Introduction

This page is intended to highlight the different types of content (photo, video, audio, etc.) on this site, the features used to display them, and how best to use and take advantage of them. If you have a technical background, much of this will be obvious.

Your Browser

If you are able to install software on your computer (meaning you are not on a company computer that prohibits you from doing so), do yourself a big favor and install the latest version of the Firefox browser. This goes for Mac and PC users. Not only will this site behave better for you, but it may save your life. Perhaps that’s overselling, but it will definitely improve your browsing experience. If you are worried about all of those precious bookmarks and favorites that you’ve saved in Internet Explorer, don’t fret. When you install Firefox, there’s an option to import your bookmarks or favorites.

Navigating the Site

Aside from the photo gallery, 95% of this site’s content is contained in categorized and chronologically organized articles (a.k.a. posts). There are several ways to navigate the site to easily find what you are looking for.

Categories: Articles are organized both by geography (region and country) and theme. You can find all categories listed on the right-hand sidebar of the site under “Entries by Category”. The Categories to which an article is assigned are also listed at the top of the post as “Filed Under”.
Tags: Articles are further classified by the tags assigned to them. Think of tags as topics or groupings. This site uses tags to indicate more specific geographies (e.g., city) and further details topics that might be covered in an article. The tags assigned to an article are listed at the bottom of a post.
Chronology: Organized monthly by the date the post was published. Just click on a month to find out what we were doing then.
Search: Type in the keyword or location you’re searching for. All posts and pages in the blog are indexed. Photos and photo captions are not.

Anatomy of a Post

All posts contain the following components to allow the reader to understand the geographical or topical context of the post, comment on it, email it or add it to a social bookmarking tool.

At the top:
Date: When the post was published (or when we had the experience)
Comments: Number of comments (click to read the comments and or comment yourself)
Categories: Links are located next to “Filed Under.” These are the categories that the post has been associated with. Click on a category to find related posts of that geography or theme.

At the bottom:

Comments: Click on this to add your own comment to the post or read previous comments.
Share This: Click on this and a box will pop up giving you the option to email the post to a friend or add it to your bookmarking tool of choice such as del.icio.us, digg or technorati.
Tags: More detailed than categories. Click on a tag to see a list of related articles with the same assigned tag.

The content:
The text is at the heart of the post. In addition, many posts will include several or all of the following elements to share the experience in a multi-sensory way.

Watch Our Video

Click on the video box to play the video. Tips on how to get the best viewing experience are below.

Practical Details

What the traveler needs to know – transport, accommodation, food and other useful information.

More photos…

Photo sets and individual photos related to the place or topic of the post. Most photos are displayed with location data and a zoomable Google Map at the bottom of the page.

Audio MP3

Simply click on the play button to listen. You also have the option to download the track or play it in a popup player.

Photos

Technology has enabled us to do some wonderful (and sometimes extraneous) things with our digital images.

• Individual Photos
  • An example photo page
  • For those photos that are geo-tagged (meaning that we’ve embedded or associated them with location data) , there’s a nifty little map at the bottom of each page that shows where the photo was taken. You can zoom in and out using the map controls, in some cases to street level.
  • EXIF data shows camera settings (e.g., shutter, aperture) on the right sidebar
  • All photos are “tagged” or associated with keywords. Click on the keywords to see related photos.
• Flickr Photos – all of our photos are also displayed on Flickr:
  • Our Collections
  • Our Sets
  • Our Individual Photo Stream

Videos

Technology has also enabled us to do some enjoyable (and sometimes extraneous) things with video.

• Embedded Video
  • For videos to appear and play, you’ll need to download Flash
  • For example, if you check out a post like the one that chronicles our boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang, Cambodia, you’ll notice a video near the bottom of the post. Press the play button and you’re on your way. If the video skips or is slow while playing, press the pause button, get something to drink and allow the film to load completely (in the background). You’ll notice a little gray (or red) progress bar moving from left to right at the bottom of the video window as the film loads. After the film is completely loaded (the progress bar is all the way to the right), you can press the play button again and watch the video without it skipping. You can also control the volume of the video by clicking on the volume controls near the bottom right-hand side of the box.
  • On the right-hand side of our pages, you’ll see even smaller video windows. Do the same with those.
• We tend to post our videos to video sharing services such as YouTube and Blip.tv.

Subscriptions

If you are interested in finding out about subscriptions, RSS, and how to subscribe to our site, check this out.