but better late than never.  I have been meaning to do a blog on lessons learned about the trip to Thailand and Korea.  I think what finally inspired me to blog again is that Trina and I are starting to plan for our next trip.  For those of us, who have not heard Trina and I are planning to go to Tibet later this year.  More on Tibet when we have something to tell, now on to lessons learned.....

 

I think that the biggest lesson that we learned was to trust our instincts in all cases.  We were good while traveling about trusting out instincts but during the planning portion of our trip we went against our better judgement with regards to going to Chiang Mai.  While we were planing the trip, we started to question why we were going to Chiang Mai.  It seemed that the things that everyone was doing there were not the things that we were interested in doing.  For example, we were leary of the elephant camps and now I will never be able to look at an elephant again with out getting a sour taste in my mouth.  So next time, we will be sure to trust out instincts when making plans.

 

Now on to more tangible lessons learned.  There are some great products out there to make your travel a little easier. 

 

One of the best ones that we found was a product called Body Glide.  It's not what your thinking.  Body Glide looks like a stick of deoderant but you rub it on your feet in spots where you think that you may be getting a blister.  The next thing you know that area feels better.  Let me tell you that this stuff works wonders in hot weather to combat chafing.....

 

Head lamps.  Another great product is head lamps.  Now, we weren't doing any night hiking or anything of the like.  However, when you are on an island that doens't have 24 hour electricity and its pitch black, it is much easier to work your way through a mosquito net and then go to the bathroom with two free hands.  Not mention the fact, that it is a lot easier to read a book with a head lamp than a flash light.

 

Digital photography rocks!! This may seem obvious and really I knew this already but we took 1200 pictures in Thailand.  1200.  Digital Photography frees you to take as many pictures as you want of anything that you want and then pick out the good ones later.  I still need to figure out a better wa to bleed off pictures from the memory cards.  I got the iPod Camera Connector and it seemed like this was going to solve my problem.  However, when i got in Thailand, I was confronted with the fact that it does not really work for transferring a large number of photos.  I think that I am going to look into getting a portable hard drive.  In the meantime, I just got some bigger cards.

 

Those are the things that jump out at me right now...