The joy of travel research

One of the great things I love about heading to any new location when we travel is the fun in researching the destination.

This often involves madly Googling the hot spots, trawling through Trip Advisor reviews and figuring out where one thing is in relation to another on Google Maps. It’s a far cry from when my wife and I went backpacking around Europe for 6 months in 1997.

Back then Google hadn’t even been started, Hotmail was still cool, internet cafes were the rage and the bible for most travellers was the trusty Lonely Planet guide book of a certain destination.

Maps were paper things that you picked up at an airport or found at the back of the guide book, and figuring out your location involved some thought and getting help from a local. Not the luxury of pressing a button on your iPhone. And cameras still used a thing called film!

Fast forward about 18 years and in a few short minutes I can know all there is to know about a location, restaurants and best places to stay and things to do. Sure nothing beats getting lost in a new city only to stumble upon a true gem, but for planning a 12 month journey, I am glad I have Google and not a pile of out-dated city guides.

As with all things, you need to take the advice with a grain of salt. Be it a blog, trip advisor review, Instagram post or New York Times Travel review, everyone will have a different opinion on what they like and dislike. The trick is to take in all the information you can and then make your own decisions. Things that we like will definitely be different to others, and thus we will do the same.

There are some amazing travel blogs out there, and many with a focus on Bali. We are trawling through many of them now and using their experiences to hopefully enrich our future travels. My hope is that for anyone reading this information, that we can give you some tips and tricks for your travels, whilst explaining the things that we prefer and why we decided to make the decisions we did.