2011, what a year!

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Dear Friends and readers! 2011 is now the past, and what an amazing year I had!

I’ve been on 18 flights, 15000km with train(yes 15 000km)

I walked on the great wall of China

I held an eagle

I saw the deepest freshwater lake in the world

I’ve been in the area with the fewest people on the planet

I’ve been to one of the worlds finest beaches

I’ve seen hundreds of fruitbats

I’ve been in the oldest jungle on the planet

I’ve took my diving-license

I’ve seen monkeys and even held a few

I’ve been to the place where the movie Avatar got there inspiration

I’ve seen the tallest building in the world

I’ve been to one of the biggest cities on the planet

I’ve experienced the biggest national migration on the planet

Seen the white nights of St. Petersburg

Seen the biggest stilthouse settlement on the planet

Seen the most expensive mosque ever built

I’ve been a passenger in the biggest aeroplane on the planet

I’ve met the most amazing people and friends.

2011 have been a truly amazing year and 2012 will hopefully be equally awesome! YouMeAndTheWorld.com will be continued. I’ll fill you out with the details later, first up is New York! Then a way longer trip in June until the money run out :)

Music!!

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I really want some good music on my Spotify account.

I usually listen to house, dubstep, minimal and other genres in that area. however, I am very open for new genres and artists.

My Spotify is playing several hours a day, and I’m getting tired of the music I got on there. So If you have a favorite band or group please do write down a few of them in the comment field! Can’t see the comment-field? Just click the header: “Music” or click HERE.

No need to login or register to comment.

Pretty please!

Top Ten Travel Apps for iPhone

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While traveling I’ve been using the iPhone for almost everything. There is an app for everything, and to bring the iPhone on your travels is extremely helpful and maybe one your most important belongings out there.

I listed up ten apps I use the most, and hopefully some of them will be useful for you as well.

1. Spotify

I know that Spotify is not a dedicated travel app, but it is the app I use the most while traveling, by far!

The app is the possibly the best music app on the planet at the moment. It is available in most countries in Europe and North-America.

Although this app is geo-restricted for downloading and registering it is highly usable over sea’s and it syncs without any problems. I at least have any problems using it in any of the countries I’ve been to so far.

Facts:

You can have 2000 offline songs on your smart-device.
You can search and sync new songs while abroad.
You can make playlists on the go, and log on to Spotify from a random PC and get your playlists directly on that new device.

Simply this app deserves the 1. place.

Price:

App: Free
Pr month: 20$

2. Hostelworld

This app is brilliant to hook up your new place to stay on the go. Search City, accommodation type, price range and ratings. Sort out your search results by the same terms as above.

Price: Free

3. Trip Advisor
If you need any information about the place, Trip Advisor got it. Easy to use and you got smart functions like bookmarking information and making it available offline in situations where you don’t have any WiFi.

4. Valutakalkulator

This is a norwegian app, however, it is a brilliant app. You can update the change rates when you want, and it is working offline.

You can convert more or less all the currencies there is. They are listed with the country code and the national flag. If you want to arrange the list in one particular order you can do that too.

Price: Free

5. Convert Units

The app is a tiny bit confusing to begin with, but when you figure it out it is truly amazing. I’m used to the metric system, but there’s still a lot of countries using stones and thumbs and feet and whatever they had back in the stone age. So a Unit Converter while traveling is a must.

Price: Free

6. Kindle

This is an app from Amazon, it is available on all smart-devices. It allows you to buy and download e-books directly in the app, and of corse they are readable offline. You got about 950 000 books to choose from in a lot of different languages.

Carrying books while traveling adds a lot of weight to your backpack, so to got 10 books on your amazon account is a good idea. Let’s follow up with the technology shall we? Most books are a tiny bit cheaper as well.

Price: Free

7. Google Maps(Native App)

I can’t count the times I’ve used this app while traveling. You do need an internet connection to use it. However, find the route you need to walk while in a cafe, and when you walk out you’ll still have the map. If you need to walk far and need more detailed pictures, just take a couple of screenshots. Simple and very easy.

8. Flash Light

Stupid as it may sound, but this is an app I’ve used multiple times. In hostels early in the morning or late at night when everyone is sleeping you don’t want to turn on the lights in the entire room to find something in your bag. Hence the flash light on the phone. If your traveling in a more “off-the-beaten-track” places a lot of hostels and budget places to stay only offers electricity at certain times, how stupid is the flash light in those situations?

Price: There’s multiple apps for the flashlight, so find the cheapest one. You’ll find them for free, but they are full of ads. If you don’t want ads you’ll be looking at 0,99$ apps.

9. Google Translate

although this is an online app it allows you to save translations offline. You may encounter situations where a few local sentences is helpful. The app will show the text on fullscreen by a click on a button. Easy to use and it will help you out when you least expect it. A good app to have on your smart-device.

Price: Free

10. Fit IT!

This is actually a game. A good app to get your mind going. It’s a puzzle game and trust me, you’ll have tons of time in waiting halls and longer bus rides where this game will be a life saver. It got a good load of different puzzles, and difficulty levels. I bet you can’t do the expert one! Write in the comment field if you did and a screen-shot!

Bonus:

Monopoly

EA has indeed put together the famous boardgame monopoly for iPhone and iPad. If you got the iPad in hand you can play with friends or new travel buddies in your hostel. A great way to kill some time on the bus or whatever brings you around. It do suck some battery, but turn off the animations and such and it will last for a long time. A good app that make waiting go a little faster.

Price: 2,99$ (worth every cents)

Day 124, no SNUS but X-mini 2 is in stock

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I bought the X-mini 2 today, and I’m well excited to really test them out! I bought two, just because I don’t need to worry about charging them as often on the road. I can connect them together as well, but its already a good review of these and you can read it here

I headed up to Jimbaran today to pick my snus, turns out it didn’t arrive after all, it was something else.. Stupid, but I got enough time anyways :)

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Day 122, surfing and a rather special experience on the beach!

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I woke up fairly early today, not really early.. Around 9am. A nice time to wake up. The waves are a bit calmer in the morning than later in the day. I went down to the beach, got my self a surf board. I got out there and had a couple of nice runs, but after like 8-10 tries my arms was just to tired to function.. I could still paddle, but when I tried to stand up my arms just simply couldn’t lift up my body.

For those of you that basically have no clue when it comes to surfing, I’ll explain why my arms was tired.
Before you can stand up and surf the wave you need to gain speed to be closer to the same speed as the wave. That means you need to paddle like crazy to get enough speed. If you don’t have enough speed the wave will pass you. That is, if your far enough out so the wave breaks after you started. When you learn to surf your surfing the waves after it breaks. If you don’t have any speed it will just run over you or you’ll follow it for a few meters.

This is highly doable, but if your not very fit and got everlasting muscles in your arms you’ll get tired after a dozen tries.

So, that’s one problem, now on to the next one..

Snowboards, there’s similarities, I mean your on a board in speed.. However, you can decide your own pace when snowboarding, or even wait until you managed to grow a pair. Surfing on the other hand … Your not in charge anymore, the waves are in charge. They won’t stop if your last run failed. You need to recover quickly, if not the next one will beat you up equally bad. I managed to stay in the water, to get out to the point where I wanted to be for 15 minutes, I got ONE wave and used another 15 minutes to get out to the same point. The waves come so rapidly that you just get pushed into the beach, and that’s annoying!

I took a break to eat some food and when I got back down to the beach it was a living hell out at sea. The waves are as tall as me, almost two meters. To be beaten up by those waves is indeed a hit you’ll need a few seconds to recover from, depending on where you were when the break happened.

I tried a few times, but they were simply way to big for me, so I decided to go back on the beach to chill out.

This is where the strange lady and the rather strange thing comes into the picture. Since I left my money, cigarettes and other belongings at the surfshop I asked kindly a couple if I could please get a cigarette of them. I did get one, and sat down a few meters away from them.

The lady comes over to me, sits behind me and quietly and gently touched my back while mumbling something in a foreign language. I was a bit skeptic to her touching my back, but I though, let’s see what she’s doing. She was trying to find something, like a muscle or something, and she was doing like special movements with her hands. It looked like she was throwing something away. I understood that what she was doing was some kind of heeling ritual, or at least some spiritual thing.

She raised up and moved in front of me, touching my knees and legs and then my feet. She used one finger to remove sand and threw it away. She did the same with both feet. She reached for my hands and then touched my chest, almost like absorbing spirits or something, she stood up and it looked like she had gathered something, jumped towards the ocean and threw whatever she gathered out at sea. She came back and on the way she picked up sand and sprinkled it over my feet and hands. The lady then put her hands on my head, mumbling as she had been doing the whole time and she was moving her hands around my head maybe one or two centimeters away, throwing away “spirits”, and then she grabbed my head, leaned forward, kissed me on both cheeks and once on my forehead.

After all of this she sat down next to me and she was still mumbling like she had been doing the whole time, but now it was like she was actually talking to me. It was really awkward, but I tried to talk back, but every time I did she just looked up at the sun and pointed.

It was fairly strange, and I feel no difference what so ever when it comes to spirits or anything similar. However, a nice experience. Strange, but it would be cool if I could actually get an answer to why she did all of this, and why to me? I guess that is something I’ll never know.

After all of this I went to a place with some wifi and had a drink, met my friends little brother who’s studying on Bali.

We had a few beers and shared some stories, good to finally get some company down here, although I’m not feeling lonely. Not like I felt in Borneo. That’s a very good thing!