How to make your travels memorable

Memories are what you make them and no matter how you record them, there’s only way your memories will last forever.

My best tip to make travels memorable is to make the most of them: get out there, away from the tourist spots and see what the real country’s like. Take in some real local culture rather than the one offered by the hotel or holiday company. Anyone can sit in a room and watch pre-planned entertainment, but the real memories are those which show the locals doing what they do without all the hype around it.

Every country also has some excellent natural scenery and other sites which are unique to that area. So whether it’s the animals or the amazing sunset, the mountains or the lakes, or even the city sights, these are the things that make a holiday special and memorable.

I think it’s also nice to do something distinctive, whether it’s a meal or an excursion. These are the trips to that special place which you’re unlikely to do again. So my wife and I have been to Canada and seen Niagara Falls, we’ve been to Kuala Lumpur and had a meal in the Petronas Tower and been to Borneo and seen the orang-utans. These things made a trip around the world just that bit extra special.

There are different ways to record these memories, whether using the latest technology or the more traditional methods. You might decide to use a camcorder or digital camera, which you can look at again and again or download to your computer. Or you might opt for keeping a diary of events; maybe emailing friends and family back home if you can find a PC.

But I think by far the best way to make travels memorable is to soak up as much of the experience as you can. My wife and I often think of different holidays we’ve been on and can sit for ages talking about the sunset, or a certain city the sort of memories that nothing but our own heads can record. And it’s not just these memories which we talk about there’s also the things like taking a boat along the river in Bangkok and being refreshed by the lack of health and safety precautions, or laughing at the way our surname is pronounced in different parts of the world. Some things just can’t be documented easily.

So other things might help us recall certain things but our memory can last forever, even after photos have faded, the PC has crashed and your DVD has been scratched. Let’s face it, we don’t rely on batteries, interfaces or cables to look, listen and remember.