Fun Summer Tours Near You: Ice Cream Factories

Right now I’m indoors, at my desk, and it’s 86 degrees. At my desk. Inside. More than anything, I would like to climb inside a refrigerator. The next best thing would be an ice cream factory/wonderland. Here are a few you could check out.

• Ben & Jerry’s in Waterbury, Vermont: This is one of the happiest places on earth, even with the flavor graveyard that reminds me just how much I miss that old timey Rainforest Crunch. The factory is in a beautiful location, very un-industrial, there are fun things to see and do and eat, and as long as you’re in the area you can visit all the cheese and maple syrup farms and shops and boutiques. It’s a foodie’s paradise.

• Blue Bell Ice Cream in Brenham, Texas; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; and Sylacauga, Alabama: It’s “The Little Creamery” that could. Tour the factory and then sit back and enjoy a fresh scoop or four.

• Mayfield Dairy Farms in Athens, Tennessee and Braseltonm Georgia: This place has been around since 1912 and they produce milk as well, so you can get the whole history of ice cream along with the fancy new flavors. 

• Oberweis Dairy in North Aurora, Illinois: The address for Oberweis Dairy is Ice Cream Drive. Do you need another reason to go?

• Velvet Ice Creams in Utica, Ohio: There’s an Ice Cream Festival coming up here, May 24-26, 2008 and the factory is located in Licking County. This sounds like the best place in the world to bring your tongue!

Any of these places would make a good day trip, or why not find a nearby hostel and make a weekend or full-on road trip out of it? Make your own adventure on whatever budget you can afford and you can make great travel memories without spending a fortune or traveling thousands of miles.

It’s Not to Late to Volunteer Abroad This Summer

If the recent tragedies in Myanmar and China have gotten you thinking about ways you can help out, why not consider spending part of your summer volunteering as you travel? Those areas may be the most devestated right now, but there are programs that can take you all over the world to help those in need.

You can build schools, teach, work on environmental conservation, assist medical professionals, or even help local kids create art and try something new. Most of all, you’ll be letting people in sometimes remote areas know that people care enough to come from far away and lend a hand.

Start with the Volunteer Abroad site and see where in the world you can go from there.

Extra! Extra! Read Up On Local News Before You Go

When planning a trip you’ll certainly surf the web a bit. You should check in with Lonely Planet and other travel guides, maybe check out some forums where you can ask questions of other traveler’s and get advice, and talking with an experienced travel agent is a good idea as well.

Another simple thing to do is to find the local newspaper for your destination online and read up on what’s going on there. It’s an easy way to get weather reports, find out about local festivals or events you may want to attend, or just to get a feel for what the people there are talking about. It’s much easier to strike up a conversation with locals when you’re able to ask them about a recent election, important court case, big sporting event, or just something funny you saw (”What’s the deal with that surfing poodle?”).

Here are some of the best sources for news in other parts of the world:

• The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): www.smh.com.au
• The Guardian (England): www.guardian.co.uk
• The Irish Times: www.ireland.com
• Le Monde (France - French language): www.lemonde.fr
• Il Messaggero (Italy - Italian language): www.ilmessaggero.it
• Corriere della Sere (Italy - English language): www.corriere.it/english
• The Daily News (Egypt): www.thedailynewsegypt.com
• The Japan Times: www.japantimes.co.jp
• The BBC (For news from all over the world): www.bbc.co.uk

CARE for Myanmar

If you’re looking for a way to help the people of Myanmar, consider buying a book.

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers, travel or otherwise, and you can’t go wrong with any of his books. I chuckled my way around Australia reading about deadly creatures and ridiculous cricket games in Down Under (also called In a Sunburnt Country depending on where you are), and I was nearly driven to buy a backpack and some hiking boots after reading A Walk in the Woods.

His mini-book, Bill Bryson’s African Diary is slightly more serious than some of his other work, but all proceeds go to CARE International, one of the groups currently in Myanmar distributing food and water.

For about $10, you get a wonderful read, CARE gets a donation, and Bill Bryson gets a new admirer. All in all, a pretty good deal.

Make Your Way in Japan on a Student/Teacher Budget

Yesterday I told you about the sale on tours of Japan (good through the end of May). But maybe you’re not a tour person. Maybe you want to plan your own trip, go your own way. Perhaps you’d prefer to work in Japan and stay a while, get an apartment, make friends with the locals. That’s a great idea, and I give you some ideas on making it happen.

First, unless you have loads of money to spend and just plan to spend a few months sightseeing and hitting karaoke bars, you’re going to need a job. It’s safe to say that most students to head to Japan to work go to teach English.

One little hiccup in that plan now is that one of Japan’s largest English schools, the Nova Group, filed for bankruptcy in October 2007, leaving a few thousand foreign teachers out of work and unpaid, flooding the market with qualified workers. Some of those people found other jobs, others packed up and left the country, but it goes to show that when traveling it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan and some extra cash.

One of the people who found himself out of work was my friend, Luke. See how happy he looks teaching these kids? Well he looked a lot less happy when he had no job, no rent money, and no idea what to do next. Ah, but our Luke is a resourceful Englishman. He knew he had skills that could make him some quick cash in Tokyo, namely being able to sit around and look English. He signed up with some modeling agencies and soon found work as an extra for television programs that needed Westerners.

Luke also picked up some private English lessons and found work with a high school, then a university, helping students study English. It took some time, but soon he was able to afford a decent apartment on his own and even have a few yen left over for a game of snooker and a pint of ale.

How is this going to help you plan your trip? Hopefully it’s going to make you think about alternate plans of action if your first one falls through. Talk to people, share information with other travelers you meet, find out where the work is, what opportunities are available to you and what the visa or work requirements are for where you want to be. And when in doubt, do like Luke and fall back on a career as an international model and actor. Simple.

Great Mount Fuji! Japan Is On Sale

For a limited time, Travel CUTS has some of their best tours of Japan on sale. (To get the sale price, you must be booked and paid in full by May 30, 2008.) What is there to do in Japan? Hmmm, let me think.

How about ride a bullet train, be a real foodie and sample all the tastes Japan has to offer, stay in a traditional Ryokan, visit the Kyoto Zen gardens, see the sunset over the Tori Gate, tour the resting place of the Tokugawa shoguns, soak in a traditional outdoor onsen, reflect on the past in Hiroshima, or delve into geisha culture in Kyoto.

Think that could keep you busy for a week or two? If you need more encouragement, go rent Lost in Translation, then contact a friendly Travel CUTS agent and say Konichiwa!

 

Photo courtesy of Luke Rees.

How Do I Love Europe? Let Me Count The Ways.

Five.

There are five ways to love Europe. At least, in this article there are. Which view is yours? The newbie tourist, the experienced traveler, the tour bus sitter, or maybe something else entirely? Everyone’s take on a trip is different and if you did the same trip twice even your own views would come out differently depending on who you were with, the time of year, how comfortable your shoes were (shoes can shape an entire trip, for better or worse), or how often it rained.

Read these perspectives on Europe and maybe write up your own. Get a ticket, get a passport, and then get out of town and out of your normal routine. These five students did it and so can you. 

Hop Around Australia On a Student Budget

Australia is heaps big. (If you’re headed there, get used to saying “heaps” instead of “really” or “very”. It’s heaps fun.) If you want to see more than just Sydney, you’ll have to have reliable transportation that won’t eat into your whole budget. You don’t want to spend so much getting from the Outback to the Reef that you can’t afford to scuba or sail once you arrive.

Luckily, Aussie tourism is heavily dependent on backpackers and there are a few good options for student travelers who want to see it all and have enough money left at the end of the day for a quick bungee or skydive or bush trek.

Have a look at what these operators have to offer:

Oz Experience: Don’t just get from point A to point B; stop and see the dozens of sights in between. The Oz Bus has several passes and routes to choose from at very reasonable prices, and they can take you around New Zealand too.

Wayward Bus: Same idea as the Oz bus, but with different paths and stopovers. You may want to compare routes and prices to see which one is going to be right for you.

Countrylink: If you’re short on time, and want to be able to eat at a snack bar, the train may be a better travel option. Countrylink operates in New South Wales, with extensions into Melbourne and Brisbane. Single tickets can get pricey, but they’re 40% off if you have an International Student Identity Card(ISIC); perfect if you need a one-way to Canberra, or just want to do a weekend in Byron Bay.

For longer trips, look into their Backtracker Rail Passes. You can get a three-month pass, good for unlimited travel anywhere on the network, for AUD$298. Six-month, one-month, and 14-day passes are also available. Another option is the East Coast Discovery Pass, which covers travel in NSW and connecting service along the coast of Queensland, as far north as Cairns. Prices range from AUD$130 to $500, depending on how far you plan to travel. It’s good for unlimited stopovers, but only going in one direction.

If you’re backpacking with friends, other options include buying a used car once you arrive (you can sell it before you go and make some of your money back), or renting a car. Getting your own car means taking care of the car though, and that can be more stress than it’s worth. It also means that if you and your friends all wake up hung over or sunburned or otherwise too exhausted to drive, you’re stuck. 

It could be the ultimate road trip, giving you more freedom with your itinerary and destinations, but it could also be a colassal headache, leaving you with more responsibility and no professional driver to rely on. Think hard about who you’re traveling with and decide which style of travel will work best for your group.  

Bus Obscura: Showing You the World Like Never Before

I’ve said before that sometimes travel is where you find it. You aren’t always going to be able to afford the safari in Africa, the bungee jumping tour of New Zealand, or the month of Eurailing around Europe. But that doesn’t mean you have to sit at home, content with trips to the mall or the grocery store.

So how about looking at the world upside-down and backwards? From inside a camera? That moves? You can do it on the Bus Obscura. The Bus Obscura is a common school bus that has been transformed into a pinhole camera. Or hundreds of cameras, actually. The windows are blacked out (except where the driver needs to see - there’s a black curtain hanging behind him to shut out the light to the rest of the bus) and there are hundreds of pinholes made in them. The images that come through are reflected onto screens, so as the bus drives, you’re surrounded by all these little upside-down, backwards images, just what you would see from inside a camera.

The concept was created by artist Simon Lee in New York. Over the past few years, he’s created many buses, trams and vans for the project and they’ve traveled Africa, Europe, and the U.S.

Most recently the bus stopped in the San Francisco area and I got a 20-minute tour of my hometown like I’d never seen it before. The sky was down, the grass was up, the music was haunting, and when i finally stepped off the bus I felt as if I’d been in another universe. It was quick, but it was just what I needed to refresh my sense of adventure and excitement for new experiences and destinations.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a list of other cities the bus is visiting. The Bus Obscura seems to have a schedule obscura. Keep an eye on your local event listings though, and if the bus is anywhere near you, take a free ride. If it’s not, have a look at what others have seen through the lens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWbo4WsLmyg 

Or maybe you can come up with your own new way to look at things.

“Life’s An Adventure” Photo Contest

Attention student adventure travelers: Here’s your chance to show off and get something for it.

National Geographic Adventure magazine’s photo contest is open to legal residents of the United States, excluding Puerto Rico, age 18 and older. Submissions must be in by May 2, 2008 at 11:59 p.m. to be eligible, and you can get all the details on their site.

What’s that? You don’t have any photos of you doing something incredibly adventurous? Well then it’s about time you did. Start planning your travel adventure now and be ready for the next photo contest that comes up. How about a week of surf camp in Australia? Two weeks of extreme sports and hobbit-spotting in New Zealand? Three weeks observing the wildlife in Africa? Talk to our buddies at Travel CUTS and the Adventure Travel Company. They’ll have you flying, jumping, rafting, diving and more in no time, all at affordable student prices.