timbblogg.wordpress.com » Pre Travel Ramblings

Tibet…. here we don’t come

tminte — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:02:55 +0000

Well right now we should be in China heading for Tibet, probably somewhere around the Terracotta Warriors about to get on the world’s highest train to Lhasa. Unfortunately we’re stuck in the UK like a few million gazillion others. Our STA flight to Beijing was booked for last Friday but by Thursday morning we all know what had happened. Iceland used to be my favourite place in the whole wide world .

We phoned STA on Friday and rebooked for this morning, and engaged smug mode as, by then, we thought it must all be over and we had a confirmed flight ahead of the hoards of people there must be in the backlog. We’d even (via STA) managed to potentially book two tricky internal flights from Beijing to Xi’an (Terracotta Warriors) and Xi’an to Lhasa (a flight you just can’t book yourself on the internet it would seem) so we could catch up on our expedition. We held off actually booking though just in case, and that was just as well. It would appear our five star, ”Defaqto” rated travel insurance from American Express is anything but “Remarkably Good” as it says on their website, and is actually rather poor and very similar to not having any insurance at all or just buying anyone else’s out there. Basically they wont cover anything not related to industrial action, adverse whether or public transport breakdown. So we wont be using them anymore.

Just had a call from STA though asking when we’d like to re-book to (quite impressed, that was right out of the blue). Looking like a few weeks off now to fit in with our hectic schedule. Just emailed our travel co in Tibet (www.TibetanExpeditions.com) though to see what the damage would be if that old volcano keeps going and we needed to cancel. We’ve been really impressed with them so far. They’ve changed dates, shipped tourist permits accross the country, cancelled trains and generally replied to a million emails over these last few months very very well. Lets see what happens now!

Filed under: China, Pre Travel Ramblings, Tibet

Leaving Party

tminte — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:02:53 +0000

Leaving party!! Yes, we’re finally leaving so no more of us going on and on and on and on about it! But seriously, it makes all the pesky travel planning worth it! Hopefully everyone had a brilliant time, I did until about 2am then the only evidence is pictures Can’t believe it!) On a sad note it reminded us that we wont see our friends for 8 months and how we really don’t make the most of what we’ve got in brilliant Brighton. Also the friends we’re handing the keys of the flat to.. Matt and Anna were there to see just how debauched we could be. Please don’t trash our flat or anoy the neighbours!! We’re nice people really!

Pictures can say a thousand words I hear so here are 29,000 words, makes writing a dissertaion seem very easy http://www.flickr.com/photos/30094104@N02/sets/72157607197264832/

See you soon! Kath and Tim

26 Hours To Go

tminte — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:01:49 +0000

So with 26 hours to go, a whacking great list, or more accurately a load of whacking great lists still to trawl through and a bunch of things still to get I can only imagine this is more stressful than selling a house and having baby at once. And that would be stressful (and quite surprising)- if you were bloke, as I am. I can’t wait to get in that car to the airport tomorrow (thank you Darren F!) and leave it all behind. It’s only now that how big a job this has been is sinking in. Doing this at a relatively late time in your life when you have a home, a mortgage, a car, a career, what appears to be hundreds of bills, loads of accumulated stuff and furniture and limited time is not easy.

Aside from moving house (which we have all but done – packing everything, floor to ceiling, into the spare room), finding the funds, selling cars (which I still haven’t done – anyone want a brand new Volvo?) getting passports back in time (and in one piece – thank you Vietnam!!) and buying the countless things you think you might possibly maybe need this has been hard work. And Kath has had it worse, Kath has been toiling away planning every detail of every flight and a good few hostels and hotels for what seems like months and months. I shudder to think what the stats on this trip are going to be; the 34,000 mile around the world Global Explorer ticket we bought from STA Travel was the just beginning. When I get a minute I might work it out.

Right, of into to town the for last time now, just a day pack to swap – this one is too small I found out last night!, dollars, Mexican and travelers queues to buy and prescription diving mask to pick up.

PS memory cards turned up 30 mins ago, good to go now!

GPS tracking – for search parties and the like

tminte — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:03:54 +0000

Yes! Useful for search parties and the like, the little GPS gizmo I got will be logging our position as we go and when we get an internet connection I’ll have a go at uploading the data along the way. We should also be able to tag pictures with the location they were taken so they pop up on the map. Hoooraa! I hear you cry!

Big wide map http://timminter.com/maps/world/1920.htm

Smaller map http://timminter.com/maps/world/1024.htm

There will be a permanent link to these maps at the top of this page too

GPS!

tminte — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:36:13 +0000

Now I really have gone super geek! And I’m possibly more excited about this than my really really nice new camera. Sorry that can’t be right! Cameras are creative and take interesting pictures and this thing I’ve got simply isn’t and doesn’t, it’s pure geek.. but I think I’m gonna love it, and it’s bargain! I’ll get to the point. I got a GPS data logger today! (after tons and tons research AGAIN! - I really need to not spend so much time in front of the computer)

Basically this little box sits in your bag quietly recording your position and you can then download the info onto your computer and do mildly (or amazingly – depending on your point of view) interesting things with it. I just wanted to be able to plot my route on google maps and put it on this website but it can also, as a total Brucey bonus update the info (meta info) on your pictures from your camera with the location they were taken based on the time they were taken and the time GPS data was recorded. That’s only GPS data so not that useful generally but you can then upload pictures to google maps (somehow not quite sure yet) and they appear on the map (somehow) in the right place! Great little tool to put on a travel blog me thinks so I’ll give that a go!

I hear some fancy pants cameras are getting this capability built in but not for a while or they cost loads also I want this to track our route more than anything. Bargain at around £50-£60 for this GlobalSat DG-100. I got mine from easydevices.co.uk with no problems and delivery, although pricy was next day as promised.

Check out http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/GPS_Reviews for very useful info on all things GPS. One thing I did find was that there are good and bad ones out there for sure! Loads of people ranting “don’t buy this what ever you do” so the one I got in the end seems like a good one, no major rants I could find. Time will tell! Look out for battery life, number of satellites it can track and number of points it can record if the memory can’t be upgraded.

Another Kinda Top Tip

tminte — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:57:45 +0000

I must be getting really really old! Leaches, quicksand and running from rolling boulders and creaky booby traps doesn’t bother me right now. Getting somewhere and finding I’ve lost a silly bit of paper or I can’t claim on that picky insurance because I haven’t got the receipt would really tick me off I reckon. So another kinda top tip… Google Documents (http://docs.google.com/). I’ve stored scans and copies of all sorts of things, from our STA Itinerary (basically our ticket!) and hotel reservations to Yellow Fever certificate, Birth Certificate, drivers licences, passport and receipts for all this kit I’m going to lugging around. I scanned in all the paper stuff and one great thing about it is you can forward emails to a unique address given to you and they automatically get added to your Google Documents account. Kinda similar to saving things in your email account I must say but if you’re limited on space or just want a separate secure place for all you travel docs it might be worth a look.

Top Tip – Wool Pants

tminte — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:50:46 +0000

A family friend, just back from an Everest Base Camp expedition had one tip - get yourself some merino wool pants. No more worrying about how many to take, washing the ones you’ve got and lugging them around the world. One pair should do you for days or even weeks! I jumped at the idea but my girlfriend is not so sure. 11 days to persuade her!

Would you like a bag for your bag sir?

tminte — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:37:13 +0000

Yay finally got a rucksack, it’s been weeks if not months of searching and I’ve finally found the sack of my dreams! It had to be big and have loads of strappy and pockety bits and “functions”. This one’s got ‘em all; 85 litres, front opening for those hard to reach areas, sleeping bag bit, water carrying bit, pouches, netting, toggles and pulleys and even better: two things I can’t even identify. Great. Now I just need all those other things I’ve not got!

Sorry – got carried away and had to add a picture!

Memory Card Stress

tminte — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:27:58 +0000

Mad as a box of frogs! That’s what I reckon after trawling through hundreds of memory cards and more websites than I care to remember. I could have been doing something fun but no! Instead, memory card fever has taken hold. Can’t quite believe I’m writing a post about this but I feel something should come out of all this tediousness! Who could have thought choosing a memory card could be so frustrating? The rest of this post, if not the first part, you can already tell is a bit ranty and techy so I’ll get straight to the point (you can read more rantings and raving below if you really want!) A quick scan of memory cards on dabs.com, 7dayshop or ebuyer etc give you a ton of results, narrow them down to the size you want and you’ve still got a ton. The next thing you’re interested in is the speed but almost invariably that aint so obvious. It’s hidden behind branding like “Ultra” or “Extreme” or “Pro”. So is Pro faster then Extreme? Is a SanDisk Extreme as fast as a Kingston Elite? How do you compare these bleedin’ things! It isn’t easy and no one seems to have collected this info in one place and I can see why! It’s a real pain to find. Basically this is the info I collected on my investigations. It’s just about the major bands as these are what you find out there really and I’ve had enough!

Manufacturer	Model	Write	Read	Label
SanDisk	Standard (no speed rating)	4.5MB\Sec (30x)	4.5MB\Sec (30x)	None
	Ultra II	9MB\Sec (60x)	10MB\Sec (66x)	66x
	Extreme Ducati	20MB\Sec (133x)	20MB\Sec (133x)	133x
	Extreme III	20MB\Sec (133x)	20MB\Sec (133x)	133x
Kingston	Secure Digital
	Secure Digital Elite Pro	7.7MB\Sec (51x)	8.2MB\Sec (55x)	50x
	Secure Digital Ultimate	20MB\Sec (133x)	21MB\Sec (140)	133x
	Secure Digital Class 2	2MB\Sec (13x)	2MB\Sec (13x)	Class 2
	Secure Digital Class 4	4MB\Sec (26x)	4MB\Sec (26x)	Class 4
	Secure Digital Class 6	6MB\Sec (40x)	6MB\Sec (40x)	Class 6
Crucial	Secure Digital	3MB\Sec (20x)	3MB\Sec (20x)	None
Lexar	Platinum II	8.5Mb\Sec (57x)	8.5Mb\Sec (57x)	None

Apologies if anything is wrong or incomplete, it’s just a guide (and if a manufacturer sees this and it’s wrong – bleedin’ make it easier to find!!!)

I completely believe all the manufacturers got together (except SanDisk I have to say) one day in a room and came up with the most opaque, random and damn right hard to fathom system of classifying the speed of their cards. Possibly it took them a week.

Basically I think all you need to know about a memory card is how big it is, that’s easy peasy and then how fast it is. To find out how fast it is you need a standard of course and you also need to be measuring the same thing each time. There is a standard out there (1.5MB\Sec = 1x) but not everyone uses that, and then there are two really important things to measure that matter the user, read and write speed. But then there are other measures too, erase speed and of course you can average these (or choose to just average two of them etc etc!) Basically trying to compare memory cards from the info you are given is almost impossible. Some manufactures don’t even display any speed info about their products or hide it way away in techno babble in some distant document.

Does speed matter that much? Possibly not if you’re just snapping away with a compact camera so I’d stop reading right here – (a bit late sorry!) there are better things to be doing right now. It would definitely matter on professional digital SLRs but could also definitely matter on your more standard DSLR like I have or the new compacts capable of recording HD TV video. What I was more interested in though was just getting the best card for the money, going off a big trip like this one, it’s going to be a real arse if I get somewhere and I’ve either run out of cards because I bought too few because they were too expensive or bought the cheapest biggest cards and missed that amaaazing shot because the camera couldn’t write the last picture fast enough. Second thoughts, I don’t think I’m going to take a camera now. You can spend too much time looking through a lens.

Sources and more info:

http://www.valuemedia.co.uk/sd_card_speed_tests.htm
http://www.sandisk.com
http://www.kingston.com/flash/photo.asp
http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/review/2006/07/22/Memory-Card-Roundup/p5
http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/review/2006/07/22/Memory-Card-Roundup/p7
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f122/sd-cards-speed-ratings-card-readers-writers-199888/

14 days to go!

tminte — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:24:02 +0000

And the main thing is planning the leaving party! I’m quite excited about it really, my passport might still be at the Vietnamese Embassy, I might not have a rucksack, sold my car or have enough Malaria tablets yet but hey, at least we’ve got nibbles.

Sorry I’ve been very very lax recently on the internet side but promise to put loads and loads of interesting things up soon! This travel planning really does take up your life. 14 days to go and 29.5 hours to party…