One of the great things about traveling the world like we are doing is that we constantly experience things that other travelers will experience. This includes everything from the joys of seeing new places to the frustrations of trying to get the best deals. So we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have a tool that searches through all (or at least a lot) of the online travel sites and finds the best rates from each of them?

Since we like to solve any problems or difficulties we encounter we decided to implement just such a tool. And if it works for us, why shouldn’t we let travelers all around the world use it too? Hence we’ve added that great tool at hotels.worldiki.com. You can also see the search form on the lower left side of the main Worldiki.com page.

How does it work? Simple, you just input the city you want to find a hotel in, and the dates you want to stay there, and it will search over 30 travel sites on the internet for the best fares! Once you find a hotel you like you can then compare the fares from the different sites side by side and decide where to book You can also browse hotels by country, city, or search for a particular hotel name.

After you use it I’m sure you’ll wonder what you did without a tool like this when booking your hotels! At least we did So head on over to hotels.worldiki.com and give it a test run. Oh, make sure to bookmark that site so that you’ll have it handy when you need it in the future!

People’s cultures vary so widely from place to place. It’s very interesting to see what traditions people hold dear and how absurd they may seem to us, mainly because, other people may be thinking the same about traditions we hold dear.

In the White Karen village for example, girls and women that are unmarried have to wear white. Once they’re married (sometimes as young as 13 or 14), then they can wear other colors like red or blue. They also require the bride’s wife to give a pig to the husband’s family as dowry so all families who have daughters have to also keep pigs! Maybe it’s a secret revenge by the women in the tribe, saying the men are pigs for making them wear white till they’re married.

Another odd tradition is the metal waist band (see picture above) worn by the Palong tribe women. By wearing that they hope that they won’t be considered a candidate for heaven and thus won’t die!

Or what about the Long Neck Karen girls who have metal rings placed around their necks since they are around 5! They only remove these rings once a year to add a new ring till they have a total of 25-27 rings! What these rings do is push their collar bones down and make them look like they have an elongated neck! Doing this to children seems abusive to me!

And why does it seem like most of these restrictive traditions involve women?

If you’re serious about traveling the world, and working as you travel (like we are), then these are some things you’ll have to sort out before your trip. Many of these things take a bit of time to sort out, so it’s best to start a few months before your expected departure date .

1) Make sure you have 2 or 3 credit cards from different banks, and at least 2 debit cards.

While we don’t advocate spending on credit, having credit cards is a security measure. If someone makes an unauthorized payment on one of your credit cards you can refuse to pay it and Visa or Master Card will not charge you the amount. This is different from a debit card where you will only claim AFTER it has been charged to your account. Why have 2 or 3 cards? What if one gets stolen or you cancel one that has been used fraudulently? You will need to have others while it is being replaced, which could take months. Besides, sometimes a credit card might not work in one establishment or country, but a card from another bank might.

Just remember, pay the full amount by the deadline and you won’t have to pay interest on them!

2) Make sure you have internet banking from all your accounts and that you can pay all bills and view all deposits into your accounts online.

This includes all your credit card bills, mortgage payments, and any other expenses you will need to pay on the go. If you have a company account make sure you can use all the features you need online.

Also make sure all your customers can pay you online, either through a credit card gateway, paypal or through bank transfer. When you’re tracking lions in Kenya it might be hard to run down to your local bank and deposit that check!

3) Make sure your passport, drivers license, and any other important documents won’t expire in the next couple of years.

It would be a real show stopper to have to fly back home half way through your trip because you’re refused entry into a country that requires your passport not expire in the next 6 months to a year.

4) Figure out how you want to handle your snail mail.

It’s one thing to be on a one week holiday, but if you’re traveling the world for many months or years you need to have a way to deal with important letters. Mail redirection will only work if you stay in a fixed location long enough (3-6 months), or if you have a p.o. box somewhere in the world that you check during your travels.

You don’t want to have your house re-possessed while away, or get arrested when you come back home, because you forgot to open a letter from your bank about a payment error, or from the government asking you to serve juror duty.

But if you’re going around the world like we are, and you’re not planning on staying in a fixed location for too long, then you’ll probably want to appoint someone you can trust to receive your mail and to let you know if mail from certain places (government, etc) came in and then maybe courier anything urgent to you.

Read Part 2

G: Pedro’s American accent got lost while we were figuring out how to get to Tung Choi Street, a popular street in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where aquarium and pet shops are located. I’ll give him a -1/5 for his weirdo speak and 6/5 for making me laugh while filming him