There is no need to book hotels or apartments early as long as there is not high season. Study where you go and you may book early if free cancelation, then you are free to change and get the best deal. Most cases we have bad experience with early bookings and great experience with bookings close up to the visit.
In most cases Google map is a fantastic, and it even selects roads that you never will visit unless google help you finding them. Even in Indonesia it works most of the time. The only problem is that google map does not differ if you drive a normal car, 4wd or motor bike. My advice is: ask the locals when you end up in suspicious places, and you may study the map before starting the drive.
In every passport there is now an area that is machine readable (below the picture of you). Especially for persons with Æ, Ø and Å in their names this is important in order to avoid spending extra money and time. Passport, Visas and flight tickets should be exactly the same!
Using prepaid sim card will nearly always be a good idea when outside Europe. The most effective way is to buy it on the airport – you want get lost and you do not have to spend a lot of time to get it elsewhere.
In Malaysia several larger apartment buildings had a community cantina at ground floor, and I think the people living there had an opportunity to get dinner every day for a small amount of money. And they did not have to spend time, shopping, making the dinner or clean up after. Much like we are doing traveling around this year:) Is this a business idea possible to realise in Norway?
In Sri Lanka we experienced that washing machines, refrigerators, and other large items were sold on tax free at the airport. Never seen that before, an probable never again:)
The holy cow does not have a good life in India, living in cities, on roads and so on. Eating garbage and drinking mud water. Poor cows!
Kina and India has one thing in common. Everywhere you hear body noises (burp, hawk, fart, slurp, cluck out load, and so on). I wonder if this is something that becomes ok when the total population exceeds 1 billion people:)
In India we experienced that nothing was finished. There was construction work everywhere (road, railway, houses ….). Hughes projects with no workers doing the job. New modern railway that ended in the middle of nowhere, 200 km highway with detours all the way between Delhi and Agra. Houses that was only the structures and no more. Maybe it is not that bad in Norway where only small parts of the road are improved at a time….
Hong Kong is much larger than I thought, traveling from the centre to the great buddha took more than an hour. Going from the hotel to visit some friends took more than an hour. There are small mountains and forests. And we did not even visit half of Hong Kong.
Worldwide Family Tour 