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Bali Travel Tips For Getting The Best Out Of Your Travel

24 Dec 2010 - noxa

Bali’s varied landscape of hills and mountains, rugged coastlines and sandy beaches, lush rice terraces and barren volcanic hillsides provide a picturesque backdrop to the colorful and deeply spiritual culture of this \”Island of The Gods.\” Below are a few questions that are commonly asked plus tips on the do’s and don’ts of Bali Travel.

1/ Do you need a visa for travel to bali?
In general you don’t need to get a visa before you to Bali from most countries. A visa costs approximately US$10 for 7 days/US$25 for 30 days. If you have a Hong Kong SAR or Macau SAR passport, then you will get a free visa.
Your passport must be valid for at least 6 months from the date of entry into Indonesia, and you must have proof of onward passage (either return or through tickets). If you cannot fulfill both of these requirements, you may not be allowed to enter the country.
The Visa on Arrival is non-extendable and cannot be converted into a different visa. Once you disembark, you will come to an area where you buy your visa. (Do not miss this section).  AFTER you have paid for and received your visa you THEN to proceed to Immigration where your visa will be processed.

2/ Is it safe to travel to Bali?
On October 12, 2002, the most commercialized, southern area of Bali came under attack by terrorists. The Kuta Beach tourist area is often referred to as \”Little Australia\” by the local people because it is known to primarily cater to Australian tourists and surfers. This shocking tragedy sent the message around the world that no tourist destination is completely safe in our dangerous times. What a disappointment to all who have come to deeply appreciate the hospitable Balinese people and their culture. But the intent of the perpetrators was to strike at Western revelers and their commercialism. Since Bali as a whole is primarily unscathed by such ugly decay, the Balinese culture remains untouched. However, the impact on the tourist economy has not been minimal. In recent years, tourism has contributed significantly to the financial well-being of the island and even to Indonesia as a whole. Swift efforts by the government to ensure a speedy recover are underway. Strict security measures have been implemented. Some countries have already lifted travel warnings implemented, and tourism to Bali is again on the rise.

3/ Do I need a License to drive or Ride in Bali?
Yes. If you live in Australia, then the best way to do this is to see your NRMA branch and apply for an International Drivers License which will cost you $25 for one year. Other countries: see your roads and traffic authority to apply for an international licence.This is easy to do, will save you the headaches of police fines and problems; and will be a lot easier than applying for a temporary license once you get to Bali as this takes a full day in Denpasar filling in applications and doing the test.

More Bali Tips:
• Change money at a reputable looking location, use your own (or the hotel’s) calculator before changing!
• Drink a lot of bottled water and eat lots of fresh fruit – do your body a favor.
• Be careful with your belongings at all times. Crime is on the increase and can ruin your holiday. Cases of handbag snatching have been reported, so leave important documents in your hotel safe and wear your bag across your shoulders!
• Try not to step on offerings in the street (walk around them).
• Respect the slow pace of processions when stuck behind one, i.e. don’t honk!
• Haggle when buying (except on price-tagged goods.)
• Buy ‘Imodium AD’ to relieve bouts of Bali belly.
• Have a great holiday in Bali!

Don’t:
• Forget to take your passport (or a photocopy of your ID).
• Do drugs! It can carry the death penalty, and there are enough foreigners residing in Bali courtesy of the Govt. Prison service!
• Touch people’s heads – it is very offensive to Hindus.
• Enter a temple during menstruation. Sorry Ladies!
• Forget to put salt on your food & drink water – you will probably sweat a lot.
• Worry too much about the ice – its government-quality controlled in established bars and restaurants.
• Forget to look and listen while you cross the road. Cars may stop, motorbikes may not!
• Forget to reconfirm your flight 72 hours prior to flying.

By following these tips, you will get the most out of your holiday with the least amount of hassles. Have a great trip and enjoy!

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Best Travel Tip for Being Your Own Travel Agent

20 Oct 2010 - noxa

The other day I overheard a conversation between two women discussing their summer holiday plans. One was telling the other that she had gone to her local travel agent and asked for a cheap package holiday in Spain. The agent had quickly managed to find a holiday that suited and the lady booked it immediately.

The other woman said that she wished she could do the same but had been unable to find a travel agent who could help. Apparently, someone she knew recommended Northern Cyprus to her. The description of its climate, fabulous beaches, beautiful scenery and welcoming local people deeply appealed to her but she had been unable to find any travel agent offering package holidays there. The person who recommended Northern Cyprus to her explained how it was possible to book flights and accommodation online but she felt apprehensive about not going through a travel agent.

I was quite taken aback at hearing this admission of total dependency on travel agents and ignorance of Internet travel sites. After all, this was 2008 in the U.K. where traditional travel agents have long since been marginalised by online travel sites. Yet, as the conversation developed it became apparent that neither woman knew anything about what resources the Internet offers in this respect.

It got me thinking about how many other people there were around who need tips on organising travel online and when I got home I decided to write down the following seven steps for them.

Step 1: Finding out about the travel destination

Open Google and type into the search box, the name of whatever country or general area you want to holiday in, followed by the words “travel information” or “travel guide”. For example; “Spain travel information”. Browse several of the sites your search throws up and then decide which ones give you the best travel tips relevant to your holiday needs.

Step 2: Deciding on the actual resort

Use the best sites you find from step 1 to decide which resort or locality offers you most of what you want for your vacation. For example, localities with secluded beaches or beaches with lots of facilities, resorts that have plenty to keep the children occupied or quiet villages in scenic locations, etc.

Having familiarised yourself with all that you want to know about the resort or locality, ascertain the nearest airports (or other relevant transportation centres).

Step 3: Finding suitable accommodation

When you have found some resorts that satisfy your criteria, look for suitable accommodation in them. This may require typing a new search term into Google because the sites you have looked at so far may not have sufficient detailed information about specific accommodation in a given locality. They may however have some links to other sites that do. If so, check the links out before starting a new search. If you do need to do a new search, the best search term to use would be something like; Name of resort or locality followed by the word “accommodation”. For example if after researching southern Spain, you had decided you liked what you had read about Mojacar as a holiday resort, you would type; “Mojacar accommodation”. Here’s a tip worth remembering: you may need to refer back to the other website pages that you have already opened so keep them open by doing your accommodation search in a new tab. In case you don’t know about using tabs, take a look at your browser tools options and learn how to set your browser up so that you can open new pages in new tabs.

Step 4: Checking cheapest flight availability

When you have ascertained that accommodation exists in your chosen locality, the next step is check out what flights (or other transportation) is available to get you to the resort.

Open another tab on your browser and this time type in the search term, “cheapest flights” followed by the name of nearest airport. If there are other, more distant airports that you would be prepared to consider, you might want to run separate searches for each airport.

Spend time on checking for flights because quite considerable variations in ticket prices exits, not only from flight operator to flight operator but also from one airport to another even when they are more or less the same distance from your departure airport and operated by the same company. Very significant price variations will also be found by trying different departure and arrival dates.

Step 5: Provisionally book accommodation

Assuming that you establish the availability of flights (or other transportation) at the time you want and within your budget, you will be in a position to provisionally book accommodation. Return to the browser tab you left open with the websites providing accommodation details and follow the instructions for contacting the person or organisation offering the accommodation. Sometimes this will be an automatic online process and sometimes you will need to send an email. Submit the dates you have decided upon from the flight availability research. You will not normally be asked for a deposit at this stage but if you are, inform the accommodation owner that you want them to provisionally hold the dates until after you have booked your flight.

Step 6: Booking your flight

Having received confirmation that the accommodation is available for you between the selected dates, return to the website where you found the cheapest flight deal and book your outgoing and return flights. Very occasionally you might be unlucky and the flights on the selected dates are no longer available. If so you will need to select new dates and redo step 5.

Step 7: Confirm Accommodation

Once you have your flight has been booked you are in a safe position to confirm your accommodation booking. Usually, this will require that a deposit is paid, either online or by bank transfer. Either way, the balance is usually paid upon arrival at the accommodation.

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Putting the best foot forward while traveling

19 Oct 2010 - noxa

OK that you have made up your mind  to travel , the next big question now pops up is about knowing what the destinations is like  so as to double the pleasure of traveling. This can be achieved by only doing an in-depth research of the places. So what are the options available to you. As you are reading this article online, I would assume that your source of information would be the worldwide web as it the best possible medium with a most up-to-date data resource.  This article traces some of the online tools available to get you to the truth.

Travel Guides: This is perhaps the best possible source offering useful planning information. You can get a complete information on the overview of a place, how to reach, attractions, excursions, must do activities, important distances under a single source. The scene of online guidebooks just got very competitive after some of the big names from the publishing world and travel agencies (OTAs) have come out with their own set of travel guides covering all parts of the globe.

Well, these guides are wonderful and really worth for those short in time, but there are some follies associated with them also and following them like a holy grail is not always the best way to discover a place. Guidebooks especially those related to traveling in the Indian subcontinent do provide some sections which talks about the dangers and follies while traveling.  This can range from a series of stern to subtle warnings related to single woman travelers, going paranoid over the luggage, intentions of the average people on the street and a vast range of ‘dos and don’ts which sometimes border on outright comical and instigating panic. All these and much more are encapsulated under the “Dangers and Hazards” section of the guidebooks.

While there is no denying the fact that whatever they say must have been true to some people, but the problem arises when everyone starts to follow this wholly and truly. Bad and awful things  do happen but not all the hazards, problems or crimes occurs to someone  all the time as they want us to believe. India for most parts is safe and exercising a prudent judgment is often the solution to problems in the course of journey, while following a guidebook as an unyielding authority is not. Remember journey for a greater part is also a discovery.

Personal Blogs: The travel Blogs has now evolved as a highly popular source for getting authentic as well as unusual and sometimes very personal information, strangely enough for all their valuable content they are more often than not an overlooked resource. Blogs with a combination of relevant images, audio content (podcasts) and videos (vlogs) can become a highly effective travel resource.

Zeroing on the places of your interests along with the author credentials is a great way to do research of the blogs. As blogs are similar to journal or a diary it would be best to read the most recent entries. It may not be of the same week or a month before but gleaning over the most up-to-date information is preferable. Travel Blogs can sometimes give you a rare insight which is beyond any guidebooks. Sometimes the authors can seem to be a bit more adventurous than you usually are or the language is too personal or flowery but then these are some of the things which give the blog its inevitable spin. The best way is to search for at least 5/6 blogs on a single place and watch out if there is any trend emerging.

Travel Articles: Article is another great way to scout information about various locations. However credibility of the author and the source is vital.

Forums: Forums are a platform by the travelers for the travelers and of the travelers. That is the best way to describe a forum. There are plenty of forums you just need to find them in your favorite search engine to make them work to your needs. It is a favorite of the traveling community and a place that sees everybody agreeing or even agreeing to disagree.  The members in a forum are a helpful bunch of people who incase do not have the answer to any particular question would direct you to someone who knows that.  Information is mostly unbiased.  Forums talk of the distances, driving directions, safety considerations teal by actual people who have been to there. You can continue the thread by asking relevant questions after someone else’s post. However, to reiterate, the last word is better to gain a multiple set of opinions to see if there is a general consensus or trend emerging before concluding.

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My Best Business Travel Tips

11 Oct 2010 - noxa

Business travel has actually increased considerably in the last ten years as companies are able to sell more readily to markets all around the world; the Internet has ensured that even tiny companies can have a customer base that is truly global! It is business travelers though who are feeling the strain with increasing stress and fatigue levels. With that in mind, this business travel tips article highlights some useful information that could make your business journeys more pleasurable.
Sometimes for instance, baggage goes missing; that is an unfortunate fact of travel and whilst it is distressing enough on a family holiday, on a business trip it can be disastrous. An easy remedy to this is to pack as much as possible that you absolutely must have for you meeting, in your hand luggage.
This means that even if your main luggage is lost your trip does not have to be wasted; your meeting can still take place despite any inconvenience that has been caused. Regular travelers know that the main business travel tip when packing is to keep things simple by only including exactly what you need for the journey and that way you won’t go far wrong if luggage goes missing.
If you only take enough business clothes for the trip and then all that is left is some casual wear for the evenings, just two pairs of shoes; one casual pair, and one pair for business should be enough. The remaining items to pack will be toilet essentials and any other work related documents that aren’t important.
A clever business travel tip, to reduce the size of bag you require, is too roll your clothes up instead of folding them; apart for taking up less space they are not so creased when they are unpacked. The last thing you want on a business trip is having clothes laundered because something was spilt on them, this can easily be avoided by wearing dark clothes which are able to absorb stains more easily.
Of course if you are working to a tight schedule and the inevitable delay happens then you want to know you can attend a meeting at a moments notice and the way to freshen up is by using those hand and face wipes that come in travel packs. Cell phones and other related equipment normally have good battery life but don’t forget to take a charger if you are going to be somewhere for more than a few days.
As it is possible to carry out work while you fly, by making the best use of this time you will be able to spend some time relaxing in the evening and perhaps a little site seeing. These tips make sure that no matter what happens when you travel on business you will be able to continue with your plans and will not be left wondering what to do next.
Business trips do not have to be boring and stressful if you apply the business travel tips in this article as they will allow you the opportunity to enjoy your free time even more.

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Best Wildlife Resorts to Stay Around Kanha National Park

17 Jul 2010 - noxa

Are you planning a Wildlife tour to Kanha National Park and finding it difficult to choose a suitable resort near this wildlife sanctuary? In case yes, here are a few options that would help you to make a quick and firm decision regarding your boarding & lodging arrangements for a Kanha Wildlife Tour. All of these resorts in Kanha offer top class services besides giving you unique opportunity to enjoy the wildlife of this national park.

The Krishna Jungle Resort
Located in the buffer zone of Kanha National Park, the Krishna Jungle resort boasts of cozy and comfortable cottages designed as typical Indian villages. All 31 cottages of this resort have modern facilities like attached bath, 24 Hr hot-n-cold water supply and an independent sit out area where you can sit and enjoy the beauty of the surrounding area. In addition to these, air-conditioning and heating arrangements are also made accordingly, to cater to extreme climatic conditions.

Wild Chalet Resort
Wild Chalet is a nine acre jungle lodge situated on the banks of river Banjar. This river flows along the periphery of the Kanha National Park. Bougainvillea creepers enhance the beauty of the sloping roofs of the resort. Though the accommodations of Wild Chalet give a rustic look, all of them are well equipped with several modern amenities so that the stay of guests here is comfortable. You can either go through the collection of wildlife books and movies stocked in the library of Wild Chalet or have a conversation with the resident naturalist sitting by the campfire.

Tuli Tiger Resort
Set in 22 acres of lush green land, Tuli Tiger Resort depicts the rich colorful heritage of rural India. Here, you can rise in the morning by hearing the chirping of the birds. Not only this, the sunrise in the eastern horizon of Tulli is also an excellent sight to view in the mornings. Situated near Ganghar River in the western region of Kanha’s buffer zone, this wildlife resort consists of 26 spacious, air-conditioned rooms elegantly decorated. The Nature Shop within the resort premises sells exclusive souvenirs that you can carry back home from your jungle visit.

The Celebration Van Villas
Celebrations Van Vilas is a luxury resort located at the Khatia side of Kanha National Park. This resort is spread over 5 acres of lush green land and borders the Banjar River. There are 25 A/c rooms with all fresco bathing facilities and a small private garden in the Celebrations. Apart from this, there are 6 Air- cool rooms with separate upstairs and 3 spacious A/c suites. All of the cottages have small seating areas in the form of private garden. The resort has a Garden Spa for traditional Kerala Massage & herbal remedies, a helipad for perfect landings of private helicopters, a wildlife reference library and a small daily needs shop amongst other facilities for its guests.

Kanha Jungle Lodge
Kanha Jungle Lodge is about 1 Km from Kanha National Park’s Mukki entrance. This jungle lodge has 18 spacious double bedded rooms and two independent deluxe cottages overlooking the lush green Sal forest of Kanha National Forest. You will be served Indian and Continental cuisines in the spacious thatched dining room of the lodge that is also the center point of several activities like lectures and star gazing. Not only this, tribal dances and bar-be-que dinners around a campfire are some of the other surprises in store for you in this resort.

A trip to Kanha National Park for a wildlife tour will be hassle free if you make prior reservations to one of these resorts in Kanha. So, plan your trip ahead and enjoy the abundance of wildlife species that exists in this national park.

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