Feb

Plan for your perfect travelling period of the year

cecil on February 6th, 2010

I need to confess here. There won’t be any perfect period of time to travel in a year. It’s all depending on what you want in your travel in the first place. If someone tells you he had a perfect vacation somewhere in a particular month, he actually referred to a perfect timing for himself only. It’s not necessary yours too. There are similarities between this and my thought on perfect travel destination.

The perfect time of year to visit a country or city is up to you to decide on what you want to see or experience there. Some might wish to see snows while others hate cold weather. If you are looking for blooming flowers, you can’t expect to see snowfalls. Or you don’t hope for falling leaves while you are looking for hot sunshine! Isn’t it logic? Every place or travel destination has its own characteristics at different time of year. That’s the fun part of travel! It means we can travel all year long at any time to have a perfect timing and a perfect vacation!

So, what would be the perfect timing to visit a city? Let’s list down what you should expect from these 4 main seasons of the year so you could plan for your next perfect vacation.

Spring. This is when the flowers start blossoming and mountains turn green especially in Mediterranean countries like Amsterdam and other areas with temperate weather. Sunlight is getting stronger and longer during Spring until the peak in Summer. Travelers should expect 12 hours of daylight in a day. For hobbyist photographer(that’s me!), this is the best time to capture colourful scenery with deep blue sky! Temperature is also moderate during this round of time. I could book cheaper Barcelona hotels in Spring also. However, snow melt may cause flooding in some of the areas. Spring is the season for new life. Other than blooming flowers, other micro organism are being born as well. This may include new born viruses. Influenza A H1N1 and SARS viruses started to spread at this time also. Thunderstorm is also another possibilities during this season.
Summer. This is the hottest time of year. Sunlight is bright (photographers may find it too harsh sometimes) and it has the longest day and shortest night. Travelers would able to enjoy more daytime activities than night markets. Also the hottest period for sports, people are rushing out to the beach for water activities. FIFA World Cup and the Olympics falls on this period too. However, being the most popular season for travelers, Every corner of those travel destination in North Hemisphere is always packed with people! You should expect extremely high accommodation demand when booking hotels during the season especially in those popular destination like New York hotels! Another reason to travel during Summer is the grand Summer Sales for fashion! Good news is viruses normally are less active and controllable during this season!
Autumn. This is when the leaves start changing colour and falling especially in Mediterranean countries and other areas with temperate weather. Sunlight is getting softer and shorter. Travelers could expect equal daytime and nightime as Spring. For travel photography, though flowers and mountains may not as colourful as in Spring, blue sky or twilight scene could still be expected. Temperature is also moderate during this round of time which is much cooler than in Summer but warmer than in winter.
Winter. This is when all flowers die off and leaves fall. All living creatures become inactive or hibernate. Photographers could capture snowfalls and white scenes everywhere in this season. Daytime is much shorter than night hours. Other than snows, travelers visiting those temperate countries like Europe should expect another round of grand Winter Sales! Good news is all micro organism disappeared during this time of year! You don’t have to worry about cockroaches or lizards!

See? The decision is yours. Every seasons have their own characteristics to suit everybody’s taste of travel. Plan your travel according to what you want from that travel destination. If you like hot sun and people (or bikini? ) watching , plan for your Summer trip. Otherwise, you could plan for your Winter travel to feel and hold snows in person! For me… I’m planning my Europe tour for this coming Spring. Reasons being those blooming flowers and clear blue sky with plenty of sunlight which I’m seeking for my next travel photography project. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.

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All Travel Tips, Travel Guides, Travel Perception, travel destination 3 Comments »

Jan

Travel by Photo – Phi-Phi Island, Thailand (Part 2/2)

cecil on January 3rd, 2010

Let’s continue our photo travel to Phi-Phi Islands. We left Monkey Bay and arrived at Maya Bay at about 11:30am. If you were new to this travel blog and wish to know where we were coming from, read Part 1/2. Maya Bay is one of the most popular beach of Ko Phi-Phi Leh Island though there is no permanent inhabitants on the island. The Holywood’s movie, “The Beach” and the leading actor, Leornardi DiCaprio, have both further popularised Maya Bay (the main backdrop at where the movie was screened) as well as enahnced its image to the world.

You can count the number of boats and people in the photos above. There were full of tourists snorkelling, swimming and fish feeding there. We spent 1 hour there relaxing on the white sand beach, snapping lots of photos around and also very importantly, people watching!

Yeah! I’m taller than those lime rock mountains at the back!

What’s the essence of beautiful portrait shot? Clean and nice background… apart from the lighting off course in order to capture vibrant images.

With one exception that when you want to show the distractive background as part of the photo. As the above photo is full of distraction with people and mountain in background but it was the purpose of the shot to show how crowded the beach was…

That day weather was really perfect with beautiful sunshine and clear torquious sea water.

Beautiful scene of Maya Bay. We left Maya Baya at 12:30pm for another movie backdrop scene. This time we had to travel back in time to 20 years ago to see the cove where James Bond’s movie, The golden Finger was screened. What was next? Snorkelling time again at Loh Samah bay of Phi-Phi Leh. What tourists could do in Phi-Phi Islands at day are mainly swimming, snorkelling, diving, kayaking and fish feeding. These activities are carried in bays and coves of the 2 biggest islands of Phi-Phi, The Ko Phi-Phi Don and Ko Phi-Phi Leh.

Another great example of perfect lighting. I did nothing to the above 3 photos except some sharpening and resizing. No Saturation had been enhanced.

One lighting illusion I like very much is this example above. No shadow (or little bit) of boats could be seen on the sea surface although the sunlight was harsh. This made the object (the boat in this case) like pasted onto the photo but accidentally left out the shadow…

Most travel agents now are using speed boat for Phi-Phi Island excursion. It saves at least 2-3 hours from the journey if you were boarding at Phuket. I would strongly recommend this type of transport.

At 1:30pm, we left Ko Phi-Phi Leh for Phi-Phi Don for lunch. All of us onboard seemed exhausted and starving.

We passed by the ‘Viking Cave’ at Ko Phi-Phi Leh where bird nests are found and picked for the thriving bird nest soup industry in the region.

This is it: We were approaching Ko Phi-Phi Don, the biggest island of the islands group.

Buffet lunch was served at Long Beach of Phi Phi Don Island. Food varieties and quality were ‘normal’ with western and local Thai foods. Off course, Tom Yam soup was served as well.

What we could do after lunch? Some were shopping for souvenirs next door (above), some were relaxing under shade on the long beach (below) and some might wanted to stay out on seaside for the beautiful scenery (further below).

At 2:30pm, after our lunch at Phi-Phi Don, we headed to our last stop of Phi-Phi day tour, the Ko Phai or Bamboo Beach. Rows of beach chairs were provided for visitors to lie down, relax and maybe sun-bathe. Again, plenty of fish for travellers to feed and feel. This time round, I left my Nikon D60 on the beach chair and went out to snorkel and fish feeding! Great! At last I could feel the sea water of Phi-Phi Island rather than tell stories from the back of my camera view finder! Off course, I needed to compromise. That’s was why no photos of Bamboo Beach could be seen here. Camera man was under water! We left Phi-Phi Island and reached back to our Safari Beach Hotel at Patong Beach at about 6pm. The day trip to Phi-Phi Islands was concluded as a worthy and fascinating excursion with a cost of about THB2500 per adult. – Travel Feeder.

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 RSS feeds for free upcoming stories; 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, contact me at chienchoilee[at]hotmail.com for ads arrangement. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

The above photos were captured with Nikon D60

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A budget traveler, All Travel Tips, Phuket, Travel By Photo, Travel Deals, Travel Guides, Travel Log, Travel Perception, travel destination 4 Comments »

Dec

Travel Perception – Sand Sculpture or Foot Prints?

cecil on December 16th, 2009

Many times, when travellers visit a city or country, they will have a first impression towards the place. This first impression is what travellers observed in the first place, whether the travel destination is cool, clean, noisy, safe, friendly or gorgeous. However, it’s still up to the perception of that traveller. One might say the island is sunny while the other might feel it’s too hot! Some would feel the local people are helpful while some others would complain about privacy. Eventually, verdicts of the destination would depend on individual traveller’s own perception rather than the actual situation.

So, the best way to know whether the city or country is good to travel, apart from gathering 100+ comments from others, is to visit the place and look at it from all angles! No other better way. Perceptions of others might be totally different from yours! Try look at something in different angles! Look at the photo below for example…

Do you see a pair of foot prints on the beach, or, a pair of sand sculpture on the beach? One sand is sunken and the other is protruded out…

Still wondering? Yes. It’s a huge sand sculpture made on the beach. With the reflection of lights and shadow, it created an illusion to observer to believe that they are footprints. Same to a travel destination. Some action, decoration or recommendation make you believe that is’s what it is. But the actual fact might be the other way round when you look at it in other ways.

Don’t always believe your eyes. It’s not neccessary what you see. Don’t always listen to what other people tell you. It’s not neccessary your own perception. Don’t believe me? Ok ok, I just made a mickey out of you guys… the above photo is ACTUALLY a pair of foot prints on the beach! Sorry mate… – Travel Feeder.