Can’t help but I have to heat up further the South Africa’s FIFA World Cup 2010 fever here! Tonight (my local time at 10PM) my favorite Brazil will hit the ground against Netherland in the 1st Quarter final match. 56 matches had have their results and there are still 8 matches to go before the last team to clinch the World Cup 2010. After 11th July, FIFA World Cup would be over but the heat will still remain. What could we do after that to prolong the heat further?

The best way is off course to stay behind and start exploring the Africa soil. Before this, I have published the Top 5 Travel Attractions in South Africa for those who are traveling there during these period. Now, I will elaborate more on the foremost attraction of all, the Adventure Travel to the Kruger Park!

The best way to discover the travel secrets of South Africa in Summer is definitely the adventurous way. Apart from the usual travel book recommended travel spots of Johannesburg, travelers should also be more adventurous to explore further to the Safari! The best Safari holidays includes driving up to gold mining town of Pilgrim’s Rest with many beautiful waterfalls and unique flora, having picnic lunch, explore Bourke’s Luck Potholes, God’s Window, and the stunning scenery over Blyde River Canyon, the famous Kruger National Park where you’ll head out on game drives, spot the big ’5′: elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo. Besides the Kruger Park, other wildlife concentrated areas such as Swaziland hills, the wetlands of St Lucia, Hluhluwe with its high concentration of rhino are also worth to explore. Don’t forget to drive up to the Drakensberg Mountains where these dramatic peaks and sweeping amphitheatres of rock offer great walking possibilities.

Above is a typical drive route for a Safari exploration.

Continue the World Cup fever by celebrate along your adventurous travel in South Africa with endless drinking session for the upcoming reigning FIFA 2010 World Cup Champion! Can it be Brazil, Netherland, Argentina or Spain? – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel guide blog

What Patong Beach is first famous for? The beach off course! I’ve posted quite a number of Phuket travel stories so far but I still haven’t posted much things about the beach itself. This is it: The Patong Beach, the beach itself. We reached Phuket and Patong in the morning, had our first look at Patong Beach and had our first lunch at Jungceylon shopping mall. After lunch, we walked around the town to get some feel of the environment and local culture, and we headed back to our Safari Beach Resort for a brief nap…. zzzzzzzz.

In the late afternoon, we went out again. This time we were walking down to the beach, just across the Beach Road in front of our hotel (this is the best part of Safari Beach Hotel which situated in front of the beach and next door to Bangla Street). Have you ever experienced this: You thought of going somewhere or buying something on travel but you did not do it in the first place and you started to say to yourself, “Nevermind, I still can do that LATER”? And what would happen next? You would never have the 2nd chance to do it! It happened to me on my Gold Coast travel where we thought of going back to see the sunset at Surfers Paradise on our last day but we failed eventually as bad traffic delayed our way back from Hinterland and it was already night hours when we reached home…

So, whatever you think you want to do or see or buy on travel, DO IT IMMEDIATELY or you’re going to miss it! Same with our fun hours at the beach of Patong. If we delayed to go to the beach on our first day in Patong evening, we were going to miss the best evening sunlight in Patong as there were too cloudy to see sunset on the rest of our days in Phuket!

I love the late afternoon sunlight at Patong beach. The beach was so attractive under it…

While many tourists were sunbathing under the sun, there were many other activities going on the beach.

Beach parachute ride is a famous activities at Patong Beach.

We were doing something else…. crab catching!

Jetskiing is another favourite sport on the beach.

Love sunlight, lovely wife…

Beach soccer is among the local favourite sport on the beach. There are a lot of Thai soccer talents out there…

An illusion of moving sand after wave tides, one of my favourite shot.

Beach chairs could be rented for sunbathing and there are also best for people watching!

Singha Beer on the beach! Lovely!

The best part on the beach of Patong: visitors were served with complimentary Starbucks coffee! Wonderful! I couldn’t find any of this in Malaysian beach. Can you?

An unique feeling of tasting coffee on beach!

Though evening sun is bright, scattered clouds blocked parts of the sunset unfortunately…

The best dusk scene I could captured on the day in Patong Beach. The sun set at 7pm and we left the beach for our first dinner in Patong! What we did at night after dinner? Exploration on the Bangla Street, the most happening street in Patong and Phuket!

Don’t miss my upcoming stories on Phuket travel. I will try to wrap up the whole story of my travel to Phuket before this May. Why? In May I will write and concentrate more on my exciting short 14-day tour to Western Europe!

p/s: If you think this travel photo blog has something you are looking for and is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

It’s coming! Another 2 months and I’ll be in London! A big round of applause to our budget airline AirAsia, which had encouraged me to travel to Europe again after 12 years. I’ve booked my air tickets 3 months ago and I finally have my first Western Europe tour itinerary drafted recently. The whole idea of the trip is to visit some of the top cities in Western Europe in a short period of only 14 days. Reasons why being such a short period off course includes budget, my work and also my children. So 14 days is all we (initially I’m going with my wife only but eventually we are going in a group of 5 including Jean, her siste, my brother in law and a friend of mine) have in Europe. And my role has also changed from a husband and lover to a tour leader and organiser of this small tour group! Ha ha!

If you know where I’m coming from, I’m the advocate for budget travel. It would be my biggest pleasure to have saved more in my travel! Since budget is our next biggest constraint other than time, how and which cities to cover in Europe is a challenge to me. Since none of them have been to Europe before, I thought we better concentrate on those my Top 5 Cities in Europe. To be less ambitious, I’ve opted out Prague. Since we have only 14 days, I decided we travel only the Western European coutries, start from and end in London (the only European destination Air Asia X covers).

In order to plan out our preliminary itinerary of the Western Europe trip, I needed to consider these following factors in advance:

1. Transportation cost. I would say transportation cost is the biggest expense of our trip, contribute no less than 50% of the total cost. Though we have bought low fare air tickets to London, we still need to move domestically from London to other cities and countries. We have 2 options here: by plane of train. Different route has different pricing at different timing. In other words, it affects my itinerary planning with tight budget!
2. Number of places of interest. Firstly, transportation cost would increase if we travel more. Secondly, less time we are going to have at each destination if we travel more. Thirdly, which travel destinations we would die for visiting it once? These are the factors to consider.
3. Season or Festival? Since we have confirmed our return flight tickets, we couldn’t change the season when we will be there. I prefer travelling Europe in May because it’s end of Spring. I love vibrancy of Spring and Jean scared of coldness, that’s it. It’s already my perfect traveling period to Europe. Festival? Ok, I’m searching for the period of any festival going on there during May, so we could pop by if possible (or we could avoid for extremely high crowd). Also the day of weekly open flea market might be our consideration as well;
4. Accommodation cost. Budget hotel in Paris would not cost the same with either Venice or London. So planning our itinerary would also depends on the cost of living and number of days to stay there. For me, any place or city in Europe has its own attractions that worth hundreds Euro to stay and needs months to explore. So, which travel destination to stay longer would only depends on the accommodation cost of that place. that’s the only factor, and
5. Strictly for ladies. They haven’t got enough money to try the German knuckles or beer but they always have plenty to spend on fashion! Insertion of certain shopping paradise into our itinerary would please our ladies in group. Planning to spend a day in London shopping at the final days would be a good idea.

In view of the above factors, I have drafted a preliminary Western Europe tour itinerary for 14 days. Check this out:

1. 1st day – From KL to London. Stay in central London;
2. 2nd day – From London to Paris via EuroStar. Stay 2 nights;
3. 4th day – from Paris to Munich via rail. Stay 1 night;
4. 5th day – From Munich to Venice. Stay 2 nights;
5. 7th day – From Venice to Florence. Stay 2 night;
6. 9th day – From Florence to Rome. Stay 2 nights;
7. 11th day – From Rome back to London. Stay 2 nights, and
8. 13th day (midnight) – From London back to KL on the 14th day.

This is just my preliminary planning. I need your feedback to tell me whether I’m too ambitious or we should stay more days in either city. What do you think about this itinerary for short trip to Western Europe? – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.

Since now is still the first fresh month of Year 2010, I still have 11 months to realise this, hopefully. This is just part of my wish list this year for contenting my craving on travel photography equipment. If possible, I hope my wish could become reality before this May. Why? Because I would be better equipped by then. So what? SO I COULD TOUR THE TOP 5 EUROPE CITIES IN MAY! To be exact, I have only slightly more than 3 months to grab them into my packing list to travel! Can I? Let’s check my list first…

What camera system do I need to take with me for my photography travel? Firstly, what camera system do I currently own? As a budget traveler who prefers to travel light, I have a Nikon D60 body. Though it’s not perfect but it’s still good and light to carry around travel. For lenses attaching to it, I have the “3 lens combo for poor man” which includes a Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a Nikkor 55-200mm zoom lens and a 35mm f1.8 prime lens. For capturing day in day out travel photos under good ambient lighting, 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses are good enough. Whereas my 35mm fast lens are normally used to capture indoor or night scenes under available light, which is brilliant (you can see my Chinese New Year photos indoor). I have plenty of 4GB SDHC memory cards and 1 spare battery which should be enough (Europe is using the same power socket as Malaysia, so charging battery there would not be a problem). I’m currently using my only Lowepro Cirrus TLZ15 waist bag to fit in my camera and a single lens. For night scene long exposure (like my shot of Genting Highland), I would bring along my tripod. That’s all my camera system currently.

What else do I need? For a budget traveler with limited budget on travel photography, Nothing else I need. I don’t need a much more bulkier and heavier camera body like D300s to burden our rucksack eventhough though its metering and dynamic range is much better. I don’t need a ultra wide angle lens to capture the whole scene of Coloseum where I could still stitch a few photos up as panorama. If budget is my biggest concern, I don’t need a telephoto lens either. Out of 100 travel photos that I’ve been shooting, only 10 or less photos are telephoto. So I’ll miss only 10% of all photography opportunity.

However, To have a more complete camera system for better travel photography (but also heavier bag and heftier budget), and to ease my craving as a hobbyist photographer, I wish I could own these 5 camera components as listed here:

1. Wide angle Nikkor AF-S 10-24mm f3.5-4.5G ED DX lens costing USD 800. This is the lens for capturing landscape with more impact! I want this first!
2. Midrange Zoom Tamron AF 17-50mm f2.8 SP costing USD 449. This is the lens to replace my kit lens for travel. It’s fixed aperture make it a lot more flexible in shooting indoor and outdoor!
3. Telephoto zoom Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f4.5-5.6G ED VR, costs USD 540. If budget allows, this lens can help you to capture those statues on top of the roof at St. Peter’s Square and PS can’t help you on this!
4. I need a much bigger sling bag preferably the Lowepro Slingshot 350AW sling bag, cost USD115. It will fit in more camera staffs on travel, and can be treated as a backpack cum waist bag, and
5. Finally, if budget allows me to do so, I wish I could upgrade my body to Nikon D300s which cost USD1,500 or RM4,950 only now! It’s tremendously good value now if compare to its original list price of USD1,800!

Other than the above, I would also get ready some ND and polarizer filters for some effects. What are the total cost of all 5 items?  USD3,404.

However, I haven’t got any of the above. I wish I can get some of them (or at least the first 4 items) by end of April so I could fully explore my photography travel to Europe. Or can you think of anyway to support me on this please?

p/s: If you think this travel blog is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee as you like. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

If you ever have the chance to visit to Malaysia for a week or so, one city you must not miss for your travel photography portfolio is Melaka. At about 150 km south of Kuala Lumpur, Melaka is one of the 4 heritage sites of Malaysia inscribed by UNESCO, other than Penang. It features all sorts of heritage architecture left behind by the three conquerers, Portuguess, Dutch and British before the independence of Malaysia.

Colourful historical buildings and streets are just perfect for travel photography. I love it. I travelled there again on New Year eve just to shoot some beautiful heritage buildings with bright natural sunlight. The most attractive site is definitely the red coloured Stadthuys Square in city centre. It was constructed by the Dutch with the main landmark of Melaka which is the Christ Church Melaka. It’s best to capture the whole scene with at least 10-24mm wide angle lens. I didn’t have it so I shot part of the square with some creative composition from different perspective view. Highly recommended place for travel in year 2010, according to Lonely Planet – Travel Feeder.

The above photo was captured with Nikon D60