TV Ones-To-Watch: Monday 28 January 2008

You can watch these programmes around the world anytime in the next 7 days on BBC i-player.

Panorama
Alex James in Colombia
8.30-9.00pm BBC ONE
www.bbc.co.uk/panorama

Alex James, bassist of hugely successful Britpop band Blur, goes to Colombia to report on the effect the cocaine industry is having on the country that supplies 80 per cent of the world's cocaine.

Paradise or Bust
Episode Two
9.00pm-10.00pm BBC TWO
http://www.tribewanted.com/blogs/tribal_gatherings/1056

The Island of Vorovoro is open for business, and the first 13 members of this 21st century internet tribe are living and working alongside an ancient Fijian tribe. Led by 26 year old Ben Keene they are now working together to tackle their first major construction project - building a traditional Fijian house, which will be one of the biggest in Fiji.

The Convenience Of USB

We won't be travelling with a laptop on our travels so pay-per-use internet will be our connection whilst we're away. There are steps you can take to minimize the security risk to your personal information. If you have a USB Memory Stick (it doesn't need to have a huge capacity) plug it into your computer before you go, download the Mozilla Firefox Portable Edition and the free anti-virus software ClamWin, and install them onto your memory stick.

Every time you use a public computer whilst you're away simply plug in your USB stick, open the Portable Firefox Browser from your folder, and all of your personal data will be confined to your USB stick. There are lots of different tools that you can download from PortableApps including the popular Thunderbird email client. You can also easily customize your portable firefox browser with your favorite links and add-ons, saving you valuable time when you log on.

Recommended add-ons: Gmail Manager, Facebook Toolbar, New Tab button, Meebo Toolbar, PicLens.

An SD or CompactFlash memory card reader is also a great idea to save carrying computer cables and fumbling around with your camera. You can pick one of these up for about £10.

Carbon Offsetting

A growing number of us find it difficult these days not to look at the bigger picture that surrounds our lifestyles, and the internet ensures that there is no excuse for ignorance or 'gaps' in our knowledge. Information on anything that interests you is at your finger tips. Environmental issues can be notoriusly difficult to relate to, but in the Cook Islands global warming has hit home in a big way. In 2005 five devastating cyclones ripped through the islands in the space of five weeks - traditionally the Cooks could expect one such cyclone every 20 years. Coral bleaching, changing seasons and rising sea levels are all evident - many of the Northern Group barely rise 5m above sea level.

Blue Ventures is an award winning, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to marine conservation, education and sustainable development in tropical coastal communities. Their research and observations on the changing environment around Andavadoaka, Madagascar inspired them to setup their own carbon offset projects to address anthropogenic effects on the environment.

BV Carbon Offset is currently running an energy efficient and solar stove programme in Andavadoaka, Madagascar, and hoping to replicate it in other rural villages in the region. Their projects are sustainable, independent, verified, not for profit, and benefit communities in the following ways:

• Economic improvement - job provision and reduced fuel costs.
• Health improvements - reduced smoke related illnesses.
• Environmental improvements - reduced deforestation and reduced carbon emissions.

We will be using Blue Ventures to offset our own carbon emissions generated by our travels this year. The journey from London to Auckland will emit a total of 2765.312kg of carbon.

• Equivalent to 92 Televisions being left on standby for a whole year (Rainforest Concern).
• A 25 year old forest of 405 pine trees would need a whole year to absorb our total emissions.

Blue Ventures Carbon Offset

Auckland > Cook Islands
3010.4 Km using 0.125 Kg of Carbon per Km.
A total of 376.300 Kg of Carbon
At £12 per 1000Kg that will cost £4.52 per flight

Cook Islands > San Francisco
7647.3 Km using 0.14 Kg of Carbon per Km
A total of 1070.622 Kg of Carbon
At £12 per 1000Kg that will cost £12.85 per flight

San Francisco > Washington D.C.
3926.8 Km using 0.125 Kg of Carbon per Km
A total of 490.850 Kg of Carbon
At £12 per 1000Kg that will cost £5.89 per flight

Washington D.C. > London
5911.0 Km using 0.14 Kg of Carbon per Km
A total of 827.540 Kg of Carbon
At £12 per 1000Kg that will cost £9.93 per flight

Away From The Humdrum Life

I've read a couple of fantastic articles lately that really inspire feelings of what the personal experience of travel is all about, and just how good a period of wandering is for the soul. The descriptive tag of Spiritual Travel is a fair association but is by no means a reference to hippy, hemp-wearing, flower-waving, soft, fuzzy experiences. It's about a philosophical approach to adventure and taking the time to discover what you want for yourself away from the material trappings, media bombardment, peer pressures, and prescribed achievements of everyday life. It's only when we know what we want for ourselves that we can set goals and begin to achieve, allowing good fortune to follow. A period of travel isn't just about the immediate experience, its endurance can provide you with focus and stability for the rest of your life.

• 11 Jan 2008 - Finding Yourself Is Your True Destination - Brave New Traveller
• 11 Jan 2008 - How Do I Bring Vagabonding Home - Vagablogging
• 5 Dec 2008 - Forget The Destination, Focus On The Journey - Brave New Traveller

CREATING A BLOG

Last week I started to think about how we would document our trip so that friends and family could stay in touch with us and vice-versa. There are countless sites that offer 'travel journals' or 'travel blogs' online, and upon joining you become a member of their community/archive of travellers and have a very user friendly template to record your trip in.

Personally I prefer to have greater control over the layout and tools I use which is why I have setup a blog. I've used blogger in the past, and currently use it for the Make Travel Fair Blog so it was an obvious choice to use it to record our travels. WordPress is another of the more popular platforms and I had intended giving it a go until I discovered that you cannot edit the standard templates without paying a small fee, and it is only a small fee but enough to send me back to Blogger where I can customise appearances for free.

I used the 'minima' template and just customised a few elements of it. Once the structure is established it is extremely easy to alter the layout using the widget functionality. I found 'Recent Comments' and 'Recent Posts' widgets at Beautiful Beta. An itinerary widget is fed from my 30Boxes Calendar (Google Calendar does not have a decent widget that displays content like I wanted), photos are uploaded and stored in my Picasa Web Albums (I was going to use Flickr but Picasa works just as well and has no limit to the number of albums you can create, Flickr charges an upgrade fee for more than 3/4). A 'Where We've Been' widget makes use of Google's 'My Maps', all in all I guess it is a Google dominated setup, except for the Calendar but it works well, or atleast I hope it will.

Of course there is also Facebook and i'll probably start importing these notes to my profile once we get on the road, but truth be told i'm getting a little bored with the habit and revealing nature of it all. Back to basics for me, where nobody knows and nobody cares. Our new travel blog will be as much a record for us as it will be reading for friends and family.

I'm also using Google Docs to create a Budget Sheet and a repository of info. Creating the budget sheet has not been a happy time.

CREATING A BUDGET

I've had the sobering task today of setting out a budget for our trip. I'm using Google Docs to create a spreadsheet that we can check whilst we're away. I started by noting down all of our known costs so far, flights, transport, hostel reservations and then filled in the blanks with predicted expediture. Adding a daily budget for food and the odd activity/tour is easily forgotten. It is not supposed to be a precise, rigid document just an outline to assist with managing our finances and to give us the best chance of doing everything we want to. As we travel we'll subtract from our funds what we've actually spent so that we know exactly how much is left, and whether we need to tighten the purse strings if we want to do everything we intend to do.

I feel a bit subdued after dealing with this side of things but if we make all our decisions based on how they look on paper then I'm not sure we'd end up doing a great deal.

SPENDING MONEY ABROAD

These days it is easy to find an ATM in even the most obscure places and to withdraw cash with the same convenience you have at home. Even if there's no ATM it's often possible to pay for goods or services with a credit card. It seems having the right plastic cards though is extremely important and is cheaper than any other method of spending whilst you're away.

Debit Cards
When using a Natwest debit card in an ATM abroad the bank will add on a transaction fee of 75p, an exchange commission of 2.65% and a cash withdrawal fee of 2.25% (max £4)

The Nationwide Flex Account Visa Debit card doesn't add an exchange commission anywhere in the world, is free of interest (unless you're overdrawn) and doesn't charge any transaction fee. Being able to withdraw cash from ATMs when travelling without any hidden costs is fantastic and removes the burden of carrying huge sums of currency or travellers' cheques around.

Credit Cards
When using a Natwest credit card abroad the bank will always add on an exchange commission of 2.65% and if using the card in an ATM they will add the cash withdrawal fee of 2.25% (max £4) and a huge rate of interest (whether the balance is paid off in full or not).

A Nationwide credit card does not charge an exchange commission on purchases made abroad. The right credit card is also a great way to make purchases since if something goes wrong with the goods you've bought (over £100 worth) then the credit card providers are jointly liable with the retailer, so you can complain to them and they'll refund you directly.

"There's a growing trend when spending abroad for the retailer to do the conversion to Pounds itself, giving you a poor exchange rate you've no control over. Always check that you won't be charged in pounds. That way, assuming you're using one of the top cards, you'll get the best exchange rate possible."

moneysavingexpert.com

HOW FAR HAVE WE COME?

The New Year is a customary time to be retrospective and prospective, even a little bit introspective. A quick glance back over our shoulder and a squint forward to the horizon looks like this for Make Travel Fair.

2007 Achievements

- Had our first go at web design and built a site for Make Travel Fair.
- Won the Travelmole Web Award for 'Best Online Education Site'.
- Won a place at the Striding Out Big Leap Business Plan workshop.
- Awarded Courvoisier The Future 500 One-to-Watch accolade for Travel & Leisure.

Our first year has been very much about establishing Make Travel Fair, gaining recognition within the travel industry for our message, and networking to establish a good contact base within the industry.

2008

This year we will be building on what we've learnt and taking Make Travel Fair on a trip around the world for 6 months to talk with those who have most contact with the sort of issues we raise online - The family-run guesthouse, the tour operator, the fisherman, the conservationist, the large hotel, the traveller...This trip will also allow us to reconnect with the experience of travelling on a tight budget, from planning travels, to buying tickets and finding accomodation to actually being on the road. We hope to better understand how we can reach out to the traveller through Make Travel Fair as a result. We will also be writing a book about our 6 months of travel and the conversation we have along the way.

A major goal of 2008 is to setup a bursary for young people who have a passion and desire to travel the world but can't quite afford to make it happen, or know how to.