A Backpacker’s Epiphany: 5 Reasons to Try Out Club Med

I’m a bit of a travel snob. I don’t mean snob in the sense that I only stay at five star luxury hotels or only dine on nothing less than expensive champagne and caviar in Paris.

Actually the opposite- I’m the type of travel snob who believes the really interesting travel happens off the beaten track, unplanned, and without a tour guide. I’ve hitchhiked my way through Africa, dragged my backpack through train stations in Egypt, and spent the night with plenty of bedbugs through the years. Essentially, travel for me has always been more gratifying when there’s discovery, wacky surprises, and okay, a little bit work on my part. Can you relate?

Club Med on Ishigaki Island, Japan

However, recently due to some stressful personal life events, my husband and I were just not motivated for our usual kind of travel. We did not have the energy for the hustle bustle, scary taxi rides, or price haggling. We wanted to go easy for a change.

We opted instead for a stay at an all-inclusive Club Med. Now, I’ll admit I had reservations. Isn’t the fun part of travel wandering down hidden alleys for a tiny gem of a restaurant or stumbling on a secret beach? How could I possibly enjoy just walking up to the buffet line or sauntering out to the resort pool?

Well readers, enjoy it I did. I’ll even go so far as to say that I’m looking forward to planning my next Club Med vacation.

Now, I knew little about Club Med Resorts before this trip, and I had some strongly formed misconceptions about how stimulating the experience would be. In short, I didn’t expect it would be. However, I am here to tell you that I was wrong. In fact, there are so many interesting and fun benefits to staying at one that I want to share with you.

Reason 1

Club Med resorts offer a wide array of activities including tennis, archery, water and snow diversions, yoga, bike riding, exercise classes, excursions, and most fun of all, flying trapeze. When else do you get a chance to engage in all that? Most of the activities require no extra charge; hence, you can easily try out something new. Moreover, Club Med resorts around the world are often within easy reach of places of cultural or historical interest. We left the resort one day and visited a monkey enclave and mangrove forest. In no way does your time need be limited to the pool.

Reason 2

Club Med personnel is made up of people from all over the world, which gives the resort an international vibe reminding me of a youth hostel. The staff members themselves are roaming travelers, moving to a new resort every year or so. They freely conversed with us during the day, shared drinks at the bar and sat with us during meals. This interaction presented many opportunities for having lively discussions and making friends.

Reason 3

The resort is a perfect, if not a little strange, self-sustaining world. It’s the kind of place where the person who is the receptionist is also the bartender and the trapeze artist and the magician and head of the breakfast clean-up crew (and if you were getting married, would also be the officiate performing the ceremony). It was hilarious actually to see what new role that person would pop out as next. Moreover, each night, the staff put on a show for the guests– yes, cheesy and badly adapted from the Vegas strip, but all the more fun to watch when that’s your new pal from Indonesia on the stage. Essentially, Club Med was not the sterile environment we expected in the least. There were lots of surprises and laughs.

Reason 4

If you have children, child-care is included in the cost. Amazingly, the staff whisks the little ones away for hours. If I were a parent, I can imagine that would be heaven. I’m all for creating and sharing memorable travel experiences with your children, but that is exactly the benefit of this type of resort. You are not simply dropping them off in a small room so they can watch cartoons while you sip a cocktail at the bar. The childcare is educational and cultural. On our trip, we met kids who went on nature walks, learned local songs and games, made crafts, and became amateur trapeze artists.

Reason 5

Finally, the drinks and food are free flowing all day long. As much as I love discovering a fantastic hole in the wall restaurant, I have to admit, it was lovely to have all that sustenance at my fingertips for once. The food quality overall was very good and they served a range of dishes and drinks. We stayed at the resort on Ishigaki Island in Japan, and there was no shortage of sake, awamori, goya, and beni imo (purple sweet potatoes). To be honest, we could’ve eaten burgers and fries there too if we wanted, but we were pleased to see variety and local ingredients.

Club Med resorts are located in over 100 destinations all over the world, and they are not limited to Caribbean beaches or European ski villages; in fact, locations exist in countries such as Senegal, Morocco, Turkey, and even Brazil.  If you’re feeling less than usual motivation for the uncertainty and hardship of adventure travel, I recommend breaking out of the typical pattern and giving Club Med a chance.   You might experience your own epiphany.

8 Old Colonial Hotels You Can Still Stay In

Remnants of a bygone world, these colonial memorials are places of nostalgic luxury where century-old traditions are preserved with meticulous care. Their Victorian flavour is reminiscent of Agatha Christie stories (actually, the famous writer stayed in some of them herself).

Most of old colonial hotels are as unaffordable for the average traveller as they were a hundred years ago, but this apparent shortcoming is compensated for by their opulence, charm, rich history and a long list of famous guests. Get to know some of the most celebrated hotels in the world…

Galle Face Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Opened in 1864

Facing the Indian Ocean, this very personal and unique hotel has been hailed as a masterpiece of Victorian architecture. Some of its guests have said that staying at Galle Face is alone a sufficient reason for visiting Sri Lanka.

What is more, staying at Galle Face is affordable. You can enjoy the dramatic sunsets over the Indian Ocean from its black-and-white chequerboard terrace and know that famous guests, such as Richard Nixon, Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Neru, Emperor Hirohito, Roger Moore, Yuri Gagarin have probably done the same.

The hotel has its own ‘landmark’ – a world-famous doorman, eight-eight-year-old Kuttan, proudly bearing the title of the most faithful employee in hotel industry. He has served Galle Face for 66 years since the days of the British Raj.

Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, Thailand

Opened in 1876

One of the oldest hotels in Asia, the famed Mandarin Oriental (formerly Oriental) is not cheap, but it certainly lives up to its reputation of superb service and opulent luxury. With a ratio of three staff per one guest, the hotel aims to make every visitor feel like royalty.

The famous guests include almost everyone who comes to mind – politicians, royalty, designers, celebrities such as Graham Greene, Sophia Loren, Alfred Hitchkock… Joseph Conrad did not stay at the hotel, but he was a frequent visitor to the bar.

In 1888, he arrived in Bangkok to take over the command of a ship whose previous captain died at sea, and spent many an evening swapping stories of far-off places in the bar of the Oriental. A few years later he would settle in England and take up writing full-time.

Raffles Hotel, Singapore

Opened in 1887

In 1886, the Armenian Sarkies brothers took over a harbour-facing building known as the Beach House. In December 1887, the new hotel opened and was named after the founder of the British colony in Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles.

Rudyard Kipling, who arrived in the same year, noted that the food was excellent but the rooms were bad. It seems the hotel has improved a great deal since then and has a guest list that looks like an edition of Who’s Who. Charlie Chaplin, Ginger Rogers, William Golding, Elizabeth Taylor and David Bowie have all stayed there.

One of Raffles‘ legendary, even if not overtly famous guests, was a certain Dutch archaeologist, Professor Callenfels, who drank up to three bottles of gin for breakfast alone and once ate every dish on the hotel’s menu. He then proceeded to do it all over again, only backwards.

Rumoured to be the place of mass suicide of 300 Japanese soldiers in the end of the Japanese occupation of Singapore in 1945 – in fact, only one such suicide has been proven – this famed hotel withstood wars, crises and disasters gracefully and is now a celebrated national monument.

Eastern & Oriental Hotel, Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

Opened in 1885

The Eastern Hotel in Penang – now a UNESCO world heritage site – was the first enterprise of the Sarkies brothers. Renamed Eastern & Oriental after a few years, it became commonly known as the E&O.

This hotel is one of the earliest major historic buildings still standing in Georgetown and is a charming legacy of Malaysia’s colonial past. Many of the historic features have been retained up to the present day, including the somewhat moody antique elevator and classic black-and-white tiled Victorian bathrooms.

E&O has welcomed celebrities such as Noel Coward, Herman Hesse, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham.

Pera Palace, Istanbul, Turkey

Opened in 1892, will reopen in April 2010

The grand and opulent Pera Palace was built for the use of passengers coming from Paris to Istanbul on the Orient Express. It is located in a cosmopolitan quarter of Istanbul on a hill overlooking the Golden Horn and Bosphorus, a place of symbolic significance, where the East meets the West.

Pera Palace been frequented by politicians, writers and artists. The guest list includes name such as Mata Hari, Greta Garbo, Ernest Hemingway and Valeri Giscard d’Estaing.

The hotel had a very special place in the life of Agatha Christie. She stayed there many times between 1926 and 1932, and also wrote one of her best-known stories, Orient Express, in the hotel.

Winter Palace, Luxor, Egypt

Opened in 1886

Winter Palace, built in a typical British colonial style, soon became famous for its New Year’s Eve celebrations with masked costume balls. Taking part in hotel celebrations became a symbol of status and recognition. It was said to be the ultimate privilege to have one’s yacht moored along the quayside opposite the Winter Palace.

Agatha Christie is once again on the list of famous visitors, and it might have been here she got inspiration for her many stories set in Egypt.

It was on the notice board at Winter Palace that Howard Carter first announced the discovery of the tomb of Tutankamon in 1922. The famous Egyptologist frequented the hotel until his death.

Oberoi Grand, Kolkata, India

Opened in 1890

One of the oldest hotels in India, this colonial mansion is a haven of privacy, peace and old world charm in the hectic and exhausting city of contrasts that Kolkata is.

Boasting celebrity guests such as Melinda Gates, Ricky Martin and the Queen of Bhutan, Oberoi Grand used to be the favourite destination of princely Indians and local and international celebrities alike.

It is still one of the best hotels in India and perhaps the best hotel in Kolkata, a city is rich in top of the range hotels. The grand dining room offers different international buffet every night of the week as well as an exquisite Sunday lunch buffet, popular with locals and tourists alike

Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa

Opened in 1899

Mount Nelson Hotel was the fruit of the imagination and determination of shipping magnate Sir Donald Currie. The first visitors were the European high society travellers and the nouveau riche who partied and celebrated at the wake of Anglo-Boer war that broke out in the end of 1899. A young Winston Churchill was then a regular guest as a newspaper correspondent reporting on the war.

Since these troubled days, the walls of Nellie, as it is affectionately known, have survived three wars and many changes of government. They have welcomed the rich, the famous and the royal. Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and more recently Charlize Theron, Robbie Williams, Bono and Oprah have all stayed at Mount Nelson.

This white mansion boasts breathtaking views of the Table Mountain, and is striking in its colonial grandeur that South Africa is so famous for. Mount Nelson still serves high tea in the afternoon and champagne before dinner.

Additional photo credit: Pera Palace Hotel by Inga Kastrone

Best Round-The-World Travel Blogs

Here at BootsnAll, we’ve been trying to inspire and help people plan round the world (RTW) trips for over a decade now. We also host thousands of travel blogs ourselves, with many of them being RTW journals and sites. You might already realize that there are so many thousands of travel blogs out there that finding the best of the best is just about impossible, but that hasn’t stopped us from at least trying to point out some excellent sites that we consider to be among the finest.

First off, what makes a great travel blog?

If you are interested in just keeping track of your journey for your own sake and the interests of friends and family, then it’s totally fine to use an existing template and just cover whatever you prefer. But if you want to put together a site that will appeal to people who’ve never met you, it’s a bit more complicated. Everyone has their own preferences, but generally speaking these are the things that will make your site stand out and appeal to a wider group of people:

• Use lots of photos, on almost everything.
• Make sure your site is easy to navigate, so people who enter on any one post can easily find posts on the same topic or different topics.
• Create an “About Me” page that is easy to find (If random readers can’t tell if you are a 22-year-old female backpacker or a 51-year-old man on a temporary retirement, it’s much harder to feel a connection with you).
• Be opinionated.
• Use lots of photos (seriously).

Here are some RTW blogs that we feel stand out:

Gobackpacking.com

This started out as a standard RTW blog written by a guy in Virginia, USA, who spent 20 months on the road, but now it’s being expanded into a helpful resource for independent travelers. It’s nicely designed and easy to read and navigate, but the content itself is the key. His article describing the actual costs of a RTW trip is a great example of the practical advice he dispenses. And it seems he is looking to expand through outside collaborators now too, so check the site if you are interested.

Nomadicmatt.com

If you follow the online travel and social media community, chances are you’ve heard of Nomadic Matt. He’s another who hit the road a few years back and has barely slowed down since. His site is filled with really helpful tips, and he isn’t afraid to be opinionated, which is refreshing. On his site you might miss his actual blog, but it’s worth a look, especially for solid entries like this recent post called Everyone Say I’m Running Away.

Everything-everywhere.com

Gary Arndt brings a fresh perspective to his site. He’s an entrepreneur who has evidently done well enough to afford a life more or less on the road since 2007. Most RTW blogs concentrate on hostel dorms and barely-existent budgets, so it’s nice to read posts by someone who isn’t forced to travel as a backpacker. Gary is also a good writer who has lately become a key player in the travel social media community, including as the host of a new weekly podcast called This Week in Travel. His site also features a stream of great photographs, so it has the distinction of also making our Best Photo Blogs list.

Alittleadrift.com

This site is the work of a 25-year-old Florida native who says she had a “quarter-life crisis” and decided to hit the road in 2008. She’s a good writer who does an excellent job organizing things so the site is easy to navigate, and there are always plenty of great photos too. She also puts together articles that are meant for a broader audience, including her budget tips and declaration that RTW travel can be cheaper than you might realize.

Ottsworld.com

Sherry Ott was in her 30s when she decided the corporate world just wasn’t for her anymore. She traveled around for around two years and has been based in Vietnam for about a year, teaching English. Now she’s on the road again, but she’ll continue to write and try to help others break away from the corporate grind. If you are unsure whether you can or should hit the road yourself, have a look at her section on taking a career break.

Wherethehellismatt.com

You already know this guy, Matt, from his amazingly inspirational and successful videos of him doing the same goofy dance in some of the most picturesque places on earth. His first trip and video got him so much attention that Stride Gum sponsored a second one and then a third one. He’s now been to 80 countries, at last count, and does actually have a proper travel blog/journal on his site, in addition to the videos and such.

Forksandjets.com

Some colleagues and I discovered this one a few months ago, and we were immediately hooked. It’s written by a pair of “amateur foodie traveloguers” who left Los Angeles in 2008 for a nomadic lifestyle, and the moment the page loads you’ll see they also have a definite sense of style. Once you get past that cool retro look and font you’ll notice that the site is filled with great photos and stories on the food and culture everywhere they go. Check out their observations and frustrations with Morocco as a good example.

Nodebtworldtravel.com

Brian described his mission as “One guy’s attempt to travel as far around the world as he cheaply can” and he’s another who has made a name for himself in the online travel social media circles. It’s not so much a travel journal anymore as it is a useful hub for travel information and advice. He’s recently put together an ebook, in which he’s compiled some of his best stuff. One great example of his style is his article discussing just how much can you save by staying in hostels instead of hotels.

Kiwifamily

This is one of the busiest travel blogs hosted here at BootsnAll, and it should be inspirational to anyone thinking about long-term travel with kids. In their own words, this is about “A Kiwi family with eight kids and a grandpa chronicle their pilgrimage from Singapore to London and beyond…..overland all the way.” You don’t see many large families on the road, so it’s interesting to read about some of the unique challenges, like this post from Bulgaria.

Theworldeffect.com

Here’s another one that is new to us, but caught our eye quickly. It’s written by a couple who obviously have a great sense of visual style. Right now they are in Africa and they have posted some of the finest pictures we’ve seen on a travel blog. An excellent example is this fairly recent post from Serengeti National Park.

Livingspree.wordpress.com

This site is also written by a couple who thought about dropping out of the rat race, and then went ahead and did it. They’ve been a lot of places, and this one isn’t the easiest to navigate, but it’s filled with good writing and useful information. Folks thinking about going to Southeast Asia might especially appreciate the way they break down their exact expenses. Particularly interesting is this post called Wish I Knew It Last Month, where they collect their best tips and insights from the road, after plenty of experience.

Roundtheworldticket.com

This one isn’t a RTW blog in the traditional sense, but we’ll forgive that since it’s part of our own travel network. It’s a site that is loaded with RTW-specific advice and resources, and even though it’s not as active as it once was, you’ll still find some interesting stuff here. In particular you might be interested in Places You Should See on your RTW Trip and Not So Obvious Reasons to Go on a RTW trip.

Do you know of any great RTW travel blogs that we didn’t include? There are lots of fantastic sites out there, so if you know of a site that deals with circling the globe, let us know in the comments.

Photo by aranarth on Flickr