Travel and Technology Guide: Using technology to get the best and the most out of your trips

Famed Chinese mystic and philosopher Lao Tzu once said “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one misstep” - or maybe he said step. Nevertheless missteps were what I was concerned about as my mouse hovered over the “confirm booking” button on my trip to Hong Kong.  Several deeply ominous signs warned me that there would be no refunds without heavy cancellation fees. I clicked the button. The fat was in the fire and my adventure would soon commence.

    
Flying in Comfort

Certain I could do better than a travel agent, I looked online for flight and hotel deals. A point to note when doing it yourself is to keep track of the total layover time. Yatra was ambiguous on this and it very nearly lead to a massive mix up that I would have had to scramble to find somebody to blame. I was able to find higher fares with shorter flight times, but not before I loaded up SeatGuru.com to choose my seat. Vastly underrated, SeatGuru can accurately provide you the aircraft's floor plan if you just enter the flight number. Where you previously chose between window and aisle, now you can really get in there and fine tune your experience for the best legroom.
    
Host with the Most

Websites like Airbnb and Travelmob are a boon to travelers especially those adventurous and/or on a budget. Rentals are usually run by local hosts and hosts of properties that are rated well usually go out of their way to help you get the most from your vacation. In my case, I needed a professional atmosphere so I could schedule meetings back at the hotel as well. I finally settled on a package deal with Yatra for the Dorsett Hotel in Mongkok. A quick visit to Dorsett's website revealed not only that it had a free shuttle running all day, but also the timings and locations of its stops. The shuttle made most major areas accessible and affordable and is a good thing to look for when booking a hotel.

Ideal Individual Itineraries

Sightseeing is great when you're relaxed. If you're like me however, functioning on very little sleep and beginning to feel like the proverbial bull in the not so proverbial China shop, navigating websites like Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet seem like noble if ambitious goals. A less involved traveler (read lazy) can get just as much information from sites like Couchsurfers and Meetup and these are great resources for finding happening things to do quickly in any particular city. Incredibly convenient was our hotels policy of providing guests with a 3G smartphone for their stay with included an app with all the local places listed along with estimated prices and even suggestions on bargaining. The fact that this was linked to Google Maps (more on that later) made their smartphone an indispensable part of our trip. We even used it as a backup camera when our own phones batteries began to die. 

Power Conversations and PowerBanks

It’s worth mentioning that services like Viber, Skype and Whatsapp take communication abroad to a whole different level. Before I left, I hopped on Skype and ordered calling plans that allowed me unlimited world calling and 800 minutes to India, both at very reasonable rates. A local calling plan is highly recommended and I cannot stress how relieved you’d be if you were lost or confused and you had the option to call up the hotel when you need more information on the shuttle system or want to talk to the concierge. Powerbanks (external batteries or chargers for electronic devices) are other essential travel commodities, but I found them so cheap and ubiquitous that it’s hard not to imagine it’s a little symbolic of what's going on there today. Evidently the Chinese too believe that in Hong Kong, you can never have too much power.

Google Fail

Google morphed into something diabolically unrecognizable, designed to torture my existence the moment I began to depend on it. In all fairness, Google did helpfully remind me that walking directions were “beta” but that’s like saying somebody is a “little bit pregnant” or that the Mumbai local is just a “tad crowded”. The hateful little blue arrow on the Google Maps app seemed to have a life of its own jumping around the screen like a demented energizer bunny on caffeine even while we stood perfectly still. Google Translation didn’t fare much better either. Google had such a hard time figuring out what things meant I might as well have been taking pictures of the Voynich manuscript. In frustration, I finally photographed a street sign just to see if I was doing something wrong, Google responded with great pomp and ceremony, and the only correct translation I was ever able to coax out of it the whole trip.

Technology can only get you so far

Even if your technology is perfect, travel is a uniquely human experience and that’s the real fun. Keen to eat local food whenever possible I visited several restaurants that had Cantonese writing and the odd picture or two but nothing resembling what we’d traditionally call a menu. My travelling companion, ever the optimist insisted on asking for “veg” food wherever he went. It became a custom that while restaurant owners pondered over what kind of meat “veg” was, I would bring up a picture of a duck or a pig on my cellphone and explain that’s what I wanted. I learnt the limitations of this strategy one day staring at a bowl of something that resembled no meat I had ever seen before. I later learned they were pig knuckles. I left most of it; and if you're wondering, it was a little stringy.

Like life, travel is not meant to be predictable. It’s the crazy transience of it all that makes life worth experiencing. Everything else is narrative. It’s good to plug in sometimes but it’s also good to plug out. On one of our last days there the hotel app suggested a walk down Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Harbor. We took some pictures and as my hands clamped the railing I thought of a line from one of my favorite books:

“...we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road