Blog - foXnoMad

Can You Really See The Whole World In A Lifetime?

by Anil Polat | Dec 2, 2009 | Travel | 25

holding the world Ask people who are enthusiastic about travel the places they’d like to see and you’ll often hear city after city only for the person to realize, “I want to go everywhere!” After having a similar conversation like this recently I began to wonder, is it humanly possible to see the entire world in a single lifetime?

What Is Seeing The World?

In this rather unscientific approach, let’s define “the entire world” as all of the cities with a population of 500,000 or more. That leaves us with approximately 1,000 cities. Let us also add a quarter of that for smaller cities that you might want to happen upon and another 250 places that aren’t cities all together (i.e. Grand Canyon). So, for the purposes of this little mind experiment, we’ve got a world that comprises 1,500 places to see.

How Long Are We Staying In Each Place?

There is a lot of debate on how long you need to be somewhere to “really” see a place. I think a week is a good average time to become familiar with a city (especially the smaller ones) and plan excursions outside of town. Due to travel time, I’m going to add 1 day of travel between each city. That equates to 8 days (7 per place and 1 day of traveling) for each destination in the world you’ll be visiting.

The Length of Time For The Entire Trip

In order to see 1,500 places and stay a week at each plus the added days for travel to and from each destination it would take 12,000 days, which is 1,714 weeks or 32.9 years. If a traveling lifetime starts at age 20 and goes through 80 you can see the whole world with quite a few years to spare. Now if you include all of the towns in the world with populations 100,000 and over that’s 3,200 destinations. Using the same traveling criteria it would take you 3,657.14 weeks or 70.3 years to see it all.

A Thought Experiment

This is all theoretical however and assumes an infinite budget, no health issues, and non-stop traveling to see as much as possible in a lifetime. In reality these numbers are probably very optimistic and would only be met if you were actively seeking to beat a record. You now however have a better idea of how long and possible (or not) it might be to “see it all” although I don’t think it will stop any of you from trying.

As far as how much the total trip would cost, well, that’s a much more difficult calculation I won’t even attempt.

[photos by: JasonRogersFotographie, sean dreillinger]

Enter To Win A Prize While Helping Support Passports With A Purpose

by Anil Polat | Dec 1, 2009 | Contests, Site News | 4

children in cambodian school Help the independent non-profit organization American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC) reach their goal of raising $13,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia. Myself and many other travel bloggers have all pitched in and donated a number of prizes which you’ll be entered to win for each $10 donation you make.

What Is Passports With A Purpose?

The group organizing and coordinating the efforts to raise money for the American Assistance for Cambodia. They gotten together a lot of sponsors and bloggers who’ve donated some great prizes.

Where Does The Money Go?

$10,000 of the total $13,000 will go towards the construction of the school and the other $3,000 goes to the school’s account to help with monitoring, maintenance, and overhead. You can read more about the AAfC’s efforts and the Rural School Project to find out more.

passports with a purpose

How You Can Help (and Enter To Win Some Great Prizes)

It’s very easy to donate and for every $10 you do you’ll be entered to win one of the prizes you select. So, for example, if you donate $30, you can chose to enter once for 3 prizes or 3 times for the same prize. You’ve got until December 21rst to enter so do it now before you forget.

Go to the donation page.
Pick the prizes you want to win, and enter the donation amount accordingly.
That’s it!

$10 is a small amount to give and if you can’t give that much get in touch with me and I’ll help you earn it somehow. Also, from now until December 11th if you purchase a copy of my eBook, Overcoming the 7 Obstacles to Traveling the World I’ll donate 100% of the earnings to Passports With A Purpose. On top of that if I’ll add $2 and enter you to win a prize.

foXnoMad’s Prize: Casio Exilim Digital Camera

I’m putting up a Casio Exilim EX-S5 digital camera (a value for $100) as my contribution to this year’s efforts. The Casio Exilim is the one I carry with me everywhere. It’s extremely small, durable, and has an impressive feature set for a camera its size. On top of that it’s only one of the prizes you can enter to win.

How To Contribute

Make a donation (minimum of $10) to Passports With A Purpose.
Become a fan of Passports With A Purpose on Facebook.
Contact me if you have any questions.

I hope that you’ll take a few moments and take a look at the prizes and consider making a donation. Thank you!

[photo by: snowlet]

The Best Comments Of The Month: November 2009

by Anil Polat | Nov 30, 2009 | Discussion | 7

At the end of every month I like to take some time to highlight a few of the comments that appear on various posts. The comments are insightful, entertaining, and add much more information and experience to each post. Here are just some of those great comments.

The Backpack Foodie tells up how to really crack an iPhone to avoid its disadvantages.

Drive 2,250 kilometers the quick and painless way using some of Mark H‘s Australian advice. Brian Smith recommends B vitamins, hot water, and a getting your blood flowing to keep the trip safe and seamless.

While I don’t recommend using the Internet kiosks at airports, if you really must, use Richard‘s technique to keep your online accounts safe.

Luke says the trip is in the traveler and we don’t fall into neat traveler types or categories.

In addition to some of these free alternatives to Hotspot Shield (so you can watch Hulu and get to other sites from outside the US), Benjamin Barnett recommends Graboid, an option for a small fee.

I may have convinced Shannon OD to go to Comic Con, while not on the level of a full blown Star Trek convention, it’s still dorky fun.

I never though of it before but the Van cat does kind of look like David Bowie (thanks Gourmantic!)

Finally, take some time to check out and enter Jen Laceda‘s camera giveaway. It’s very easy to enter and the Soviet-style Lubitel 166+ Universal Lomo medium-format film camera is an awesome prize.

Top Commented Posts

Thank you all very much for the comments, keep them coming!

[photo by: Vito]

No Posts Today, Or Tomorrow

by Anil Polat | Nov 26, 2009 | Site News | 2

It’s not often that I take a break from my usual once a weekday blogging schedule but I’m going to take advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and do some work behind the scenes. In the meantime, I’d like to point you to some recent blog posts I’ve written on my other travel blogs, including A Traveler’s Guide to Hacking Wireless Networks Part 1 and my interview with Go Pet Friendly road trippers Rod and Amy Burkert.

For all of you travel bloggers out there, I’ll be updating Travel Blog Advice with a spanking new post tomorrow morning. Until Monday, have a great weekend.

Hotspot Shield Alternatives To Watching Hulu and Other US Sites Abroad

by Anil Polat | Nov 25, 2009 | Tech | 8

simpsons on hulu Hotspot Shield is the popular method for getting access to US-only websites but is ad-heavy, and since Hulu and other providers are on to it, isn’t as reliable as it once was. Those of you outside of the US can still access Hulu, Netflix instant streaming, and other US-only websites using these good alternatives.

In addition to watching TV, using these proxies can be a good way to get lower airfare if you’re in Europe by booking on Kayak, or some other site that thinks you’re in the US.

(Be careful what information you send across a proxy you didn’t set up yourself. It’s best to use a one-time credit card if your bank offers it.)

Free Programs

Reader Andrew sent me a great list of alternative programs, all of which I’ve downloaded and tested (on Windows, Mac, and Linux). These are the easiest alternatives to use because they don’t require you to set much up and are free.

FreeVPN (Windows only) – Out of all the virtual private network (VPN) software I tested, FreeVPN was the easiest to use, set up, and the least intrusive. Once you download and install the program, it sits in your taskbar and does it’s magic as you turn it on or off.
UltraVPN (Windows, Mac) – Similar in setup to FreeVPN and available for Mac, except that UltraVPN requires you to set up a username and password. Make sure to use a password you don’t use for your email or any other accounts.
FoxyProxy (Windows, Mac, Linux) – FoxyProxy is an application that you install but requires you to change some settings on your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox) to get the proxy to work. It’s not much work and is a one time setup. A good proxy that also works on Ubuntu Linux.

There are some paid alternatives out there which I didn’t try. They run anywhere from $30-100 annually and the quality and service varies. The free methods listed above should be enough to meet your needs in most cases.

Set Up Your Own VPN

There are two ways to set up your own VPN. One is to have a computer that running somewhere in the US (i.e. in your parent’s house) and the other is to purchase some cheap hosting or use an existing Web server you may have. Basically the computer just needs to be in the US, running, and connected to the Internet.

Other Alternatives

Hamachi (Windows, Mac, Linux) – Makers of the popular remote desktop solution LogMeIn also have a free VPN service you can sign up for called Hamachi.

For many of you watching your favorite sitcoms abroad makes VPN software like these essential tools for digital nomads. Remember though that all the data you send through a VPN that you didn’t set up yourself might not be absolutely private. Avoid sending across passwords, credit card numbers, and anything else you wouldn’t want someone else to read.

[photos by: thms.nl, colmmacc]

What Type Of Traveler Are You? [POLL RESULTS]

by Anil Polat | Nov 24, 2009 | Polls | 6

It would seem that most of you reading travel at least several times a year, even if it’s hard to classify what type of traveler you are. I think many of us fall into more than one of these categories.

what type of traveler are you

How would you have grouped the different types of travelers – or do you think traveler ‘types’ are really an exaggeration?