Friday, February 17, 2012

Travelling: Blogs, Clips, TV Shows

I have a sweet spot when it comes to travelling. I have been travelling to a few countries in Europe, Asia, North America (major cities both east and west of both U.S.A. and Canada), and a few islands in the Caribbean and I always try to travel somewhere away from home once a year whenever I have the chance.

Aside from travelling, I spend a lot of time reading travel blogs, scouring travel short clips on YouTube/Vimeo, and watching travelling TV shows to entertain myself and get ideas where to go next or what to expect if we were to visit the places we saw/heard/read.

The first travel clip I saw a few years back was by Matt Harding, a video game designer who quit his job, dropped everything, travelled, and recorded himself doing "the ugly dance" in various places he visited.

Matt Harding first video was taken around 2003/2004 and posted online in 2005:


He continued to produce the second video in 2006 with a bigger success:


And he saved the best for last in 2008:


You can visit his website at http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/ where he documented all the things about his travelling up until today (it looks like he's making another video).

Here are a few other "creative" clips of travelling around the world:


MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Kien Lam quit his job as a Strategist in a financial firm to travel around the world and made this wonderful video from the collection of pictures he took during the trip:


Looks like Kien Lam switched gear and now he's a professional photographer. To see his work, you can go to his website at http://kienlam.net.

I don't read too many travel blogs as sometimes they're too long and detailed to my liking. The few blogs I'm interested typically focus on pictures. Here are a few of my favourite past-time blogs:
Some of the picture arts from the blogs above:

Borobudur, Jogjakarta from Stuck in Customs (Trey Ratcliff)
Prambanan, Jogjakarta from Stuck in Customs (Trey Ratcliff)
Rice terraces on the island of Bali, Indonesia
Rice Terraces, Bali from Everything-Everywhere
Here are a few travelling shows my wife and I have watched in the past few years:

1) Rick Steve's Europe



Rick Steve typically goes around Europe old cities to cover a more historical building. His show seems to be targeted for retirees who would like to travel in a more slower pace and specifically to Europe.

2) An Idiot Abroad



This travel show has a little bit funny back story. Karl Pilkington (the traveller) does not want to travel but was forced to do so by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, well-known U.K. celebrities. Both Ricky and Stephen monitor Karl's progress from London, U.K while Karl made fun of himself doing odd things around the world.

Most of the time, we found "An Idiot Abroad" to be funny, and occasionally we felt less entertained due to the nature of the show trying to mix between (more) stupidity/stubbornness and (less about) travelling. Overall this is a funny travel show which we enjoy.

3) World Travel


Two travel writers exploring the world. We found this particular show to be a little bit dry for no reason. Some of the shots of the places were nice, but the overall feeling of this show is somewhat a little bit on the average side. I feel the show is a bit cheesy as most of the activities they did were predictable.

4) Departures.

Here we go. This is the best travel show we have ever watched. The Best Ever. Period.



We stumbled upon this show one day as I flipped through channels and fell in love immediately. Justin Lukach and Scott Wilson were high school buddies who, with Andre Dupuis as the cameraman, decided to travel around the world and document everything (literally everything).

This is the show that definitely will make you want to travel.

Side note: Scott and Andre were college buddies who own a multimedia business focusing on television programming, commercials, etc even before undertaking the Departures project. Perhaps that explains the quality of the show.

3 comments:

Simple name said...

Your writings, articles, blogs I mean over all contents is must read matter.

www.pinkroseholidays.com

Online Hotels Booking said...

I enjoyed reading it. I need to read more on this topic...I admiring time and effort you put in your blog, because it is obviously one great place where I can find lot of useful info..
Hotel Booking London

Jack Witson said...

Really impressed! Everything is very open and very clear explanation of issues. It contains truly information. Your website is very useful. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to more!

bus shah alam

Post a Comment