10 Travelling Questions: Ask Something Different

An alternative to 'Where have you been? Where are you going next?' etc yawn yawn...

Travel.
The inspiration for numerous questions.

If you're backpacking around the world, or even planning a backpacker trip, then an excellent twitter account to follow is @STATravel_UK, and they recently raised a very valid point when they tweeted...

"Everyone asks the same travelling Qs: Where are you from? Where are you going? How long? Ask something different & we'll re-tweet the best."

After a few months of backpacking the standard introductory backpacker questions definitely become repetititive, so it's good to vary things up by asking a few alternative questions.  STA Travel UK's tweet drew a number of interesting suggestions for questions to ask on your travels, and I've featured the best suggestions below...

1) "If you had to pick one place you've travelled to settle down & live where would it be? #travel"
@STATravel_UK

Things To Watch Out For: Break Ins

Cautionary advice...

Keep an eye on your valuables.

The vast majority of people who visit Haad Rin have an excellent time, but there are a few risks and concerns to look out for which could potentially ruin your visit, particularly over the Full Moon period.

Haad Rin Guide book contains a chapter covering some of these potential risks, physical, financial and otherwise, which you may come across during your stay in Haad Rin.  I should mention that the point of cautionary advice like this is not to make people so worried that they avoid visiting Koh Phangan altogether, but simply to raise awareness of some of the things to watch out for.  Hopefully, this will help ensure that visitors to Haad Rin have a problem-free stay on Koh Phangan and enjoy their visit to its full potential.

Here's one of the entries from the 'Things To Watch Out For' chapter from the Haad Rin Guide Book...

Break Ins

In total, I've spent several years living in Haad Rin and been to over thirty Full Moon Parties, and I've never had a problem with a break in.  However, there was one Full Moon Party when I returned to my room to discover my padlock had been covered in oil.  I presume this was an attempt to force open the lock, but thankfully the padlock remained in place and my room stayed safe.

The Fire Hoop: Win Or Lose?

Backpackers risking life and limb in the name of entertainment...

The fire hoop.

I've mentioned before on this blog that a popular late night form of entertainment on Haad Rin Sunrise Beach is the fire skipping rope, where drunken backpackers attempt to skip with fire ... not always successfully.

The fire skipping rope isn't the only fire related late night activity that you'll find in Thailand though, and other fire activities include the fire limbo, fire jugglers, flame throwers and a particularly dangerous fire activity ... the fire hoop.

The video below features drunken backpackers attempting to jump through a flaming hoop of fire ... with mixed results.  To make things a bit more interesting though, rather than just edit together a compilation of fire jumps, the clips are instead presented in the form of a quiz...

Basic Map Of Haad Rin

...and street name index.

I’m not a professional cartographer, so the maps featured in the Haad Rin Guide Book won’t win any awards for graphic design.  However, the locations of hotels, hostels, restaurants and other landmarks are accurate, so the maps in the guide book should be a practical help for first time visitors to Haad Rin.

Where maps have been included, their purpose is to help you find your way around Haad Rin, so rather than use the official Thai street names, I’ve referred to streets and lanes by their 'unofficial' backpacker names.  This should be more helpful for finding your way around, as for example the term ‘Restaurant Lane’ will mean more than ‘Soi Tonson’.

As an example, here’s the first map from the guide book which is a basic map of Haad Rin: