Some locals will tell you of all Sydney’s problems. Bad traffic; expensive living costs; too many people; need rain… the list goes on.

However, don’t let that deter you from visiting. Sydney is constantly being voted as one of the top city travel destinations, and has been crowned the honour once again by readers of the Conde Nast Traveler magazine in 2008.

This harbour city is well known for its beaches and the vibrant metropolitan lifestyle. However, as Australia’s largest city, Sydney is also the centre stage for diverse food / culture scene thanks to a large multicultural population.

The Aboriginal and the Colonial past also offer heritage experiences for visitors to learn more about this oldest city of the nation. From fine foods to cultural experiences to shopping for the latest fashion, Sydney is a city determined not to disappoint.

Visiting Sydney?

“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.

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 annouced four new travel guides for travelers! Siem Reap and Phnom Penh now is available in Chinese version. The other 2 guides are Hanoi and Singapore in English version.

Previously we’ve launched Siem Reap guide in English and French version. Now it’s in Chinese! It consists of 18 pages comprehensive traveling analysis, tips, alerts and 3 maps that can guarantee you an affordable and enjoyable holiday.

Phnom Penh also available in Chinese now! Phnom Penh is a major tourist destination and a rising commercial, political and cultural hub in the region. The city is situated at the confluence of three major rivers, the Mekong, Bassac and Tonlé Sap. The river system remains vital to the city’s economy, as they connect Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

Hanoi guidebook is a travel guidebook with comprehensive travel analysis, scam alerts and ways to cope with it and two detailed maps. All these information can fully assist you in your Hanoi travelling plan.

Singapore guidebook contains comprehensive travel information and tips and 3 maps to ensure a fruitful trip for the traveller, budget or otherwise. All sections covered - hotels, restaurants, places to visit, shopping and transportation are carefully chosen based on price, location, ranking and testimonials from fellow travellers.

A4tripians are always trying their best to provide a comprehensive and yet affordable guide and of course other than that, we are trying hard to break the language barrier. After few weeks time of translation, we are happy to announce that Phnom Penh guide now is available in French Version.

Big credit goes to Chinseng, Lina, Marie Claude, and Nicholas. *clap clap*

Pssst…. Phnom Penh in Simplified Chinese is coming up too!

Buy & Download Phnom Penh Guidebook here!

Chicken Rice

One of Singapore’s favourite national dishes, this dish of fragrant rice and either steamed or roasted chicken is a must try. It comes with a piquant chilli dip.

Satay

Chunks of chicken, beef, mutton or pork on skewers and grilled over charcoal, satay comes with a rich peanut gravy, ketupat rice cakes and a side salad of cucumbers and onions.

Char Kway Teow

A famous noodle dish made with flat rice noodles, Chinese sausage, cockles, eggs and beansprouts. All fried up in a thick black sweet soya sauce.

Roti Prata

A flat bread, pan fried on a griddle. You can either have the squareish flaky bread plain or with an egg in it.

Chilli Crab

Spicy and sweet, this national dish is a must-try. Succulent mud crabs tossed in a piquant chilli and egg sauce. Mop up the sauce with roti (bread).

Laksa
Rice noodles in a thick coconut and shrimp gravy. The definitive one is Katong laksa.

Singapore Travel Guide

Beef Noodles
Hanoi is famous with its beef noodles. Tourist can see a lot of stalls selling beef noodles along the streets. Vietnamese will use yellow beef and quality rice to make the beef noodles. Hence, Beef noodles is a must try in Hanoi.

Chicken Noodles
Chicken noodles are famous as beef noodles. Tourist can find lots of stalls selling chicken noodle in Hanoi, too. A bowl of chicken noodles not only contains chicken and noodle but also eggs, meat and vegetables. The stall owner will put some fresh lemons on the table. It’s totally your choice, to add or not to add the lemon into your chicken noodles.

Prawn Cookies
Famous food in Hanoi. Restaurants located in West Lake sells very nice prawn cookies.

Fried Spring Roll
Vietnamese favorite food. Outer part of the spring roll is made by glutinous rice.

Green Bean Cakes
Green Bean Cakes are Vietnamese traditional cakes. The most famous shops which sell these cakes are golden dragon brand.

Baked Squids
Baked Squids is also a well-known snacks in Hanoi. It can buy in Hanoi’s old street night market.

Hanoi Travel Guide

Just to let everyone have a little sneak peak of what’s coming up within the next few weeks. a4tripians are working hard to make sure that more travel guides are going to be released and ready for sale by these coming weeks. So, that means more varieties of travel guides (in terms of different places and different languages) will be available for everyone’s convenience.

So, guidebooks that are currently ready and on sale are:

Cambodia - Siem Reap English Travel Guide

Cambodia - Pnom Penh English Travel Guide

Also, we have just launched our:

Indonesia - Yogyakarta English Travel Guide

Apart from these which are already launched and on sale, we have a few draft travel guides on sale such as:

Cambodia - Siem Reap French Travel Guide (Draft Version)

China - Beijing English Travel Guide (Draft Version)

China - Beijing Chinese Travel Guide (Draft Version)

Of course, there are other travel guides which aren’t ready yet as some of them are still under the proof reading stage. For example:

Cambodia - Siem Reap Japanese Travel Guide
Vietnam - Hanoi English Travel Guide

With all these goodies coming out soon, it looks like Christmas might be arriving a little earlier than expected

Welcome to browse our newly launch Persian language’s website. This is our first and ever tried out. Persian is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. What’s more interesting is that our website is in totally opposite direction in Persian as you could view from the image above. We are pleased to assist our viewers to get to know more about us in their native language. This website is proudly translated by Mohsen Mohebali, a volunteer who assist us in the launching of Persian website. We really appreciate his effort. Other versions of language are still in progress, so please wait patiently.

We are much appreciate if you could help us to translate into other languages.

This month, we proudly launched our first translated version of a4trip.com website in Basque and Vietnamese. You can see the full list of languages, or change your language settings, from the language selector in the header on any page.

Our goal is to support a4trip.com in 24 languages or more. With this goal, we’ve received response from several of our a4friends who want to help translate a4trip.com into their native languages. The most important factor in all of this has been the hardworking communities that spend their time getting a4trip.com ready to be used in every language across the world. Without them, this process would be much more difficult. We’re working hard to continue to open even more languages for translation, so stay tuned.

In conjunction with Beijing 2008 Olympics, our Beijing travel guidebook is coming soon! Beijing is a metropolis situated in northern China. As the nation’s capital, it’s recognized as a political, educational, economic and cultural center. Although it’s now a vibrantly modern city, its history dates back thousands of years. As such, the city possesses an incredible number of historical and cultural attractions, as well as national treasures.

Big credits go to our team that worked so hard to complete this guide book. Inside this Beijing guidebook, you will find restaurants, accommodations, shopping centers, food that you don’t want to miss, and some useful travel tips. What’s more, it also feature local culture and language guide that promise you to communicate easily with the friendly locals.

60 members and 36 guide books in progress in 6 months. The numbers do not lie. The members are real. The guidebooks are genuine. The time is the proof how a4trip grows by leaps and bounds. In a4trip, it is not about individual, it is not about organization, it is also not about alliances; a4trip is about a big family, so big that it doesn’t cover one country but multiple countries around the world. Here, we are more multi-racial than a multi-racial country. A perfect blend of cultures and heritages.

Here in a4trip, we constantly strive to walk an extra mile by bringing our travelers more language selection on each guide. In a short period of time after launching English version of Siem Reap travel guide, we hit the accelerator to produce a French Siem Reap travel guide. This travel guide cannot be done without our fellow translator, Marie Claude from France whom recently celebrate the birth of her 4th grandson . A double joyous occasion for Marie (guide book + 4th grandson). Also not forgetting Sissi, whom is doing proof reading for this guide book. We also have lovely Lina who draws the maps in detail. Last but not least, we have Shengnang who is the Irrawaddy river dolphin charity ambassador.

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belt because you will visit Yogyakarta with our travel guide. Yes, stay tune with us and start planning your trip to Yogyakarta. Big credits go to the team that work hard to make this guide book. Karen, the guide book writer, an outgoing lady that purposely fly to Yogyakarta to collect information. Eunice, the mapper; Matt Kemp, the proof reader; and Meiyen, a very young lady is the charity ambassador.