Why You Should Bring Tech Travel Gear With You
by BootsnAll
You *heart* technology. You think technology is the best thing since sliced bread. Technology and travel go together like Mexico and corn-row braids, and here’s why:
Organize your life on the road: Technology helps you organize your life while you’re away from home. Overseas banking? Easy-peasy. Have to fill out a job or school application? No worries. Hiking in the desert and you want to make sure that you won’t get lost? Piece of cake. With high-tech gadgets like computers, PDAs and GPS systems, these are things you won’t have to worry about, no matter where you are.
More versatility for what life throws your way: Stuck in Rome for another night and you need to find a hotel? Simply call a few of the choices listed in your guidebook from your mobile phone to see if they’ve got a room available before you hoof it across town only to find out they’re full up. Technology can help you adapt – and keep your cool.
Creature comforts: A cell phone keeps you in touch with your family and friends. A translator lets you order off a menu in an unfamiliar language (and lets you avoid the mystery meat, too). A laptop makes it easier to keep up with your travel blog and download photos from your digital camera as you go. Technology makes life a little easier, and more enjoyable.
Modern traveler: The more technology you have, the better. You are part of the cutting edge, the epitome of the ‘wave of the future’ – you’re a modern traveler. Having tech toys in your arsenal just means that you’re more prepared to face whatever travel throws at you than the poor sods who are too afraid to figure out the local electricity.
Streamline life with travel: Advancements make life and travel more compatible – you can take part in conference calls, check in with your house sitter, pay your bills, etc. The bottom line? You get to spend more time on the road and less time in the office. And that’s always a good thing.
Teach others: If you are heading to a developing country, bring along your laptop or other electronic gadget and provide locals with an opportunity to learn more about technology. And no matter where you’re going, there’s nothing quite like the grin on a kid’s face when you show him the photo you just took of him on your digital camera, seconds after you took it. Instant gratification sometimes equals instant karma.
Clearer memories: Chances are, your digital point-and-shoot is going to give you waaay better quality pictures than that old film camera, and at the very least you’ll be able to check your handiwork immediately and re-take the Eiffel Tower shot if you don’t like the first one. A video camera will help you capture the real-life movement of those dancers you saw in Bali in a way that a still photo can never quite match. And a journal that you’ve typed into a laptop or directly onto your blog is much easier to read months later than the chicken scratches and incomplete sentences you jotted on the back of a bar napkin in Buenos Aires at 3am.
Emergency use: It’s not all fun and games, folks – GPS units have been known to save lives, getting digital shots of the scratches your rental car came with means you’re not relying on the agent to accurately note them, using your own laptop to do your internet banking protects you from potential spyware that’s installed on the computers at the hostel or internet cafe, and having a mobile phone can get you out of a jam quickly and safely.
With justifications like this, how could you possibly leave any gadget at home?
>> For the other side of the story, check out Why You Shouldn’t Bring Technology on the Road
original photo by: Paull Young