....Have backpack will travel.
This blog will be straight forward and honest. All opinions will be mine and I will do my best to entertain you, educate you and maybe make you laugh a little,
What is this blog about?
Simply put--what ever I feel like. The main focus will be that of travelling and ice hockey and spreading the word about how great to do both can be.
Who am I?
Do you want an essay? or are you like me and go by the KISS rule? No, this is not about putting on make up and singing along to "Rock and roll all night". For me KISS is Keep It Simple Stupid. Who am I? A fun loving Canadian who loves to travel and loves ice hockey.
Why this blog now?
In hindsight I should have started this blog about 20 years ago. I travel a lot and over the past 20 years I have visited about 40 to 50 countries and in reading many other blogs or vlogs a few things have become painfully obvious. Many people who blog or vlog are fakes. Why do I call them fakes? When I was in South East Asia, I met up with a couple of people who were vloggers and well paid--but they did something that I did not like: They failed to tell people they were being paid to do everything they did and failed to give honest price estimates of just how much things cost. In my opinion because they were not paying for anything and went off of what they were told by companies or agencies that were being used, they did not have an actual idea of how expensive somethings were.
Examples:
Zip lining in Thailand and Cambodia. They did several blogs where they quoted a price under the actual price. Most of us paid about £50 to £100 for an all day zip lining tour. The bloggers/vloggers said it cost only £15. The Bloggers/Vloggers told me I should learn how to haggle. Coming from two people who did not pay for anything, this annoyed me and planted the seeds for this blog. I understood their point but from my perspective they were being either paid to lie or did not actually ask how much something cost.
Second example is with the youth hostel I was in with them. They quoted £2.5 for a private room with own bathroom. Well, again that is not how much it cost in that youth hostel. The shared dorm room with 13 other people was £2.5, the private room with bath was £7.00.
You may look at both as me just being petty. But when you travel you need to have honest and accurate information. And that is my goal. If I get a discount I will let you know and I will back up information either with receipts or proof of payment.
First stop
Isle of Wight: Day trip on June 13th
Preparation:
Budget: £100
Train Ticket £17.50 (remaining £82.50)
Ferry Ticket £19.80 (remaining £62.70)
Train ticket from Warminster to Portsmouth Harbour: £17 return-Booked 10 days a head. Train departs at 06:48 am arrive at 08:28 am return 20:23 arrive 22:00.
If you live in the UK you know there are several ways to book a train ticket. With Portsmouth just being about 2 hours a way and a straight line I used http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ because it is very simple. I was gong to Scotland from London I would have used http://www.splitticketing.com/ because using that site can save you a lot of money on trips like that if yo are booking far enough a head.
For Ferry travel I used http://www.wightlink.co.uk/
Over the next few a days I will do a few blogs on prepping for the day trip.
Prepping is the biggest way to save money on any trip and the basic rule is the more you search the more you can save
JTS
