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