Travelling Tales

Here are some useful trips for cheaper air travel in Europe.

Flying in Europe can be dirt cheap

Enjoy the idea of sleeping on a plane? Well, like it or not, now a hostel has been made out of a decommissioned Singapore Airlines 747 jumbo jet. For me, it sounds really, really cool! What’s more, from the photos shown, it is actually not half bad!

Here is the original story.

Or, you can check out the place at its own website.

While I am not really a beach kind of person, I am sure many others are. Well, here are some ideas of good and affordable beach resorts for consideration. As usual the information is accurate of November 2008 and the currency quoted is Australian dollars.

World’s top affordable beach resorts

Continuing the theme of holiday-planning, here are apparently some of Asia’s top new destinations!

At the best of times, when I travel I need to watch that I don’t spend unnecessarily – after all, my name does not have a Hilton or Gates in it… Given the current financial turmoil, thuis is especially true, so here is some timely and practical advice that hopefully will make sure that you won’t break the bank – or perhaps just a little puncture!? – during your next trip.

Top 10 tips for cutting your travel costs

As we near the end of 2008, are you already planning your next vacation in 2009?

Well, here are some suggestions extracted from Lonely Planet’s “Best In Travel 2009″: 2009’s hottest travel destinations.

Are you into hiking, away from city lights?

Here are some great choices across the 5 continents: The greatest walks on earth.

To kick off the new change, here is an interesting article for people planning to travel to/in Australia, where 20 famous Australians share their favourite national parks around the country..

20 great spots by 20 great Aussies

I am ashamed to say that pit of the list I have only been to Sydney Harbour (>4x), Wilsons Promontory (1x), Grampians (2x), part of Blue Mountains (1x) and Noosa (2x).

This has been a long time coming, but I have finally decided to change a little the flavour of this site. Instead of simply documenting my own travels, from now on I will also include snippets of travel-related information so that I will be able to find the same information in future!

Had a chance to attend a 2-week long Machine Learning Summer School held at The Australian National University (or ANU) in Canberra, 6 – 17 February. It was both somewhat strange and exciting to be back on the grounds where I spent three and half years of my life as a PhD student. The move to Canberra really marks the start of my independence as well as a journey that has taken me away from home since, and one that I am still taking in fact.

During the weekend of 11-12 February, took some time out and went up to Sydney with colleagues attending the same Workshop. There was a couple of “firsts”. This was the first time I travelled by coach to Sydney; this was also the first time in many years that I was in Sydney as a complete tourist. On previous trips, I was usually the unofficial guide, mostly for the international students at ANU. This time I had a local guide – I have known her and her boyfriend since the days at ANU and who is currently working in Sydney – and I was able to fully enjoy myself. Nice to have such good friends and I do wish her all the best in her life in Sydney, also far away from home.

Spent the first afternoon milling about George Street, then travelled up to Circular Quay, by strolling through the Botanic Garden – a first experience for me, as a matter of fact. After the obligatory photo-taking at the Opera House, went to the ferry terminal and caught a ferry to Darling Harbour. Had a slow dinner at Harbourside and then headed to our hotel on the north side. The “slowness” was not by choice but simply poor service, by the way.

The following day started off nice and cool, but the temperature quickly picked up. After a nice breakfast of French toast and latte – loved the coffee in Sydney!! – went over the Milson’s Point to begin the harbour bridge crossing. You can see many of the shots I snapped here.

This was followed by a nice relaxing lunch at the Rocks, with full view of the opera house and harbour bridge. A bit pricey but at least worthwhile for its location and ambience, for lunch. Later, headed over to Paddy’s Market where you can pick up many souvenirs, but most are made in China these days.