Welcome to Operation Backpack Asia!
And so we’ve officially arrived where we always meant to get to! If you’ve been with us so far, you’ve seen the metamorphosis of this trip, the site and of us through the site(s). What you see now is a total redesign of “two kids and a dream”, and with it the redesign of our aims with the trip and the site. We started with a dream; general, with some direction, but the gaps not yet filled in on how to get where we want to be. What you see now is where we were trying to go.
When we began this trip – and this site – we had nothing to offer but some hope, and a desire to share some wide-eyed experiences with you as we went and got our socks knocked off by things we knew we couldn’t begin to fathom from back home. What we ultimately wanted was to have some great experiences, gain some good knowledge, and live to tell about it so that we could encourage and help others pursue their dreams.
Five months into it, and we are still getting our socks knocked off every second that we are on this side of the planet. We have seen much, done lots, and have learned tons that we hope might be able to help others as they consider the leap from the familiar into the great unknown.
The site has changed thus to reflect a shift from only Us, to try to reach out to others as well and try to provide some concrete, practical advice, tips, and information that might assist others in enhancing and optimizing their own journeys: through life, through travel, and certainly through Asia. This is perhaps first and foremost reflected in the name change from “two kids and a dream”, to Operation Backpack Asia. This journey isn’t just for us anymore; it’s for anyone who wants to see and experience this incredible land of adventure, mystery, and intrigue.
Some of the changes and additions to the site that have taken so much time to create and implement include:
Creating and linking social media accounts. LOTS of them.
In several cases, this meant learning of, and then learning how to use, new services to make ourselves more accessible and available to others, such as: Twitter, StumbleUpon, TravelBlog Exchange, Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. We are also now easily reachable with accounts on Facebook, Myspace, Feedburner, and Youtube. We want to connect with our readers, and we want our readers to be able to connect with us, especially if they have questions. So come be our friend! Similarly, we spent time…
Adding a Latest Tweet feature at the top of the site
So you always know the latest even when we haven’t posted yet
Adding a Where are Ray and G right now? feature
So you can easily keep tabs on at least where we are
Making it easier to share your comments more places on the site
Hopefully, anyway. That’ll be up for you to decide, we guess.
Tagging all of our blog posts
This also required the lengthy process of learning what tags were even for, other than just looking annoying, even spammy, at the end of posts. Turns out, they’re actually very useful when used correctly. Instead of leaving it as “Tags:” and listing a bunch of words that just look annoying, hopefully we’ve made it easy for you to understand how they work too. Basically, they get all stories on a similar topic together for you. If you want to read all the stories on animals we’ve had, you can. If you want to see how each couchsurfing experience went all at once, or get the raw edit and just read the entries posted directly from our personal journals all in one go, now you can. Pretty cool, huh?
Writing Gear Reviews
Those three tabs that just used to promise “coming soon” now have some hard-earned, detailed content. The blog posts used to be all that carried the site. Now they will also serve as a deeper context for the travel information we have now to share, like what you can’t live without if you’re doing a trip like this, what will be the first thing you ditch, and how we really ARE living comfortably and hygienically with only three pairs of underwear each.
Writing Travel Reviews
So many things to see, do, places to go. Such a short life to live. Sharing our hard-won information to make it that much easier to find the best places to spend your time and the best things to do with it!
Writing Travel Tips
Because omg, we sure could have used some of these when we were planning this trip. There are several articles now and many more yet to come.
Implementing “bread crumbs”
So you can easily navigate back to the main page of a section, for example the reviews and tips
Updating the Map
You can practically see us waving at you!
Naming our photos. ALL of them.
That’s more than a two thousand photos to go through and painstakingly change from “P1000109.jpg” to meaningful names. This makes the photos findable for people searching for images like them, and makes the site more user-friendly and accessible for those with disabilities.
Adding a get updates by email feature
All the news and updates delivered right to your inbox at the click of a button!
Implementing a star rating system
A quick and easy way you can tell us what you enjoy most and what is most useful.
Adding sharing capabilities
After you say you like something, now you can easily retweet it, share it on facebook, and more.
Adding a Most Popular Posts feature
So you can easily see what others have found most interesting or useful. It’s based on the star-rating system so be sure to rate what you read!
Adding a Related Posts feature at the end of individual blog posts
So if you click on an individual post that you enjoy, you can easily be taken to others you will probably like too.
Adding a search bar
The site has grown a lot now, and we don’t want you to have to spend a lot of time looking for what you need.
Adding a Ray and G author account
So you can tell at a glance that the post was written by both of us, and/or so we don’t have to post two back to back entries about the same event from our different perspectives.
Adding a couple of videos and a YouTube account
Even the videos tab got some lovin. The slow internet in India is severely curtailing our ability to add much in this arena right now, but there are a couple of short and very amusing videos of a few things that put life here in a 20-second-or-less nutshell for you, and you can now subscribe to our channel for easy access when we get the necessary bandwidth to add lots more.
Setting up an Amazon Affiliates account and linking our reviews
So you can make your purchases easily and even help out the site when you make your purchases at Amazon from our site.
Linking ALL photo albums to a blog post
No album exists all by its lonesome in cyberspace (or our gallery, anyway) anymore. Every album can be opened via its corresponding blog post, even dating back to the pre-trip days.
Updating The Trip description
We don’t have to defend our decisions to live out our dreams and our passions and pack up and go see amazing things anymore, and our new description reflects that. So does our state of being, at that.
Updating the Join Us! Page
Just a few small wording changes…but they’re there.
Updating the donate button text in the sidebar
Hey, the new text speaks for itself.
Making it no longer necessary to register to have your comments show up right away
You want to see your comments go through right away, and so do we. Registering with the site will still customize your experience more and make it better for you, but we’ll leave that up to you to discover.
Enabling photos to appear with your comments
Enter the email address you used to sign up for your Gravatar when you submit your comment and your picture will show up now too. If you don’t have a Gravatar, it’s quick, secure, free, and worth getting one! Please do! http://en.gravatar.com/
Linking to a fantastic ebook and fellow travel blogger whose work both inspired and assisted with countless things that are easily visible as well as behind the scenes
NomadicMatt’s ebook “How to Make Money with your Blog” has been instrumental in helping to get us going with a lot of the steps we’ve taken and we highly recommend it to anyone who would like to begin a blog with the aim of eventually making income with it, or to take their existing blog to the next level.
And, last but not least…in fact, probably biggest of all!
New name and new look
…So??? How do we look??!
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
The new site is hot! I did a quick overview and it seems much more coherent and there is a lot more detail. I can’t WAIT to begin procrastinating at work by reading all these awesome trip posts. I’m really going to dig into the gear reviews.
good work! You two better be careful or you’ll start doing this professionally!
why dont you just worry about traveling (which is the point of your trip) and not this blog. When you look back on this trip in a few years, its the trip/traveling that matters, not this website.
Wow! It looks like you two did a ton of work! It looks great and I hope it pays off.
Hey Scott, thanks! I hope you like all the new and forthcoming content! I can’t wait to help you procrastinate. Just doin our part. :)
Adam, we did! Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words – we’ve enjoyed the feeling of working so hard on something WE really wanted to be working on a great deal.
And…
Matt, I’m not sure if you have ever traveled long-term to very busy, fast-paced, and completely different cultures than the one from which you come. But a major and necessary part of that traveling and that trip is a) trying to swallow or absorb all the information you are force fed through every pore of your body, and b) trying to process it all.
If you’re lucky, and if you put in a lot of effort, you might even be able to process that information into some kind of coherent knowledge on the fly so as to enhance the trip that is yet to come (if you’re looking down the gun barrel of two years of non-stop travel and information overload still coming your way) and better appreciate and enjoy it thoroughly.
Putting your thoughts and experiences in written form can help immeasurably with this processing and enhancing of the trip, and is essential to us both to help us make sense of the overwhelmingly incredible things we see and experience every day, and also to help us stay in touch and close with those we left behind to take this journey, which matters to us a great deal.
Hope that answers your question. Thanks for commenting!
I just want to say that when I went to India, I kept a blog and I wish I had written MORE in it, not less. Things happen so fast, and it is so great to have a way to share with friends back home and also to look back on yourself. I know a lot of other friends who have traveled or done Peace Corps and felt the same way. I think it’s especially the case when you’re in a country that’s really different from home.
And also, after you get home, the trip feels almost like a dream, and it can be disorienting trying to integrate the two, again especially if the place(s) you went was really different than home life, and having the blog to look at makes it more real. So, I say keep on bloggin’!
To quote a good friend: “OMG THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER AND I TOTALLY SEE WHY YOU WANT TO DO THIS AND I’M SO GLAD YOU DID!” I couldn’t agree with this statement more! Hope to see you both in June!
I have traveled long term. 10 months through 20 countries… many of which are on your itinerary. thats why i felt compelled to give you some advice.
there is nothing wrong with having a blog. in fact, i had one. my concern was with you over writing instead of appreciating.
take it as you will and best of luck on your journey. ill be following you every step of the way. stay safe
bear down
@Chrys Thanks for your comment, that’s good to hear. I have never had a full-on website like this through my travels before, but it sure would be interesting to look back on them now if I had. Where is your blog?
@Gini lol, thanks Gini!
@Matt Thanks for the input. We definitely agree that having the experience comes before documenting it. The site was neglected for a loooong time because we were so engaged here and even when we weren’t actively doing things, updating the site would have felt more like work than pleasure…so we didn’t. Being struck down for three weeks with Indian pneumonia just gave a great opportunity to jump on it! Thanks for following along with us. Where can we see your blog, I’d be interested to see where you went?
I think having and maintaining a full-on website as you go definitely shapes the experience, which is what Matt was probably considering. Learning to be a webmaster/small business owner of sorts has definitely been an engaging and incredible journey – one that has unfolded alongside the one that takes us on trains, boats, rickshaws, and camels through mountains, rivers, deserts, and monuments.
When we look back, the two experiences will undoubtedly be intertwined to the point that the trip may well have been different without the site. It’s an interesting point for all bloggers and webmasters to consider, I think. Not even just travel bloggers. It’s like the questions that have been popping up about services like Twitter – are people Twittering about life instead of living it nowadays? Or with anything electronic or cyber-based: why play a skateboarding videogame instead of going out skateboarding? Why talk to your friends on Facebook but not befriend your neighbors next door?
For the travel blogging thing specifically… As with anything in life, a minute or an hour you spend on one thing is a minute or an hour you’re not spending on something else. I can say one thing for sure though: Maintaining a site or blog while you travel can be a great way to enhance the experience for yourself by trying to find coherent ways to process it for others as you go.
Of course, when we’re on camels out in the desert or underwater with the whale sharks, the site will just have to sit here sad and forlorn and neglected.
Oh well, that’s what archive pages are for. :)