Do you fancy eating lobster? A lot of people do and all of those many seafood restaurants in Patong are selling lobster. There are 2 types of lobster displayed for patron’s selection: dead or alive! Dead lobsters are off course much cheaper. Another factor deciding the selling price is the restaurant. Some are selling dead lobster for 180THB per 100 gram while some are offering 120THB per 100 gram.

This is a photo taken on the lobster display counter in front of Savoey (our Safari Beach Resorts‘ famous seafood restaurant). Look at the price tag. Dead lobsters are selling for 200THB per 100 gram! So 1 medium sized lobster should cost you around 2000THB or USD60! We didn’t try any there as we prefer eating prawns more than lobster. Do you fancy eating lobster? – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel blog

It’s been a while since I last wrote about Top 5 tips for travel. This is something popped up in my mind and experienced when I tried to book for our accommodation on our Europe tour next next month in May. Let’s put aside other accommodation option like home exchange, residential room to let, or sleep on train. When you need a proper accommodation to stay on your travel, there are still some tips for you to book them cheaper. If money is not your concern when booking hotels, don’t waste your time here. You can’t get what you want and you can leave this blog NOW and search for hotel websites instead. I’m the advocate of budget travel and what I’m writing here is all about saving money on your travel, not spending! How to save money on travel? Ok, you may read on…

How to get cheap accommodation on your travel? There are many ways and what I list out here are the Top 5 tips to get them cheap (I’m not giving away discount coupon please), not free. If you want free accommodation, consider to join home exchange network, or, start praying…

Here are the top 5:

1. Location from travel destination. General rules of thumb off course is the further away from town, the cheaper the accommodation cost. However, accommodation in some cities like those London hotels are much cheaper away from city center but much nearer to train station. If you plan to go to and from there by train, and those travel sites you planned to visit are quite scattered, you may be wiser to book further away since cheaper and grab a daily  ticket to travel around travel sites by tram, underground as well as buses. This way your overall cost would still be cheaper since you still need to take an underground to wander around even though staying in city center. So, check your places to go before you book a hotel!
2. Facilities of accommodation. Well, logic tells us that the more facilities you need, the more you need to pay. This relates back to the type of accommodation you are after. They are few type of accommodation in general, from campsite, Bed and Breakfast, hostel, boutique to star rated hotel. In terms of facilities, campsites have the least facilities while 5-star-hotels have the most. From sharing bathroom for campsite and B&B to attached bathroom for hostel and hotel. Also to consider is the number of people in a room. Whether it is a 10-people-dorm or a double bed ensuite. Another factor to consider is which city you are booking for? You could expect bar facilities from Barcelona hotels while foot reflexology service from Phuket hotels. What’s the tips? Ask yourself these questions: “Can you sleep with strangers?” “Can you share bathroom with others?” “Can you sleep if someone snore?” “Can you sleep without lights?” “Do you like chatting with other travellers?” “Do you surf net on travel?” “How much time you’re going to spend in your hotel?” “How about your partner if you are travelling with companion?” Then next step is to pick the least facilitated accommodation you can accept to book it cheaper or nearer to town center.
3. Which Day / Season to stay. Which day of week to stay in that accommodation would cost differently. Don’t mention about which season of year. Accommodation cost would be doubled during weekend and halved during weekday. New York hotels would cost more in July due to its Independence Day and summer while you could expect much cheaper during Winter. Check if there is any special day in that city on which particular day and plan you itinerary or travel to avoid that festive seasons, unless visiting the OctoberFest of Munich is your purpose then booking more expensive accommodation would be unavoidable. The only option left is to book it online as early as you can! The tips is to stay in expensive Paris hotels during weekday and move to Amsterdam hotels during weekend.
4. Book online in advance. Nowadays, most travelers are booking accommodation in advance. These can be done online. Even B&B could be booked online. Why? You can get online rate which is much cheaper than walk-in rate normally. Unless you are backpacking where no definite time or date to stay in one place, travelers should book your hotels in advance to have it cheaper than published rate. Especially booking accommodation in Europe online where you need to pay only 10% deposit normally, you won’t lose much on paying money in advance!
5. Number of days to stay. If you are planning to stay in a city for few days, check the rate for multiple day stay of your hotel. Be slightly flexible to your itinerary and you might be able to stay one more night for FREE! Another instances to consider would be staying one more night in Florence hotels and travel to Pisa for a day trip is much cheaper than traveling and staying in Pisa! Tips? Do the simple math to calculate which city or hotel is cheaper to stay more days instead of spending unnecessary money by checking in and out different hotels!

By using these guidelines, I’m now assessing accommodation cost in London, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome before confirming my online booking as well as my Europe tour itinerary. No time to do all these homework? My last tips for those who have limited lead time to plan is to wait until last minute to get some last minute offers from certain online agents who offer last minute best rate within 30 days from your check-in date! – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel blog

What Patong Beach is first famous for? The beach off course! I’ve posted quite a number of Phuket travel stories so far but I still haven’t posted much things about the beach itself. This is it: The Patong Beach, the beach itself. We reached Phuket and Patong in the morning, had our first look at Patong Beach and had our first lunch at Jungceylon shopping mall. After lunch, we walked around the town to get some feel of the environment and local culture, and we headed back to our Safari Beach Resort for a brief nap…. zzzzzzzz.

In the late afternoon, we went out again. This time we were walking down to the beach, just across the Beach Road in front of our hotel (this is the best part of Safari Beach Hotel which situated in front of the beach and next door to Bangla Street). Have you ever experienced this: You thought of going somewhere or buying something on travel but you did not do it in the first place and you started to say to yourself, “Nevermind, I still can do that LATER”? And what would happen next? You would never have the 2nd chance to do it! It happened to me on my Gold Coast travel where we thought of going back to see the sunset at Surfers Paradise on our last day but we failed eventually as bad traffic delayed our way back from Hinterland and it was already night hours when we reached home…

So, whatever you think you want to do or see or buy on travel, DO IT IMMEDIATELY or you’re going to miss it! Same with our fun hours at the beach of Patong. If we delayed to go to the beach on our first day in Patong evening, we were going to miss the best evening sunlight in Patong as there were too cloudy to see sunset on the rest of our days in Phuket!

I love the late afternoon sunlight at Patong beach. The beach was so attractive under it…

While many tourists were sunbathing under the sun, there were many other activities going on the beach.

Beach parachute ride is a famous activities at Patong Beach.

We were doing something else…. crab catching!

Jetskiing is another favourite sport on the beach.

Love sunlight, lovely wife…

Beach soccer is among the local favourite sport on the beach. There are a lot of Thai soccer talents out there…

An illusion of moving sand after wave tides, one of my favourite shot.

Beach chairs could be rented for sunbathing and there are also best for people watching!

Singha Beer on the beach! Lovely!

The best part on the beach of Patong: visitors were served with complimentary Starbucks coffee! Wonderful! I couldn’t find any of this in Malaysian beach. Can you?

An unique feeling of tasting coffee on beach!

Though evening sun is bright, scattered clouds blocked parts of the sunset unfortunately…

The best dusk scene I could captured on the day in Patong Beach. The sun set at 7pm and we left the beach for our first dinner in Patong! What we did at night after dinner? Exploration on the Bangla Street, the most happening street in Patong and Phuket!

Don’t miss my upcoming stories on Phuket travel. I will try to wrap up the whole story of my travel to Phuket before this May. Why? In May I will write and concentrate more on my exciting short 14-day tour to Western Europe!

p/s: If you think this travel photo blog has something you are looking for and is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

You should know by now that I love high key photo especially portrait shot. As a stock photo contributor of istockphoto, I’m entitled for regular free download each week on some of the exciting stock photos featured in istockphoto. This week, I’ve got this high key portrait shot which I love it very much (not because of the sexy lady please!). I’ve downloaded it and decided to share with my readers here. If you still don’t have a clue about high key shot, read my post on high key portrait.

It will cost USD40 if I have to pay for it. Or you could join istockphoto to get this high definition royalty-free photo for free. To be less hassle, now you can download the full size image here at Travel Feeder. Mind you that the file size is rather big (3.6MB) as it is a high resolution image. Visit my Download page to download other exciting free download. I’ll post more free stock photos here for you in future if I think they suit. What you think about this photo and high key shot? Subscribe for free updates via e-mail. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.

15 days of Chinese lunar new year celebration is finally over. The Chinese Valentine’s Day or YuanXiao (元宵) was the last celebration on the 15th Day or yesterday. Everything is back to normal today. Shopping malls stopped playing back New Year songs. All new year decorations around town have been dismantled. I’m reluctantly back to work now! As my life will go on, a last piece of photo taken during the new year celebration is posted here as a conclusion to my celebration.

As usual, I took the shot with Nikon D60 and Nikkor 35mm lens. Firing a direct fill flash helped balancing those shadow areas nicely and 1/200s fast sync shutter speed proved to be useful to freeze their action. To avoid my wife from murmuring me, I’ve added some soft skin effect to hide some of the blemishes! Haha!

I love this portrait. It was captured in Genting Highland during CNY this year. A strong feel of Chinese New Year with Cherry blossom as background. Smiles from both Jean and Chloe’s face look wonderful to me. Hope you like it too. That’s it for the Year of Tiger! – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog RA9WE4S9YPVR