Tumbrella

Howdy folks. Tumbrella has just spent a happy few hours slurping tea and perusing fellow travel websites (but mostly slurping tea). Our pick of a new bunch of travel blogs include:

Almost Fearless has a story about What You Learn When You Travel Solo. It has some good bits:

You force yourself to be more friendly and open to others because if you don’t, you’ll be traveling alone. So you talk the vendor at the market, you chat up the locals on the bus, and sit down with the group at the hostel. You make an effort you normally wouldn’t.

And, you know what, it’s not that bad. At first, it took me awhile to get over it. I was always a bit shy. What if they don’t like me? But then you realize, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

On a beach in Thailand, I walked up to this group of people and asked to join in their soccer game. A year later, I was at a wedding for two of them. All because I just said “%^&* it!” and went and talked to them.

We’d certainly agree with that. Though it would perhaps be good to have heard some of the downsides of travelling solo too, like sometimes it can get a tiny bit boring and you end up spending three hours a day on the internet. Ahem.

Elsewhere canny Normadic Matt has a blog about how to make money with your travel blog, which clearly we should read more closely.

We enjoyed this too, from Canada’s Adventure Couple – newbies to us – and their scariest moments on the road, including motorcycle accidents, fire ants and big guns.

Equally as useful is this story on how not to sound like a jerk in your travel writing, group emails and the like:

Sure, it’s more fun to say “coruscating and neoteric” than to say “new and shiny,” but the simple truth is that it makes you sound like a pretentious jerk at best, and a loser with a thesaurus at worst.

Tumbrella wouldn’t do that. We know we would sound inordinately  asinine.

Lastly some excellent hitching tips including, lose those shades, pick your location wisely and “looking pathetic helps”.

The last tip is, now we come to think of it, probably why we’ve had so much accidental success with the thumb.

Happy travels y’all