So, I've recently been asked the question "what makes you unique?" And to be honest, I really had a hard time coming up with an answer. I think I'm your pretty typical late 20's kinda girl. Looks: 5'6", blond hair, green-ish eyes. Likes: hanging out with friends, working out, traveling (obviously). Dislikes: traffic, cooking, mundane responsibilities. I really struggled until I got to thinking about the one constant in my life, whether playing from my Ipod or just playing in my head; MUSIC. For some reason, I know A LOT of songs. I love music and appreciate all types of it. My father long ago branded me with the name "The Human Jukebox". I've been told more than once that I should go on the show "Don't forget the lyrics", my fellow servers at work frequently ask me "what's the song of the day?" and will always laugh when a song immediately escapes my lips. I've actually discovered that at work, I need a song playing in my head at all times to prevent me from losing my sanity.
You may be thinking that a love for music is not very unique, but after traveling, I've been lucky enough to bring back some fantastic music from other parts of the world. So I guess I can say that this makes me pretty unique. Not everyone has the chance to explore our world, let alone be exposed to great new music and leave countries with a new entry on your playlist.
While in Australia, a close friend of mine with whom I'm still in touch, opened my eyes to some great New Zealand reggae. He grew up in NZ and is very proud of his Maori heritage. A fellow music lover, he loved the smooth, easy soul of NZ reggae bands like Salmonella Dub, Fat Freddy's Drop, The Black Seeds and Katchafire. As soon as I heard these songs, I was in love, too.
I still find it funny how certain music never makes it across the world. I had never heard of these bands and have never heard anyone speak of them since being home. It also made me laugh while in Chiang Mai, Thailand to hear a Thai band do a cover of Britney Spears' "1, 2, 3" at a club. The words one, two, three can pretty much sum up what I understood during that particular performance, but it really made me think about certain aspects of pop culture and how some can transcend borders and how some never leave its homeland. I did get to hear some authentic Asian music as well, but it was not very popular at the clubs we were frequenting.
I'm one of those people whom you'll regularly hear say "this song reminds me of ___________" (fill in the blank). There's always someone or some time of my life that I can bring back by playing a song. I am lucky to have been able to discover music authentic to different cultures and am even luckier to get to bring back all of these great experiences any time I turn the dial on my Ipod.
So, I guess you can say that this adds some sort of "unique-ness" to my somewhat typical life. I've got some more variety to the music constantly playing in my head. If you want to hear some of these tunes that are the background to my day-to-day life just click here to listen to Katchafire or here for Salmonella Dub or here for the Black Seeds.
...Claire was here
Friday, 24 February 2012
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
What the travel companies don't want you to know...
Probably the most common way to plan a trip is to head over to a travel agent like Flight Centre, or to look up tours and travel reviews online. What I have learned is that this is a great way to get a list all of the highlights of a country and to check those well-known tourist attractions off of that ever-growing "Bucket List". This is what I did. But then upon my return, I got talking to friends and fellow travellers and they asked me "Did you go to so and so?" or "Did you see this and that?". It was then that I realized the power of my peers and their experiences and realized that there are things that the travel companies don't tell you about.
I found that social media sites like Trip Advisor are a very helpful resource for planning a trip. You get the "real" reviews of a country, the what to do's and what no to do's, what you should spend your money on and what you should skip. Facebook is great because while "creeping" through your friends' pictures (or even those people you come across without a blocked profile where you can spend time looking at the smiling faces of strangers), you can find out the great hotels, and places to visit and party that often times are off the beaten path, or simply the areas that aren't advertised in a tour magazine. I found a couple of pretty crazy places while looking through others' pictures and decided I HAD to visit. For example, on the East Coast of Australia, there is a tiny littlw town called Nimbin. Famous for it's hippy residents who are generally stoned 24/7, this is never a place you would be informed of at a travel agent! But what a weird place! And a place that I'm glad I got to experience!
The main street of Nimbin. Please take note of the man in a tutu.
I've also discovered YouTube can be another great resource. During one of my sleepless nights when I was planning an adventure and stressing about my budget, I decided that I would start YouTube-ing "cute cats", "funny animals" and then became very nostalgic and decided to look at some of the places I had visited on my last adventure. Vang Vieng, a town in Laos, a small country in South East Asia was one of these places and I found quite a few videos of the famous river-tubing where I did go, but Contiki wasn't eager to promote to its customers because of its dangerous reputation. These videos were taken around the time I was there, and really show the craziness of this attraction, that I'll tell you is not a family-friendly activity. It is wild and full of twenty-somethings who love to party. Ahhh, the memories ;) My experience in Vang Vieng was not so wild since, unfortunately I had some "stomach trouble" due to something I ate (a typical complaint when visiting S.E. Asia), so I had a fairly leisurely float down the river, not quite like the videos you'll find on YouTube.
But looking through the party videos, I found another very sad video and true story of a Canadian tourist who was seriously injured, (he almost died to be honest) when his fun time went awry. It highlighted the importance of travel insurance and being safe while still having a great time. So not only are people quick to post party videos and amazing less popular hot-spots, but while looking through these resources, you'll also get the reality of how travelling can be dangerous and how caution should be taken.
Beautiful Laotian landscape
Typical village in the mountains of Laos
So the moral of the story here is that to get your very popular tourist attractions, travel guides are a great resource. But backpackers wanting to get a different taste of the culture and find those little known pieces of paradise, (Leonardo DiCaprio and The Beach come to mind here) use social media tools to learn a lot more then you would by talking to someone at a desk. Our peers are the best resource and of course, we are always willing to show off what a great time we had to our friends and families through pictures and videos.
...Claire was here.
I found that social media sites like Trip Advisor are a very helpful resource for planning a trip. You get the "real" reviews of a country, the what to do's and what no to do's, what you should spend your money on and what you should skip. Facebook is great because while "creeping" through your friends' pictures (or even those people you come across without a blocked profile where you can spend time looking at the smiling faces of strangers), you can find out the great hotels, and places to visit and party that often times are off the beaten path, or simply the areas that aren't advertised in a tour magazine. I found a couple of pretty crazy places while looking through others' pictures and decided I HAD to visit. For example, on the East Coast of Australia, there is a tiny littlw town called Nimbin. Famous for it's hippy residents who are generally stoned 24/7, this is never a place you would be informed of at a travel agent! But what a weird place! And a place that I'm glad I got to experience!
The main street of Nimbin. Please take note of the man in a tutu.
I've also discovered YouTube can be another great resource. During one of my sleepless nights when I was planning an adventure and stressing about my budget, I decided that I would start YouTube-ing "cute cats", "funny animals" and then became very nostalgic and decided to look at some of the places I had visited on my last adventure. Vang Vieng, a town in Laos, a small country in South East Asia was one of these places and I found quite a few videos of the famous river-tubing where I did go, but Contiki wasn't eager to promote to its customers because of its dangerous reputation. These videos were taken around the time I was there, and really show the craziness of this attraction, that I'll tell you is not a family-friendly activity. It is wild and full of twenty-somethings who love to party. Ahhh, the memories ;) My experience in Vang Vieng was not so wild since, unfortunately I had some "stomach trouble" due to something I ate (a typical complaint when visiting S.E. Asia), so I had a fairly leisurely float down the river, not quite like the videos you'll find on YouTube.
But looking through the party videos, I found another very sad video and true story of a Canadian tourist who was seriously injured, (he almost died to be honest) when his fun time went awry. It highlighted the importance of travel insurance and being safe while still having a great time. So not only are people quick to post party videos and amazing less popular hot-spots, but while looking through these resources, you'll also get the reality of how travelling can be dangerous and how caution should be taken.
Beautiful Laotian landscape
Typical village in the mountains of Laos
So the moral of the story here is that to get your very popular tourist attractions, travel guides are a great resource. But backpackers wanting to get a different taste of the culture and find those little known pieces of paradise, (Leonardo DiCaprio and The Beach come to mind here) use social media tools to learn a lot more then you would by talking to someone at a desk. Our peers are the best resource and of course, we are always willing to show off what a great time we had to our friends and families through pictures and videos.
...Claire was here.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Facebook - my connection to home while abroad
"I sent you a postcard. You'll get it in six months."
Before I left for my trip, I gathered all of my friends' addresses and was prepared to send out a huge stack of postcards from Down Under. After a couple of weeks had passed and I had gathered enough stories to send back home, I bought about 20 postcards, sat in my room in my hostel and wrote them all out. 20-something dollars worth of postage later, they had all been mailed. I did not get that satisfied feeling I thought I would get. Instead, my hand was sore and my wallet had shrunk. I decided that this was the first and the last time that I would be sending postcards home.
What would I have done without Facebook while I was away? Social media, specifically Facebook - this was 2009 when Facebook was still a novelty - really changed the way I kept in touch with family, old friends and new friends that I was meeting along the way.
While traveling, you realize how important it is to have access to computers. When you're living at home, you don't even think twice about sending an email, checking messages or tweeting and Facebook-ing from your computer or your phone. But you realize that quick communication can be seen as a luxury when you're traveling through the Outback of Australia, or at a shady internet cafe in Bangkok. Of course, many hostels have computers, but internet cards can get expensive and sometimes the computers are occupied when you need one. I met some people who brought their computers with them. I did not - and those people quickly became very important to me ;)
But even worse than expensive internet, phone calls were more of a challenge. Be prepared that when you say you'll call home, that sometimes that is not always possible. I spent lots of time looking for pay phones in Sydney, in the scorching heat to call my parents that I was supposed to have called the day before....poor parents were probably waiting by the phone, but got no ring from me :( sorry parents.... So an easy way to keep in touch is via Facebook. You can always leave a message on someone's wall letting them know that you haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I countries where English is not the first language, I didn't even bother looking for a phone. I stuck to the internet for my connection to home.
Advice for travellers....get yourself a cheap phone for about 20$ so that you can call your new friends LOCALLY. If you're going to call home, get a long distance card. And when you're making plans to go fly somewhere remote, don't give times when you'll call family or friends. They will get worried if they don't hear from you. But use the internet! It's the easiest way!
Even with the challenges that I sometimes faced with internet access, Facebook was a great tool for me and I spent more time keeping in touch that way than I did with a phone. I could see what was going on back home and got excited when I could chat with someone. Social media has definitely changed the way we communicate and for me, it changed the way I travelled. My parents laughed when I told them that people now backpack with computers in their suitcases....a definite change from the days when they were hippies trekking through Europe.
And now that I think of it, I don't even know if all of those post cards even made it home. Snail mail is so 1999.
My home for 5 months....Sydney Beach House. I recommend to anyone traveling to Sydney :)
... Claire was here.
Before I left for my trip, I gathered all of my friends' addresses and was prepared to send out a huge stack of postcards from Down Under. After a couple of weeks had passed and I had gathered enough stories to send back home, I bought about 20 postcards, sat in my room in my hostel and wrote them all out. 20-something dollars worth of postage later, they had all been mailed. I did not get that satisfied feeling I thought I would get. Instead, my hand was sore and my wallet had shrunk. I decided that this was the first and the last time that I would be sending postcards home.
What would I have done without Facebook while I was away? Social media, specifically Facebook - this was 2009 when Facebook was still a novelty - really changed the way I kept in touch with family, old friends and new friends that I was meeting along the way.
While traveling, you realize how important it is to have access to computers. When you're living at home, you don't even think twice about sending an email, checking messages or tweeting and Facebook-ing from your computer or your phone. But you realize that quick communication can be seen as a luxury when you're traveling through the Outback of Australia, or at a shady internet cafe in Bangkok. Of course, many hostels have computers, but internet cards can get expensive and sometimes the computers are occupied when you need one. I met some people who brought their computers with them. I did not - and those people quickly became very important to me ;)
Cape Tribulation - North Queensland Australia -
an area so remote that there was no cell phone reception in the whole town!
But even worse than expensive internet, phone calls were more of a challenge. Be prepared that when you say you'll call home, that sometimes that is not always possible. I spent lots of time looking for pay phones in Sydney, in the scorching heat to call my parents that I was supposed to have called the day before....poor parents were probably waiting by the phone, but got no ring from me :( sorry parents.... So an easy way to keep in touch is via Facebook. You can always leave a message on someone's wall letting them know that you haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I countries where English is not the first language, I didn't even bother looking for a phone. I stuck to the internet for my connection to home.
Advice for travellers....get yourself a cheap phone for about 20$ so that you can call your new friends LOCALLY. If you're going to call home, get a long distance card. And when you're making plans to go fly somewhere remote, don't give times when you'll call family or friends. They will get worried if they don't hear from you. But use the internet! It's the easiest way!
Even with the challenges that I sometimes faced with internet access, Facebook was a great tool for me and I spent more time keeping in touch that way than I did with a phone. I could see what was going on back home and got excited when I could chat with someone. Social media has definitely changed the way we communicate and for me, it changed the way I travelled. My parents laughed when I told them that people now backpack with computers in their suitcases....a definite change from the days when they were hippies trekking through Europe.
And now that I think of it, I don't even know if all of those post cards even made it home. Snail mail is so 1999.
My home for 5 months....Sydney Beach House. I recommend to anyone traveling to Sydney :)
... Claire was here.
Thursday, 2 February 2012
The BUG...
I've got it. The bug. I've got the travel bug. For me, it's a combination of a longingness to see the world and an inability to focus on my life here in Toronto. It's not my fault, to be honest with you. My friends made me do it. My friends decided to head out on around-the-world trips and send me pictures of beautiful scenery and life-altering adventures. So I decided that it was my turn. And now I have the bug.
2009 was a very confusing year for me. But a lot of soul-searching led me to land in Sydney, Australia on October 4. This was the beginning of my six month adventure, where I was lucky enough to get to see the way people live "Down Unda" and create memories that I know will last me a lifetime. Not only did I spend time in Oz, but I got to visit New Zealand, as well as South East Asia, specifically Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. Traveling has really opened my eyes, literally, to a whole new world. Yes, I know that is cliche and is also a Disney song, but I'm not kidding. As corny as it sounds, I was able to experience exciting, challenging and emotional times and I was able to visit some of the strangest places I've ever, and possibly, will ever see.
My second day in Australia!
From climbing Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand to visiting a floating village on the Mekong River and watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat Temple, I never really knew enough about our world to realize how insanely beautiful and diverse it is. I never really cared for travel until, as I mentioned above, my friends began to get their backpacks and take off to places unknown, and now, I feel like the whole world is waiting for me to explore it.
Our hiking boots. Ready to climb a glacier!
Can't believe I climbed that!
My bucket list is quickly getting longer. There's a force stronger than myself that is pulling me in the direction of South Africa. This could be my next adventure. I realize that at some point I need to move out of the parents' house. I refuse to be 30 and still living at home - although this means I only have about 11 months left. Yes, I'll admit it - I am 29 and I live with my folks. I go to school and my father makes my lunch everyday. On a side note, does anyone know of any kind of self-help group for people like me?
Inside a beautiful Buddhist worship temple.
For the time being, I am happy to think that I have found a career that suits me. After working in the legal field and hating my life, I'm enjoying school at the moment, but I am waiting to see where I'll end up after school is over and "real life" begins again. The Professional World Round 2. My parents must be counting the days.
Although I came back from my adventure 20 pounds heavier, as did the majority of my friends that I spent time with while away, those pounds were a symbol of happiness for me. "Happy fat," a friend once dubbed them, and I guess I was okay with that - until I had to get back to reality and couldn't fit into my old work clothes. Back to real life it was, but I won't lie when I say that traveling is the best and the worst thing that you can ever do. The best because what better way to discover the world and, yes another cliche, to discover yourself? The worst because now, I never want to be in the same place for longer than a year and don't think I'll ever want to settle. So what does that mean for me? I better find a career in public relations where travel is a must - luxury travel resorts, perhaps? I better look into some internships ;)
...Claire Was Here.
2009 was a very confusing year for me. But a lot of soul-searching led me to land in Sydney, Australia on October 4. This was the beginning of my six month adventure, where I was lucky enough to get to see the way people live "Down Unda" and create memories that I know will last me a lifetime. Not only did I spend time in Oz, but I got to visit New Zealand, as well as South East Asia, specifically Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. Traveling has really opened my eyes, literally, to a whole new world. Yes, I know that is cliche and is also a Disney song, but I'm not kidding. As corny as it sounds, I was able to experience exciting, challenging and emotional times and I was able to visit some of the strangest places I've ever, and possibly, will ever see.
My second day in Australia!
From climbing Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand to visiting a floating village on the Mekong River and watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat Temple, I never really knew enough about our world to realize how insanely beautiful and diverse it is. I never really cared for travel until, as I mentioned above, my friends began to get their backpacks and take off to places unknown, and now, I feel like the whole world is waiting for me to explore it.
Our hiking boots. Ready to climb a glacier!
Can't believe I climbed that!My bucket list is quickly getting longer. There's a force stronger than myself that is pulling me in the direction of South Africa. This could be my next adventure. I realize that at some point I need to move out of the parents' house. I refuse to be 30 and still living at home - although this means I only have about 11 months left. Yes, I'll admit it - I am 29 and I live with my folks. I go to school and my father makes my lunch everyday. On a side note, does anyone know of any kind of self-help group for people like me?
Inside a beautiful Buddhist worship temple.
For the time being, I am happy to think that I have found a career that suits me. After working in the legal field and hating my life, I'm enjoying school at the moment, but I am waiting to see where I'll end up after school is over and "real life" begins again. The Professional World Round 2. My parents must be counting the days.
Although I came back from my adventure 20 pounds heavier, as did the majority of my friends that I spent time with while away, those pounds were a symbol of happiness for me. "Happy fat," a friend once dubbed them, and I guess I was okay with that - until I had to get back to reality and couldn't fit into my old work clothes. Back to real life it was, but I won't lie when I say that traveling is the best and the worst thing that you can ever do. The best because what better way to discover the world and, yes another cliche, to discover yourself? The worst because now, I never want to be in the same place for longer than a year and don't think I'll ever want to settle. So what does that mean for me? I better find a career in public relations where travel is a must - luxury travel resorts, perhaps? I better look into some internships ;)
...Claire Was Here.
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