The Internet

From yurts in Mongolia to mud huts on shores of Lake Malawi in Africa, there aren’t many places in the world that aren’t wired up and online. Word is that even the Amish have set up an Internet cafe up in Pennsylvania and plan to open it once they finally get the power on. Here’s your guide to travelling in a connected world.

HAS THE INTERNET CHANGED TRAVEL?

It sure has. There was a time not so long ago when the first thing a traveller would do when they rolled into a new town was check out the closest bar and maybe find a room. Today’s traveller however, won’t really feel at home until they’ve found the nearest Internet cafe and checked their e-mails. Instead of bragging about how many countries they’ve visited, travellers now boast about how many e-mails they got that day. It’s a new world out there, and if you haven’t got a Hotmail account – or something similar – you’re missing out.

THE NSITT GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE INTERNET USAGE

Let me just say that I’m a big fan of the Internet. I love the fact that I was able to log in on a crappy old computer in a dusty Mayan village and find out about the birth of my latest nephew back home. In that way alone it has saved me a fortune on international calls (Australia is always in the most expensive zone!)

But there are heaps of other ways a canny traveller can use the Internet to make their trip more enjoyable and last longer. For example, you can use the Internet to:

· E-mail your mum and dad for more money.

· Taunt your work mates with tales about what a great time you’re having.

· Visit a medical site and check if that rash is really fatal.

· Organise a piss-up with the other travellers you met a few days before.

· Check whether your bank balance is really as dire as you think it is.

· Line up a bed at a friends place in London, New York or Sydney.

· Check the weekend results of your favourite team. (Having said that, if you follow the football teams I follow then that can be a bad thing. A very bad thing.)

THERE MUST BE A DOWNSIDE

Sure. It’s a lot easier for your boss to contact you and tell you that you’re needed back at the office immediately. And with marks and grades now readily available over the Internet, you can instantly know that you’ll be doing first year Psych all over again.

Then there are all the little idiosyncrasies of accessing the Internet while you’re away. You won’t be able to find an Internet cafe when you’re waiting on an important e-mail. And they’ll be everywhere when you haven’t got enough money to use them. The more expensive it is to access the Internet, the crappier the connection. The connection always drops out when you’re sending or receiving a large file. When you find a cheap connection you won’t receive any e-mails and you won’t have any to send.

And Hotmail is invariably, inevitably, always painfully slow.

WHY IS HOTMAIL SO SLOW?

Most people think it’s because there are so many people using the service throughout the world. But the fact is that Microsoft is simply helping third world countries reduce debt. Word is that the good folk at Redmond deliberately slow down access times to travellers checking their e-mail in exotic and far flung locales. Hence the more costly the connection, the slower the connection. It’s true!

HOW MUCH OF MY BUDGET SHOULD I ALLOCATE FOR ACCESSING THE INTERNET?

Unfortunately, most of it – especially if you have a Hotmail account! One of the sad things about the introduction of the Internet is that travellers are now spending more money on checking their e-mail account than getting pissed. On a recent trip to Antigua in Guatemala I was disturbed to notice that while all the Internet cafes were full, their patrons staring into monitors, their backs to the colourful colonial streetscapes outside, the bars were empty. Now that’s just wrong!

IS MY E-MAIL NAME IMPORTANT?

Definitely. Chances are you’ll be drunk when you’re handing it out – and so too will the person you’re giving it to. So obviously it should be something easy to remember and easy to spell.

Of course, your own name would be ideal, but as any one who has tried to subscribe to Hotmail recently knows, it’s almost impossible to get your name, especially if you’ve got a common as muck name like mine. I was offered petermoore_23492755472290@hotmail.com the last time I tried.

You could try for something cute or funny, but chances are that’ll wear thin. A friend of mine used his girlfriend’s pet name for him, but they’ve since broken up and mrfluffymuffy@yahoo.com just raise more questions than it answers when he hands it out to people he meets on the road.

IS THERE ANYONE I SHOULD NEVER, EVER GIVE MY E-MAIL ADDRESS TO?

Strange as it may seem, there are some people you should never, ever give your e-mail address to. Basically, they’re the people you left home to get away from. And, much to the chagrin of Internet cafes the world over, I’m listing them below.

· Your Aunt Beatrice. All you’ll get are long drawn out stories about your cousin’s court case and Uncle Bob’s upcoming operation. If she’s got a scanner, you’ll get pictures of the x-rays and doctor’s reports as well.

· Anyone with a new-born baby. Your Inbox will be clogged up with pictures of the sprog – it’s first steps, it’s first birthday, even it’s first teeth. Worse, the pictures will be huge ‘cos the proud parents want to make sure you see all the details. Particularly scary with the mandatory breast-feeding shot.

· The folk back at the office. Sure, you’ll get all the latest gossip, but you’ll also get all those weak jokes and humungous files that turn out to be nothing more than singing hamsters. Fine when you’re trying to put off working, but a real nuisance when you’re paying $1 a minute on a flaky connection that keeps dropping out.

· Your ex. A bitter, vengeful letter listing all your faults in graphic detail is the last thing you want on your holidays. Especially when a ‘new’ holiday acquaintance is sitting beside you when you check your mail.

· Your creditors. Best to find out your stereo has been seized to pay off unpaid parking fines after you get back. Not much you can do about it 20,000 kilometres away is there?

· The drunken mistake. You were plastered and not thinking straight. The last thing you want is an ongoing cyber affair with someone who, quite frankly, was a dud in real life. You’re only hope is that in your inebriated state you garbled your e-mail address or put all the dots in the wrong place.

WHAT IF NOBODY SENDS ME E-MAILS?

Nothing is sadder than the person who rocks up to an Internet cafe, coughs up for the minimum half hour and then doesn’t have any new messages in the inbox. They’ve got to spend the next 27 minutes reading the latest on the on-line version of their local newspaper, or catching up on the progress of Star Wars Episode 2 on the George Lucas fan site.

If it really bothers you, why not use all that spare time to subscribe to heaps of newsletters? Then, next time you open your Hotmail account you can proudly exclaim ‘Wow! 139 new messages!’ Just make sure to hide the senders’ names and subject headers from the admiring glances from nearby surfers.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO TO KILL TIME IN AN INTERNET CAFE?

If you should find yourself with half an hour to kill, there are many ways to amuse yourself.

- Click on the history button and see where you fellow travellers have been. If you’re lucky someone’s on-line bank might have a piss-weak security and let you log back in.
- Read somebody else’s e-mail over their shoulder. Much more annoying than reading the paper of the person next to you on the tube and more fun to boot.
- Go to Windows Explorer and have a squiz around the C drive. You’ll be amazed what you can stumble across, especially in folders titled ‘Secret Stuff’.
- Call the person running the place over and tell them that you thinkyou’ve just downloaded a virus.
- Laugh raucously while pretending to read your e-mails. Not only will it disturb fellow surfers, it will make them wish that their friends were so funny.
- Check the favourites and count how many porn sites the guy running the place has bookmarked.

Of course, you could do something constructive with your time and visit a really useful web site.

WHAT ARE THE MOST USEFUL SITES WHILE TRAVELLING?

Funnily enough, when you’re paying the equivalent of a month’s wages, your surfing habits change. While you may mindlessly trawl through porn sites and download MP3′s on your computer at work, you get a little more pragmatic on the road. Personally I rarely go beyond checking my e-mail and dropping by the Sydney Morning Herald on-line (Australian news never makes any international papers!). If I really have to I check my bank account, but only if I’m sober.

SURELY ON-LINE BANKING IS A BOON TO TRAVELLERS?

It is, especially if, like me, you drag most of your money out of foreign ATMs, not altogether sure of what the rate is, or hope much you have left in your account. It’s just that when you’re travelling on Australian dollars, it’s never a pretty sight. I’ve found that bank balances are a bit like cholesterol levels. You really should know what they are, but knowing how dire they are can seriously curtail you having a good time.

SHOULD I USE THE INTERNET TO DO WORK WHILE I’M AWAY?

I’ve got to say, the Internet has been great for me. I’m actually writing this in Cairo and will be sending it to my publishers from a scungy Internet cafe just off Tarlat Haarb. But if you’re like 99.9% of the population who travel to get away from mundane things like work and study, best to tell your tutor or boss that there’ll be no internet access where you’re going, and hope that they don’t realise that there’s no place in the world where that’s true any more.

WHAT ABOUT USING THE INTERNET TO BOOK ACCOMMODATION?

In theory, it sounds great. Log into the web site for a hostel or hotel in the next town you’re going to and book a room. You turn up after a 18 hour bus trip, and voila, there’s a bed waiting for you.

Unfortunately, it never works like that. No one ever checks the e-mail at the said establishment or more usually, the computer was wiped out months before by a virus that the night manager downloaded while he was looking at porn.