Local Travels: The greener side of Milton Keynes

Recently (Easter Monday) I took a trip with mother dearest to Milton Keynes.

I must admit that I am rather a fan of Milton Keynes, at least for shopping. There’s a decent selection of shops (fashion, cafes, Disney store, etc), all undercover in one huge shopping centre, meaning rain or cold can’t disrupt a retail therapy session. It’s especially a godsend at Christmas, because while cold and slush and wind are nice, by darkest, deepest December, it’s starting to get a little tiring.

However, aside from the shopping centre, I have seen very little of Milton Keynes.

Well, I’ve seen dozens of numbered, business-sponsored roundabouts (MK loves its roundabouts), and on the handful of times I’ve caught the X5 bus which goes via Milton Keynes to Cambridge, I have been given a very thorough tour of the rail station bus stop complex. But I had never explored Milton Keynes by foot, and the glorious weather we had on Monday gave me an opportunity to do so. I looked on Google Maps, found that a park bordered the shopping centre, and off Mum and I went.

Surprisingly, it turns out that Milton Keynes has over 35 parks, most of which are connected to each other using underpasses and bridges. Within minutes of leaving the centre, we could hear birdsong, see fields and sheep, and the only clue we were in the middle of a city was the sound of traffic. This was the view we had within minutes:

Blue skies and open parkland in the middle of an urban jungle.

Campbell Park continued past woodland, open grassland (carefully maintained by eco-lawnmower sheep) and cricket pitches. Passing over a canal, and past a fairly loud themepark (it wasn’t all idyllic), we eventually reached my goal of Willen Lake, which was absolutely packed with local families relaxing on one of the first nice days of the year. The crowds, hordes of kids, and go karts being raced along the paths distracted me from photographing, but I can set the scene for you. Big lake. Sunshine. Blue skies. Many people and many pushchairs. Ice cream van. Pretty etc etc etc

After admiring the view (and glaring at a few brats children who pushed past us in their games, we decided to begin the journey back, and on our way we discovered the MK Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Temple. It had a cherry tree in full blossom, and so I was obliged to take multiple pictures of masses of pink blooms. Cue picture show:

The pagodas’ garden complete with pond, miniature bridge, and cherry blossom.

Many many flowers

Filters may have been applied, but I couldn’t resist ;)

After boring Mum with my self-indulgent photography session, we wandered back in the vague direction of the car, and we discovered another little gem; a tree cathedral.

Trees, in straight lines….oooooo!

For those who have not had the delight of visiting a tree cathedral, the basic idea is to lay trees out in the shape of a cross/church, and as they grow they will create a living ‘building’ with the trees touching overhead in an arch of sorts. This was my first, and it was quite pretty, though didn’t particular strike me as church-shaped.

After enjoying the ambience here for a little while, we continued back to the centre, and I spent the drive home scoffing chocolate eclairs and listening to Shakira whilst trying to ignore Mum’s horrendous hummed harmonies.

‘Whenever, wherever, we’re meant to be together….’

DSP

Travel Planning Tips: Travelling with technology

Deciding what technology and gadgets to bring when travelling is a delicate balancing act; you want to remain connected to the world you’ve left behind at home, but don’t want them to end up distracting from experiencing the world around you when travelling.

In years past, I was quite minimal: smartphone (for accessing hostel wifi and phone calls in emergency) and a camera. Basic but sufficient for a month or two travelling. But this year, I am off for roughly four months (I really should book flights soon I suppose….so I, like, know when i’m going and for how long….hmmm yep), and want to take a few more gadgets so I don’t have to spend a third of a year accessing the internet off a screen smaller than my hand.

In addition, the debate about what to take and not take has for me been made far more difficult this year with the purchase of a HP Chromebook (on which I am gleefully typing this). For those who don’t know, a Chromebook is a lightweight netbook which runs off Google’s own Chrome OS. It has some restrictions, the most unexpected of which is a lack of compatibility with Dropbox cloud storage, meaning I’m having to transfer 50GB of photos across to compatible Google Drive (estimated time to completion is currently reading as 5.6 days). But it is portable (weighing 1.7kg), has a battery life of over 8 hours, and its 14’ screen meaning it will be ideal for lonely dorm Youtube sessions, writing blogs and editing photos (when said photos have uploaded...in 5 days time).

Here’s what I am, and perhaps more importantly what I’m not, taking with me abroad:

SmartPhone

A no-brainer for me, As a solo traveller I will feel a lot safer anywhere knowing I have a phone to call for help, even if abroad it will cost more per minute than my daily budget. I went with a UK provider that offers unlocked phones on contract, so I should be able to buy foreign sim cards and load on money to make calls, texts and ...who am I kidding, I mostly want it for mobile internet so I upload to Instagram.

My phone will also function as my main day-to-day camera. It has better specs than my old Samsung camera, and as I will be keeping my phone on me as much as possible, bringing a separate camera just seems to me to be bringing one more thing for me to lose somewhere. My phone has the added bonus of automatically backing up my photos onto my Google Drive, meaning hopefully I’ll never lose any memories. This is especially important as last year I did lose my phone, and because I didn’t have wifi in my hostel nor mobile internet, I lost about 6 days of photos which was really upsetting.

Kindle Fire Tablet

This was an investment that I made last year when I went to Vietnam. I wanted to be able to read books and watch TV off of something larger than a phone screen, and also wanted an additional device to backup photos and scans of important documents. It mostly was very useful, though had a disappointing battery life, and all media refused to play through headphones meaning there were few places I could watch movies without being glared at.

In addition, the Kindle has now pretty much been rendered obsolete by my Chromebook, which is faster, about the same weight, and runs the Overdrive ebook reading and lending program that I used on my Kindle. Furthermore with internet on my phone hopefully meaning I can back up photos on the go, I don’t need it so much as a safety net for my photos any longer. So the Kindle stays at home.

Samsung Digital Camera

I have been very hesitant in deciding to leave my camera behind this trip, probably out of tradition: it feels wrong to go on holiday/travelling without a camera. However, the advancement of phone cameras makes portable digital cameras fairly obsolete. About the only thing I will lose out on leaving the camera behind will be optical zoom, but this disadvantage can be worked around. Leaving it behind means less things to carry in my pockets day-to-day, and one less thing to remember to charge each night.

HP Chromebook 14’’

The chromebook seems to be designed for travel; it’s light-weight, cheap (which will hopefully deter thieves, as it’s fairly obviously so), and fairly immune from bugs or viruses. It’s only weakness is a dependence on an internet connection for anything more than basically functionality, but every hostel i plan to stay as has wifi, as will many cafes and bars (this is Asia, most young people have smartphones, and everywhere has wifi as a result). Aside from making browsing facebook and booking accommodation easier, a key use for me will be editing photos. I do have a habit of taking too many photos rather than risk missing a moment, and i rarely delete too many from the tiny camera or phone screen where it is hard to judge the focus or colours. The chromebook’s 14’’ screen will enable me to check, modify and delete photos on the road, and save me having to trawl through thousands of photos back in the UK.

Nintendo 2DS and games

I brought these along last year to SE Asia thinking they would be good for plane journeys and lazy hostel afternoons. However, I found I played on it...perhaps once. I found on planes music and reading was more interesting, and in hostels, I mostly socialised with roommates. My 2DS is well-used at home because I live in a boring, small town and have little to do in the evenings, but travelling it isn’t really needed, and it just takes up space and weight. So it is staying behind.

So in summary, my packlist is as follows:

• (Unlocked) LG G3 smartphone
• Kindle Fire Tablet
• Samsung 8mp Camera
• HP Chromebook 14’
• 2DS & Games

I would definitely say that my previous travels have taught me the need to declutter and bring as little as possible (and the irritation of tangles and knots of plugs everytime you unpack your electricals pocket), and I feel bringing just two devices is the right compromise between function and space-saving. I’m sure one of them will be stolen or lost on the road, but the phone is insured and the laptop secondhand and cheap, so it’s not the end of the world. I just feel sorry for those people who bring £1000 Macs travelling with them!!

Speak soon, DSP

Travel Planning Tips: Leave the Guide Books behind

I should start this with a confession - I am a little obsessive with planning.

I reckon it stems from school where I always wanted to be top of the class, and be prepared so I’d know the topic before it was even taught. This has extended into real life where I will spend hours researching opticians or tea or whatever I am currently after, in order to go into a store or surgery and be prepared. I just like to be prepared. This preparation goes into overdrive when I’m planning travel.

I am currently sat writing this on a Saturday night, at 11pm, as a break from my SE Asia 2015 trip planning, which is so far amounting to 5 travel books, 15 tabs open behind this google doc, and a hand written travel guide which is currently 79 pages long and growing. It has a contents page and everything, and is already longer than my undergrad dissertation….

Now, I have to say that, even for me, this is a little excessive...and it may have something to do with the fact that I have a crappy part-time job which gives me plenty of free time, and friends that live 60+ miles away by trains that I cannot afford...because I have a crappy poorly-paid part time job. Plenty of time and little to do results in my planning going overboard. But hey it’s either this, or I will start obsessively cleaning the kitchen pantry….so yeah, WOOOO PLANNING.

Apart from my boredom, the other reason for this ridiculous amount of planning is that I have made a promise this year to leave the guide book behind. For someone who needs to organise and plan everything this is a big step, and also an important one. It stems from looking throw the pictures my friends have taken of me when travelling over the last few years. In nearly everyone, I have a Rough Guide/Lonely Planet/Footprint guide clasped into my sweaty hand, and I seriously feel I spent large chunks of my travels with my nose buried in a guide book rather than exploring and experiencing foreign cultures and (often bad) smells. In addition, guidebooks tend to encourage and perpetuate certain set routes through a country, and on my last trip in Vietnam I watched people with their beaks buried in a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide walk past a brilliant restaurant or ludicrously cheap bar saying ‘Oh, that place isn’t recommended, we can’t go there.’ which is silly. The guidebooks aren’t meant to be all-encompassing but rather just a starting point and framework for exploration. And that got me thinking; I’ve done that. When I first went travelling, I would worry if a friend booked accom not in a guide book, or travel across a city for 30 mins by taxi to eat in a recommended restaurant.  That’s ludicrous...and such a restrictive way of travelling. And it hasn’t always paid off - I’ve had food poisoning in India after eating at a cafe raved about by my guidebook which wiped 3 days off my travels; I’ve been scammed at a well-recommended hostel in Vietnam; and I was nearly mugged after following guide book recommendations that Johannesburg was safe to walk around (several taxi drivers and hotel owners actually hold me off for attempting it!).

the guidebooks I shan't be taking with me - the scissors are explained below

Of course, guidebooks are still really useful resources for travel, especially if you’re an inexperienced backpacker or just new to the region. If your bus is delayed and you end up in a foreign city at midnight, your guidebook will likely have a few accommodations listed, which while not perfect, are likely to be reasonably safe, and not a brothel/den of iniquity. If you’re feeling under the weather, and really fancy some comforting food from home, there will probably be a suggestion in the guidebook. They contain simple, easy-to-use maps, and the essential information you’d need in an emergency (key phrases in the local language, emergency telephone numbers, embassy locations, etc). All of this means I was very glad to have my guidebook with me for my first few backpacking adventures when I tackled remote Tanzania and hectic Indian cities.

But, it is time to be honest. I am 22; I have organised and embarked upon 9 trips abroad independently; I have visited over 30 countries. It’s time I take the training wheels off, and leave the guidebook(s) behind. Some of my most memorable trips and discoveries have been without a guidebook, and to be honest, on my last few trips, I have started to resent the bulk and weight of guidebooks when I am travelling with hand luggage only, and in Greece, the unopened guidebook spent a week propping up a wobbly table, and it only made it home because a receptionist ran after me with it when I left the hotel.

However, as stated above, guidebooks do have their plus points, and I will be travelling to countries I have never visited before this summer, so I need some sort of backup to rely one. So here’s how I am going to ensure I have somewhere to sleep and somewhere to photograph each day of my 15 week trip:

1. Bring an unlocked phone with me - I have always dragged a phone with me on trips, but more as a portable way to access hostel wifi and upload camera pics to dropbox, check facebook, and email my parents. But this time around, I plan to bring my unlocked smart phone and get a local SIM so I can access internet and therefore hotel reviews and maps for where I’m travelling.
2. Do the background reading before I go - so whilst I am not taking the guidebooks with me, I have bought a few secondhand from eBay, and have been reading the history and culture sections in my spare time, so I am more aware when I get out there.
3. Broaden my resources - in addition to selectively reading my guidebooks, I’ve also been gathering and saving other resources. I’ve been bookmarking good travel posts and blogs I’ve found, and I have a small wall covered in post-it notes of tips gleaned from reviews off of Trip Advisor and Hostelworld.
4. Gather all my resources together somewhere - this is perhaps the most time consuming project, but the most important, and is why I am confident to leave the books behind...because I’ve hand-written my own personalised guidebook. Wait, I hear you say, haven’t you just written several paragraphs saying that guidebooks are a distraction and lead you down a well-trodden path??? Well, yes, I did, and I stick to that; perhaps a better word for what i’ve written is ‘collective travel notes’. I omit all the arty photography, the lengthy description of museum collection, the lists of recommended Lebanese restaurants within the Little India district of Singapore, and the backwater town entries that even locals don’t know or want to visit. I focus on the essentials: for every location, I include a few accomodation suggestions with prices, the key attractions, key transport links, and a map (which I confess is cut out from the guide book - yes, there is a sad dejected Rough Guide Malaysia in my bin with many pages missing). It’s kept simple, brief, and will be used as a quick reference, not a reading book. The maps are removable for the occasions I don’t have internet on my phone, and the note book will never leave the hostel (mostly as I’ve written with washable cartridge ink and I’m going to SE Asia in monsoon season!). Furthermore, aside from maps and transport options, most information has come from TA and blog recommendations rather than guidebooks. I can totally see me losing it or getting it wet within the first week, but it allows me the freedom to explore and discover whilst having the basics covered in case.

my travel notes, complete with butchered pieces of guide books - somewhere a librarian just felt their skin crawl ;)

So that is how I am planning my trip; I’m leaving my guide books behind by writing my own. What was the point I was trying to make in this blog…….

…..I forget

.….anyway, thanks for reading; I’m off to make a pot of tea :)

DSP

Travel Planning Tips: Travelling is Unpredictable

Planning a RTW or once-(in my case fifth)-in-a-lifetime trip can be a daunting and nerve-jangling experience, and was a major worry for me on my first independent backpacking trip abroad back in 2011 (jeez, that’s a long time ago now!). But it really shouldn’t be enough to put anyone off, and so I thought I’d share a few tips and ideas (now over several posts as I am a wordy moron) that I am currently putting into practise whilst planning my next trip.

I should start by admitting that I am a habitual worrier and anxious mess most of the time, and fuss most over the small stuff. Only last week, I couldn’t sleep for over an hour because the following day I was going to be learning how to use a coffee machine at work. A stupid, simple coffee machine! I wasn’t at all thinking that I still haven’t got a place confirmed for my masters course, nor that global warming may flood London before 2100. Nope, I worried about whether I’d remember what a Flat White is and how to make it (still don’t know the answer to either question).

Bear with me, this does have a point, and that point is that I am not one of those chilled, cool cat sorts that breeze through life like it’s Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1; I worry, obsessively. I plan, obsessively. However, this anxiety does not apply when it comes to travelling, because of these tips, and especially:

Just a small selection of the travel books I use to plan my trips...I may not plan obsessively anyone, but not by much ;)

Travelling is unpredictable

Almost by definition, you cannot 100% plan your travelling trip. Your flight may be cancelled because of a volcano somewhere in the Atlantic decides to shut down European airspace. The ferry that you were relying on to transport you on Wednesday afternoon at 3pm may have since you read about it moved to Thursday at 3pm because the ferry captain now plays lawn tennis on Wednesday. That owned of the hostel in Ho Chi Minh City which you painstakingly selected from among thousands may when you arrive say ‘Sorry, we’re full, but my wife’s cousin’s dog groomer has a really good hotel, let me call you a taxi to take you there.’ You may be forced to spend two days worth of budget repairing a £2.50 haircut, leaving your budget in ruins and your scalp scalped.

This is why you do not accept haircuts from the same man that you turned down for a camel tour.

All of these examples have happened to me (loosely, I confess to artistic license with the lawn tennis) over the last few years, and the lesson to take away from them is: shit happens. You can never plan for every eventuality, and part of the fun of travelling is that it is unpredictable, and you nearly never actually do what you planned to do four months ago when you were sat shivering in front on a computer in mid-January. That’s not to say don’t plan at all; allow a little extra time and money in case of cancellation or changes in plans. If you’re reliant on a single bus or ferry, have a look at what’s nearby in advance in case you are stranded.

Part of the fun, especially for a worrier like me, is that because travelling is unpredictable, it is also to an extent unplannable (yes, that word is made up, MS Word is angry with me). Over several trips I have realised this, and it has freed me from the stress and allowed me to enjoy my trips much more.

Finally, to the negative unpredictable examples of travel above, I should add several positive ones I or my friends have experienced. You could mispronounce your hostel to your taxi driver, and end up at a hostel not found in the guide books where you meet some of the most fun people on your trip. You could in Victoria Falls, having dismissed it as being too expensive, find an alligator diving experience for half the price LP suggests. Or you could, as my friend experienced, book onto an amazing package tour whilst in the UK, and turn up to discover your group is full of the kind of people who only want McDonalds even though there are in Thailand. You end up bailing from the trour halfway through, make your way to a beautiful Thai island, where you meet some amazing German guys who you tag along with and explore Thailand together. A holiday romance ensues with one, and you end up cancelling more of your plans, and having more fun in those two weeks than you have all trip.

An unplanned personal party with a crocodile ;)

So my first tip is: travelling is not something that can be mapped out or planned, and so shouldn't be worried about. It's unpredictable, and you should ensure that that is part of the fun.