As a guy I normally don’t have a problem with toilets when I travel – after all guys can stand and pee. But for women I guess it can be a challenge when coming to not so nice toilets at e.g. bus stations, on buses, when going camping etc. I met this lady when I was hiking on Kilimanjaro and she had to give up on reaching the summit as she was dehydrated. She was dehydrated as she didn’t want to drink as there was nowhere to pee. Anyway, there are various products for women that can be used and one of them is p-mate (also known as p-standingup). Check out the web sites and you will get an idea of how this device work. I’m just wondering why they keep on nagging about writing names in the snow when you pee…should that really be the main selling point?

A few years back Nikki and I went to China and Hong Kong was one of the stops on the way (check out the Hong Kong trip report here). The only problem was that I caught a cold in Beijing and by the time we came to Hong Kong I felt miserable. And to top it off….this was in 2003 and it was just when the SARS virus hit town. All in all the visit was not a huge success to say the least. But now I’m going to check it out again – in September I will visit the city once again and hopefully I will be in better shape this time and hopefully I will be left with a more positive impression of the city. Have you been to Hong Kong? Feel free to get in touch if you have any recommendations when it comes to must see places, places to eat, bars with a view etc.

Here is one video from YouTube

Lastminutetravel.com is one of those websites that offers you a hotel at a certain price, a certain class and a certain area without really giving you the name of the hotel. Here is a way to find out what hotel that is on offer. First clink on the link of the hotel that is offered and in the URL you will see hotelId=9999 (where the 9999 will be unique for each hotel). Go to this link:

http://www.touricoholidays.com/en/PageHotelDetail.aspx?hotelId=9999&provider=localTgsProvider

and replace 9999 with the hotel ID and the name of the hotel will pop up

One question that comes up from travelers is: what kind of plugs and sockets are in use at the destination that I’m going to? Will I have to buy a converter? Luckily most gadgets like cell phone chargers, laptop power supply etc can handle both 110 V and 220 V but sometime you do need a converter in order to get the plug into the socket. Well, here is a page that shows you which plugs and sockets that are in use in the various countries. Check it out on http://www.interpower.com/icl/guide.htm .

Do you wonder what the weather will be like in Tokyo in April? Or how hot it will be in NYC in July? Well, it is of course impossible to predict the weather several weeks and months ahead but we can look at statistics to get an idea of what the weather should be like. I normally use the site Weatherbase for this and here I can check out average temperature, average precipitation etc. But you should also check the weather forecast right before you leave for your destination to check what the weather is like at the moment

I have to admit that I haven’t used KLM that much in the last few years as I have gone over to StarAlliance and after I had a horrible flight with them from KL to Amsterdam (see KL trip report)- but I used them quite a lot to start with as they were a Braathens partner (when that airline existed), as the connection from Stavanger to Amsterdam was very good and as they were quite cheap. So over the years I have been to Schiphol about 40 times and it is a lovely airport. Anyway, KLM has made some destination guides that might be worth looking into. I’m not sure that it gives you the ultimate guide to each place but at least it gives you a good overview of the places to start with as it covers stuff ranging from eating out, weather, how to get around etc. You can check out the KLM destination guides here.

I like to get an idea of where I will be seated before I travel – maybe you have been assigned to a seat that is not ideal and maybe you can change it to a seat with better legroom. There is of course a website for this kind of information and it is called SeatGuru . On this website you can check out how the various planes for the various airlines are configured, which seats that are good or bad and get lots of useful information. There are also other websites with similar information and one of them is SeatExpert. Good luck with grabbing that perfect seat on your next flight

I’m a bit of a Google fan and I use it for searching, the maps, gmail etc etc. Now there is a new tool available and you can find it on http://citytours.googlelabs.com/ . It is called City Tours and here you can get recommendations on what to see on a e.g. 3 day trip to various cities shown on a Google map of course. But it seems like you have to be reasonably fit to use this…when trying it out on e.g. Paris it suggests walking from Musée National du Moyen Age-Thermes de Cluny to La Cinémathèque française and the walk is supposed to take 84 minutes! Has anyone tried out this product in real life?