Low Budget Travel Tricks You Can Use To Overcome Big Budget Problems: Part 2
January 12, 2012 by Anil P.
Filed under Health and Fitness, Money, Security
In Part 1 of Low Budget Travel Tricks you learned to tame mother nature and battle armies of microscopic vampires, you, our nomadic hero. Though your path is still wroth with bandits and ruthless dragons who control the skies, yet still, you will overcome them. Leverage and luck on your side you’ll defeat these foes, allowing you to go on the offensive, but first to today’s battles.
Fight Off Attackers, Pickpockets, And Hotel Thieves
Prevention, awareness, and contingency are the basic steps to a robust security plan, whether you’re looking out for hackers or simply want to be prepared in case of a mugging. When it comes to your personal safety, knowing the streets or parts of town you might want to avoid (or just avoid at night) can go a long way in keeping you from assault. Hotels, hostels, and Tripadvisor are all good resources that can lessen your chances of ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pocket Protection
- Carry Only What You Need – I only carry a day pack if I’m hiking or looking for a cafe to get some work done. Otherwise, I leave my laptop and other valuables with wherever I’m staying. They’re safer there, no day pack often helps you blend in, plus it’s better for your back.
- Distribute Your Money On Your Person – A little bit of cash in your pockets, socks, underwear, bra, etc. means if someone picks your pocket, you’re not losing everything. A decoy wallet with a small amount of cash and an expired credit card can also protect you by fooling pickpockets.
- Catch The
BastardsCrooks – One of 4 ways to be shadier than a thief is to set a credit card trap:
“Keep this card (with no money in the account) in your decoy wallet. If it’s stolen call the credit card company or bank right away to let them know. In most countries the companies will keep close track to see where and if that card is used. If there happens to be a camera at the first place the pickpocket tries to use the card you may be in luck.”
The digital equivalent of a credit card trap is to use the free Project Prey on your laptop, mobile phone, and tablet.
Hotel Hacking
Much like protecting the items on your person when you’re out and about – it’s a good idea to distribute your valuables. Make use of the safe in the room (no guarantee yet decent protection) but generally speaking, locking the zippers on your bags provides enough discouragement for opportunistic thieves. The first rule of security is that no security is absolute – you just need enough security to make a potential theft more risky than it’s worth to the thief.
- Create A Backpack Security Plan – Remember the layers of clothing that keep you warm and make your mom happy in Part 1 of this series? Well, layers will insulate your most valuable items against theft.
- Get Pacsafe Security Without A Pacsafe – That’s also much less conspicuous.
Overcome Physical Threats
Let’s start with an obvious one that’s easy to forget depending on where you’ve been traveling – keep your valuables out of sight. That means iPhones, which seem as common as grass these days, but don’t forget they’re a cool $600 that’s easily resold anywhere in the world. It’s tempting in taxis, buses, and while wandering the city streets to multi-task with a bit of texting or gloat to your friends (“I iz totally rockin Buenos Aires right now Jimmy”) but it’s not Jimmy that’s going to get jacked that way.
- Treat Your Gadgets Like Real Actors, Not Reality Stars – Meaning be picky about when they make an appearance.
- Uglify Your Things So They’re Not So Enticing – Wise Bread has an excellent guide on uglifying and some handy anecdotes from Brazil.
- Bring A Safety Whistle – This is one personal safety tip from Legal Nomads I can’t get enough of and Jodi’s got 3 good reasons to carry a whistle.
When it comes to personal safety though whether you’ve got formal training or not, these 3 insightful rules by Sam Harris could help you avoid being harmed physically.
Tomorrow in the third and final part of this series you’ll take down a frequent foe and battle your own demons to become the one to rule them all.
How To Accurately Calculate How Many Calories You Just Burned Sightseeing
September 20, 2011 by Anil P.
Filed under Health and Fitness, Tech
As we found out last week, human beings like all of us, are really terrible at estimating things (check out #5 on this list); with it get worse when we’re talking about ourselves. In short, our Paleolithic brains tend to convince us we’re right all the time and doing stuff – like burning calories – much more than we really are.
Fortunately our biology has some silicon allies that can accurately let us know how many calories we’ve actually burned wandering around Berlin so we don’t overindulge in schnitzel afterward.
A Crash Course In How Calories Work
The (extremely) basic premise of calories is they are a measure of energy our bodies use to do things like walk, travel, and do silly dances when we get drunk. We get calories from food and drink, burning them away when we do anything. (And I mean anything – reading this post alone you’ll burn an average of 5 extra calories.) Assuming we’re good so far, there are some basic rules in how you burn:
- The more energy you exert, the more calories you burn.
- The more you weigh, the more calories you burn.
- The more athletic you are, the more you burn overall.
- Men burn about 10% more calories per activity and at rest that women.
- The older you are, the fewer calories you burn.
Keep in mind these are general rules to give you an idea of how it all works, in case you needed a brush up. I’ve probably given some nutritionists and doctors chest pains by oversimplifying this much so let’s move on to the calories you’ll burn sightseeing.
Map It Out
Have you ever sat down in a cafe after a few hours of sightseeing and exclaimed, “I must have walked 10 kilometers today!” (Afterword wolfing down 10 danishes?) Most of us have probably uttered something along those lines without realizing the walk wasn’t as nearly as far as we thought.
To get an idea of how much you’ve walked after-the-fact you can use Map My Run. You’ll need to create a free account for this tool, which lets you draw a trail on a Google Map mash-up, calculating the distance you’ve covered. Map My Run also has a mobile version (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) you can fire up while you’re actually walking. Another good option for calculating walking distances is Gmap-Pedometer. You can’t begin to accurately calculate how many calories you’ve burned if you don’t know how far you’ve really walked.
To make your sightseeing efforts more accurate, count the number of steps you climb and go down throughout the day, and jot them down somewhere.
Use GPS For Sightseeing Precision
Using online maps can give you good estimates for distance covered, but a more accurate tool is probably something you already carry in your pocket. The free SportyPal available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry turns your mobile phone into a pedometer, keeping track of distance covered, meters climbed, and the rate at which you do so. (Thanks TurkeysForLife for the recommendation.) [The aforementioned Map My Run mobile app does something similar, but doesn't take full advantage of the built-in GPS in mobile devices with cell service deactivated.] Another in the free price range, Run Keeper (Android, iPhone) is another app to consider.
Of course, walking around with mobile phone isn’t always practical and in some places not the best idea to whip out. Serious traveling runners and walkers can take a look at the various nondescript GPS watches like the Garmin Forerunner 405 for accurate distance measurements.
Adding To All Up, With Bonuses
We now have three of the four key variables (pace, distance, and time) to calculate how many calories you’ve burned. The last thing you’ll need is your weight. Most online calorie counters will let you input only 2 of the 4 variables, and this calorie calculator from About.com is the most straightforward. (Unfortunately it’s English units only.)
The most accurate figure per kilometer or mile, assuming an average walking pace, is using either of these formulas:
- For calories burned per kilometer: Multiply 0.67 x [your body weight in kg]
- For calories burned per mile: Multiply 0.3 x [your body weight in lbs]
The key ingredient to this mix of course being the accurate measurement of how much you actually walked. Calculators based on time miss things like reading maps, toilet breaks, and other stops that can have us seriously overestimating the amount of time on our feet.
- I hope you kept track of the stairs I mentioned above, add .11 calories to your total for every stair up and .5 for every stair you walked down.
Finally, for a bit of travel workout boost, you can add approximately 34 calories for every 5 minutes you spend shivering in cold climates and potentially 50 calories spent walking in temperatures about 40c (~104F). And don’t forget that day pack if you’re carrying, add 10 calories per hour if it weighs 2.25kg (~5lbs).
Good For Your Waistline And Future Travel Planning
A good assessment of your steps can not only help you keep that cute belly of yours in check by not overcompensating with too many delicious calories but give you an idea of what you can realistically sight-see in a day. Most of us unconsciously do this, mapping out an entire city, only to end stopping halfway our route to eat, people watch, and relax. Chances are, by accurately tracking how much ground you cover in one day traveling, you’ll have a better sense of what you can see (and eat!) in future trips.
[photos by: lululemonathletica (top photo of woman in blue shirt)]
What’s In That Pipe And Who’s Smoking It: An Introduction To Shisha Around The World
September 15, 2011 by Anil P.
Filed under Air, Culture, Health and Fitness
The tobacco water-pipe, nearly 600 years old known as a hookah, shisha (many parts of the Arab world, including Egypt), argile in Syria, nargile in Turkey, and galyan in Iran, is an integral part of Middle Eastern cultures whose misty clouds of smoke are often a mystery to visitors. No, they’re not getting everyone high on the streets Cairo – well, not technically – and each puff isn’t quite the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes. While shisha (the term I’ll stick with for the rest of this post) contains plenty of nicotine, it’s not what hooks it into life around the Arab world; it is something entirely more addictive about that culture in general.
Shisha – What It Is Exactly And Are There Drugs In It?
Shisha’s fundamental components consist of a (specialized) charcoal at the top that heats flavored tobacco beneath it; both separated by a piece of aluminum foil. The downward force for the heat is provided by two dedicated human lungs sucking in tobacco smoke through a hose. In a public setting, the tip of the hose is capped with a removable plastic piece, so you’re not sharing germs with others who’ve been smoking the same shisha. Traditionally, the tobacco air isn’t inhaled, but rather enjoyed more like a cigar, by keeping the fruit-flavored smoke in your mouth before exhaling. Cigarette smokers and others though do inhale the smoke however, which often produces a slight buzz and a lightheaded feeling, primarily due to carbon monoxide (CO) accumulation in the blood. That effect typically lasts 3-4 hours, the approximate half-life of CO, in the body at most altitudes.
It’s not so much hearing about the mild woozy effect that leads many to conclude there’s marijuana in shisha, but rather the appearance of the water pipe itself, which many associate with a bong.
I was quite perplexed last year while smoking shisha (nargile in Turkey) by the Mediterranean waters off Fethiye‘s coast to notice an entire British family wide-eyed starring at me. They were looking at me as though I were a green alien or had 7 arms. I kept looking over my shoulder and wondering if I had forgotten to wear pants that day and eventually asked the waiter what was going on. He told me the family was wondering if I was getting high and what exactly I was smoking. They seemed quite disappointed to find out it was tobacco only. Especially the mom.
Although you can put marijuana or hash (very popular in Arab subculture) in shisha, it’s not part of the usual mix. That’s not the traditional allure of the pipe which has roots in places from Nepal to Morocco and is spreading worldwide via seeds of Arab immigrant communities.
Smokey Shisha Bonds The Cafe Culture
The peoples of the Middle East – not just Arabs – are generally cafe cultures. Spain has its siestas and Oman has its shisha to get through the working day. Sips of tea and puffs of shisha at cafes typically crowded with men (though that is changing across much of the Middle East) is where you exchange the troubles of the day, exhaling both literally and metaphorically. You smoke a cigarette for the quick nicotine fix but a shisha for the conversation, relaxation, or both.
Gaining Ground Where It Was Once Found, Now All Around
While shisha as been quite popular throughout most of the Arab world (with a few notable exceptions publicly in places like Saudi Arabia), it’s prevalence elsewhere has brought it back to life in places more familiar with it. The hookah, it’s mostly agreed, was originally invented during the 1500s by the Persians, in what is today northwestern India. Since that time it became passe over the mid-to-late 1900s in places like Turkey and India, something considered too arabesque for rapidly modernizing societies. Shisha and the cafe ambiance around it, continued to spread during that time as Arab communities established themselves in many parts of the world. Popularizing shisha across South Africa, the Philippines, and (especially) Europe – pretty much anywhere you have Arab or southeastern immigrant populations, it has come back strong in places looking west but reexamining their eastern roots.
What we eat says a lot about where we came from and as cuisine travels around the world, so does the history, culture, and people whose tale it tells. Apparently the same is true of what we inhale as well.
Some Prevalently Common Shisha Myths
Aside being packed with marijuana, there are some rather common myths about shisha not matter how familiar its smoke is to you.
- Smoking One Shisha Is Equivalent To A Pack Of Cigarettes – One hookah can last a very long time coal after coal so it’s important to define a typical smoking session; they average about 45 minutes. Now, in terms of equivalency, there are many things in cigarettes that are bad for you, including 4,000 chemicals and 50 carcinogens – a pack generally consisting of 20 cigarettes. We’ll focus on three things – nicotine (not a confirmed carcinogen), nicotine-free dry particulate matter (NFDPM – basically tar and other crap that sticks around in your lungs); and finally, carbon monoxide which is toxic to all forms of life that depend on oxygen to survive.
So, in one 45 minute session of shisha smoke you inhale about 2.25 milligrams (mg) of nicotine, versus the average 6mg per packet of cigarettes. As for NFDPM, it’s roughly 245mg per shisha session and 120mg per cigarette packet. Lastly, when it comes to carbon monoxide via shisha you’re getting a total dose of 42 parts per million (pm) CO and a heavy smoker has about 35 ppm on average.
To add things up, a shisha session (where you inhale) gives you less nicotine, more NFDPM, and about the same CO as a pack of cigarettes according to current research.
- Smoking Shisha Is Ancient – No, it’s not, no matter what the Caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is doing, it’s about 600 years old. Remember, tobacco was only introduced to Asia about that time, so while it took off quickly, it did not take off before.
- One Shisha For The Group – Although getting a shisha for the table is common in Western countries, generally it’s one shisha per person in the Middle East and Asia with the occasional sharing.
- Shisha Isn’t Bad For You – I think we’ve covered that well above but the consensus is that while it’s not good for you, people tend to smoke them less frequently than cigarettes, and that’s kinda good.
Perhaps the biggest myth about smoking shisha is why it’s done in the first place by the peoples who enjoy it so much and often.
Conversations Around The Coal
Much like eating paella in Spain, drinking raki in Turkey, or fika in Sweden, it might be the food, alcohol, or caffeine that brings you to the table but it’s company that keeps you there. Ordering coal after coal (free without charge – you pay for the hookah once) people help their shishas keep up with the conversations gently blowing into the air all around them.
Use Your Liver To Get A Leg Up On Jet Lag
July 1, 2010 by Anil P.
Filed under Health and Fitness
There are a number of factors that contribute to the amount of jet lag you feel after crossing a few timezones. Fatigue, flight times, and stress all cause your body and mind to be out of sorts when you arrive at your destination. That feeling is in large part due to your internal body clock not being set to the local time. You can however get a head start on jet lag by setting your body clock from the organ that regulates much of it – your liver.
Why The Liver, And Why Just Sleeping Early Won’t Help
Most people try to get some extra rest (or go out all night) the day before their long flight to compensate for jet lag. The problem is that your mind heavily relies on visual cues to set your circadian (daily) internal clock. That means that despite your best efforts, you’ll find it tough to sleep when the sun is coming up, no matter how tired you are. The second most powerful time cue for your brain comes from your liver. It controls your “food clock” which is a big part of helping your brain decide what time it really is.
Shift Your Mealtimes 24 Hours In Advance
In reality, changing your sleeping habits more than an hour or two outside of your normal bed times is more likely to make you tired the day of your flight and throw off your body clock even further.
Instead, begin shifting your mealtimes, 24 hours before your flight, to match the times you normally eat according to the local time at your destination. So, if you normally eat dinner at 5pm, eat dinner at 5pm destination time.
Follow this schedule the day before your flight and continue it on the plane as well.
How Manipulating Your Food Clock Works
Your “food clock” is a powerful indicator for your body and often overrides your brain’s master clock, especially when you’re hungry. When you’re body is running low on food, the liver’s food clock gets priority, keeping you awake and alert. (Likely an evolutionary adaptation forcing us to keep looking for food, despite being fatigued from starvation.)
Make It Easier On Yourself
You might not find the idea of eating in the middle of the night very appealing, but you might be able to get around that by shifting your body clock using peanuts and using your bladder as an alarm clock, which works on long drives as well.
- Sleep deprivation and jet lag both greatly interfere with your decision making so don’t discount the benefits of a good nap if you need one.
The goal isn’t to completely eliminate jet lag (which probably isn’t possible) but to reduce its effects so you can use that day or two after arrival to see the things you want with a clear head.
[photos by: dotbenjamin (spoon in belly), Express Monorail (clock at Disneyland)]
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