The trend of shoestring backpacker travelled with their gadgets including laptops, satellite phones, GPS systems, and those who would most likely spring for the plane ticket than spending 24 hours on a bus, are in an increase trend.

Perhaps, it is just another free & easy type, or you can call it Flashpacker – a new terms catching on in the backpacking scene. Many of them carry their notebook to stay with their work and keep in touch with their friends and families.

Not a good ideas when beautiful beach is a distraction to work

I’m definitely a flashpacker. I like to experience the freedom and spontaneity of independent travel, talking to locals, stay at budget accomodation or even a camp. Yet, I can still afford to sit comfortably for a cup of coffee and working on my business at the same time.

I noticed that many Bloggers took nicer picture of where they sleep at those budget accommodation, than the owner. Yet, many travelers might want to take a look at those pictures before they decide where to stay. If this is important, why they are not doing something instead of using those super-low-resolution and over exposed picture in all hotel booking and their own official website?

If you have read Lonely Planet guidebook, most of their guidebooks are written by travelers visiting, or staying long enough at a destination – than locals. Well, I might be wrong.

I was at Dataran Merdeka last week, the place where Malaysia was born. Hardly see a local here and I start to worry if our writer might miss this out? kidding!

National flower of Malaysia

Dataran Merdeka

1. Internet has no short of useful content when come to trip planning. Thanks to the spirit of sharing, the amount of information grow dramatically and no longer an easy-to-digest type. Smart tools such as Wego and TripIT was introduced to crawl the content for you and present only useful & related information. Again, when there are many tools around, choosing a best one and not missing important trip information will soon become another set of problem!

2. How to plan, and what is the best plan? How many time you will change your keywords search in Google from Penang Youth Hostel to Penang Dorm, or Penang guesthouse, or Penang guest house, etc. How about for those speaking different languages? How about for those who call a guesthouse a homestay, like in Bali, Indonesia? What if your plan changed last minutes and you lost the leisure of booking online, but to try your luck by calling each guesthouse over the phone, in a full-booked season?

3. When you think you have every single piece of important information, but you accidentally left it at home and find no way to access it during your trip? Someone’s research in the past might help you start faster. But, how are you going to share across travelers when everyone is keeping it as notepad file or in a Microsoft Excel format?

Most of us, enjoying planning our trip. I remembered, I have kept a list of what to buy before going for my one month Taiwan trip. I have asked Lina couples of question on Visa and she is kind enough to share with me two not-off-the-beaten-path but not-to-miss places – 九份 & 成品书局.

I jolted down quick notes on a piece of paper, how about you?

“I have seen many publications gulung tikar because they are too glossy and only interested in splashing the pages with hotel and tour adverts. Not enough content. Publishers pulak are old gits who use Queen’s English and spend most of their time dreaming in the office. They are not travellers. Writers wise, worst. Many are green horns who can’t find proper jobs and ended up writing just to make ends meet. There’s no passion. Nowadays, guidebooks buyers are very educated”

I was talking to Casey Ng, Take The Path Less Ordinary. Casey is right. Many of them create a guidebook for the sake of having one, not to help. Earlier, we have collected a lot of guidebooks both printed and online version, many of them are flashy guides which provide little information but only putting up more weight to your backpack. I even came across one from Tourism Board of Malaysia with 200 over pages, glossy and full of advertisement and expecting travelers to bring it on their trip… OMG!

Casey’s Blog has a collection of what they see and experience during their community work. Check it out.

The hidden Hotel Puri found at last!

The story begins on our brainstorming today. Lately, we tried to figure out how we can help writers to perform more accurate research. Each writers have their own way to do their travel research. Yet, a slight change in terms of keywords such as homestay and guesthouse can yield completely different result.

Lately, we are using Malacca as for one of our example to explore how we can turn the research better. Surprisingly, we stumbled into this nice little hotel in a baba nyonya style, only today! The name is Hotel Puri. We completely missed it because of only playing around with keyword ‘guesthouse’. Looks like it is another good option for Mid Range, recommended by many travelers.

Our customers are, budget travelers who download and print out our guidebook, read it offline. Our current guidebook has a comprehensive listing of information, such as where to stay or eat. Yet, they are not particularly useful. Just imagine Google search result without ranking. The top-most website listed on Google is not the most related one, I doubt!

Instead of just the listing, why not we shortlist the best. I know some of you will ask, everyone has different preference when come to where to stay. Just like how you trust Google, travelers trust us to make the best decision for them, one of the reason they spend the 3 dollars to buy a guidebook from us. Good thing is, when we limit the amount of information to be included in our guidebook, we will make it even more concise.

Need a chance!

a4trip today announced another new travel guide! a4trip’s Sydney guidebook provides quick references on tips, alerts, city highlights, plus maps for locations of major venues, restaurants, points of interests, hotels, museums, and accommodations. You will know your options to have a safe and fun visit to Sydney with this reliable travel companion. Local culture, dos and don’ts, language guide, shopping guide, culinary tours, adventure and nature walks, all of the highlights of the visit are given with simple and clear information.