Free Goodies

Pardon me cause it's been a while since my last post. Lately I've been very busy with work, some paperwork and personal stuff..

The weather is terrible, if it's not raining all day, it chills to the bone. Some violent storm are reported in France and Spain, and avalanche that killed people in Scotland and Turkey have been buzzing on TV. Please stay safe and do whatever precaution to avoid any accidents and disasters.

For all those who choose and enjoy their time home like me, if you're feeling lucky and maybe a bit creative, there are some give-away out there to take.

Travelchannel is giving away tickets and stays in Stockholm, all you need is fill up the form here. They also giving away travel insurance for family here.

Lonelyplanet compass program also giving away 5 copies of the new book Best in Travel 2009, all you need is to mail the answers. Go to this page for more information.


Do you like to give review of those eating places around your area or those which you visited during your travel? Do you also like free goodies such as Canon Ixus, Travel books or iPod Touch? Go to this lonelyplanet page, and voila! Let your creativity win you something!


Happy travel and good luck!

bird with adriatic sunset

UPDATE: I forgot to put this up too.. Anyway if you have a funny or weird travel-related photo, you might want to send them to this contest. Quick! It ends 31 January

Road Trip Made Easy

With all modern comfort of using GPS navigation gadgets, knowing the way to go while driving your car can be fun and getting lost can be avoided. But making a road trip is not always about driving the car to your destination. People wants to have the most of their trip by enjoying the scenery, stopping at their interest spots, and even making a big detour to explore the regions.

Sure, those Tomtom or Garmin are very handy on-road, but good trips usually involved good planning, especially when you want to be on a safe budget as well as safe driving. Google Map is definetely one of the best and free solution for planning the way. Just google the locations, and that's about it. The best thing is that it would give a street view, when it's available. With it, you can roughly know how do those important intersections look like and figured that you should turn right before it's too late!

google if you want to go to Barcelona for example

street view on Google map

Google Map is great, but my favorite is Via Michellin, because it shows you the rough cost of your trip. With it, you can know how much petrol you would spend, how much toll and road tax you need to pay. And the most favorable feature is its 'scenic roads' map. How nice that you know you're gonna see scenery 98 km long along your trip for example. The ability to choose between "Recommended, Quickest, Shortest, Sightseeing, and Economical" makes it my absolute winner!

Via Michellin with options "Recommended, Quickest, Shortest, Sightseeing, and Economical"

Now your route is printed, the fuel tank is full, the picnic box is prepared, you are ready to go! But do check the weather and the local road information updates, especially on winter if you want to go through mountain pass, because probably the road is closed and you'd need to take a detour.

Happy road tripping! Drive safe and make your plan flexible! Cause sometime it's still good to get lost and find unexpected gems out of nowhere!