Keep a travel journal.
You probably are not in the habit of keeping a
journal at
home, but bring along a small bound book with lined pages on your trip. Write the names
and addresses of people you intend to write post cards to in the back of this book before
you leave. Also write important info in the back of this book, such as your passport
number, important bank and credit card info (account numbers, bank address and phone
numbers, etc.), and any other info you think you might need on the trip.
Every day
after you have settled into your hotel room for the night, sit down and write notes about
everything that happened during the day just past in your journal. Don't worry that some of
your writings might seem trivial at the time. Be sure to write down any names of locales
you visit and people you meet. Write down names, addresses or phone numbers. Write down
the names of tour boats and their skippers, kids on the beach, bartender's names,
restaurant and other business names, etc., etc. Business people do this all the time, to
ensure they have a productive business trip, and for follow-up after they return home. If
you think about it, vacationers should do the same, to ensure they get maximum value out
of their trip.
An excellent resource for
travel journal writing is
Writing The Journey - Keeping A Travel Journal.
Use your journal to tell stories, or write down stories told to you by the locals. Record
travel times and distances between towns. Make the journal a ritual each night, and you will
have a valuable record of your trip when you are back home. Take it from me, you will
forget 99% of the details of your travels after only six months. The only memories that
will live on are your photos and your notes in your travel journal. I also try to log my
photos in the journal, so I can sort out what is on each roll
of film (or storage card for digital cameras).
A more high tech approach to the journal idea is to videotape your trip and speak
narrative into the camera as you shoot. Personally, I don't think you will get the
detail you would in a written journal, but on the other hand, you will probably catch
small events and details you might forget to write about in a journal at the end of the day.
If you have a digital camera with sound recording capability, this is
another option - narrate your photos as you take them. Yet another
option is to use an audio recorder to keep your journal and record the
sounds of the destinations you visit. Here is an example from an
acquaintance who recorded sounds, added narration and photos after
returning home from a trip. He created a very interesting
Podcast to share with his friends using a Zoom H2 digital recorder,
some still photos, and Garage Band software on a Mac to put it all
together.
