Gadling’s Gift Guide: $51 – $250

by Jeremy Kressmann on

The holidays are upon us, and you seem to be reading our fine little travel blog. The confluence of these two facts suggest you might be in the market for some travel-themed gifts this holiday season. But what do you get for that discerning traveler on your list that won’t break the bank? With the rotten economy and all, you’re not made of money at the moment.

That’s where we come in. We’ve polled our team of travel experts here at Gadling and pulled together the following list of travel goodies priced between $51-$250, all travel tested and blogger approved. Have a scroll down below and of course, feel free to add your own travel-themed gift suggestions in the comments below.

Peek Personal Email Device

You may remember Scott’s review of the Peek from this past August, when he gave the device solid marks all around. For those that are not familiar, the Peek is handheld email device powered by the T-Mobile network. For only $99.95 for the hardware and then $19.95/month you get simple, easy to use access to all your email.

Frequent travelers looking for an unlimited email device will be pleased with the Peek’s features. Sure, the Peek isn’t for everyone. Those looking for Blackberry or iPhone-style functionality will find it lacking in features. But the device’s no-frills capabilities may ultimately be more appealing to those who are less technologically inclined because of this simplicity. Not to mention it has no monthly contract commitment unlike those fancier devices.

Where: www.getpeek.com and at Target stores nationwide
Price: $99 for the hardware, $19.95/month thereafter

Osprey Porter 46

You tend to go through a lot of travel bags when you write for a travel website. Whether it’s business travel, a quick jaunt home to Chicago for the holiday, or a 2 week trip to Japan, most of my bags have been through a literal trial-by-fire. Now, after burning through all manner of business-style rolling suitcases, shoulder-sling duffel bags and over-the-shoulder backpacks, I’m ready to declare a winner. It’s Osprey’s Porter 46 backpack.

What is it about the Porter 46 in particular that gets me so fired up? The best part for me is the size. Specifically designed to fit the exact maximum airline carry-on size restrictions, the Porter 46 ensures you’ll never have to check luggage again. I’ve fit this sucker on everything from Boeing 747’s down to those tiny Embraer regional jets, and it always has been able to squeeze into the overhead.

I’m also a big fan of the Porter 46 configuration. Unlike most typical backpacks, it opens like a duffel bag, with a zipper on the “top.” This prevents the annoying situation with most backpacks where you have to dig all the way down the bottom to find your toothbrush. No such issue here. I also really like the Porter’s backpack setup – the straps fold completely into a zippable compartment on the backside, ensuring nothing will get snagged on a conveyor belt if you do decide to check the thing.

Where: Head to the Osprey website to find a dealer online
Price: Though the Porter 46 retails for $99, I’ve seen it as low as $75 depending on where you look

Icebreaker Travel Shirt

Traveling sometimes means making do without the necessities. But that certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be able to look good and be comfortable while doing it. Enter the Icebreaker Superfine140 travel shirt. This ultra-lightweight fabric shirt is crafted from an ultra-fine merino thread, which ensures that it dries quickly and is extremely breathable.

These two properties of the Icebreaker offer an added bonus – they are very resistant to body odor. Internal consensus from the Gadling staff has it that the shirts have lasted as long as 15 days without taking on any kind of “funky smells.”

While Gadling does not endorse the extreme avoidance of regular personal hygiene, we are willing to give our readers the benefit of the doubt. Anybody looking for a versatile base-layer and all-around good travel wear should give Icebreaker a look.

Where: www.icebreaker.com
Price: $69.99

Gravis Hobo Messenger Bag

For the past 5 years, I have been on a relentless search for the best messenger bag. I wanted something that looked sharp enough to take with me to work, but not so corporate looking that I couldn’t take it with me when I was out and about on the weekends and traveling. That’s why when I stumbled on the Hobo Bag by Gravis, I knew I had finally found my choice.

While there are a number of great messenger bag makers out there, I like the Gravis Hobo Bag because of the multitude of pocket space inside. This includes a separate compartment for a laptop, as well as smaller zippered pouches for any small personal necessities. It works equally well day-to-day as well as while you’re traveling, holding items like a small camera, an umbrella and perhaps a change of clothing. I also particularly like the quirky patterns – while the exterior of my bag is white and black, the interior is made up of a pattern of robots, donkeys, elephants and monkeys (weird combo, right?). The ones online have similar colorful or more simple styles to them, leaving you free to pick a design that best matches your own style and needs.

Where: www.gravisfootwear.com or www.ebags.com
Price: $50 for the medium size, $75 for the large

Blackberry Curve by T-Mobile

Earlier this year, Scott mentioned a unique feature of T-Mobile’s Blackberry Curve phone. Not only does the Curve let you make calls over the normal wireless network of T-Mobile, it’s also equipped for Wi-Fi calling in areas where traditional cell phone service is not available. Basically this means you can make phone calls anywhere in the world over a local Wi-Fi connection, even if you have no service or are roaming in whatever country you happen to be visiting. If you’re not interested in going through the process of unlocking your phone to use it in other countries, this can be a godsend.

T-Mobile is also fairly generous when it comes to their Blackberry international data plan. For only $19.95 per month, you can send and receive as many emails as you want in other countries, with no hidden data charges.

Where: www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones
Price: $99 after instant discount and mail-in rebate, $449 without

SeV Quantum Jacket

I can never have too many pockets when I’m traveling. Between my wallet, a digital camera, a guidebook, a cell phone, my music player and all those other travel doodads we all like to have, your pants end up bulging with stuff. In September, we reviewed the SeV Quantum Jacket, noting its versatility for gear junkies. Between the jacket’s main body and sleeves it’s got 28 pockets for your digital and analog paraphernalia.

But it’s not just the many, many pockets that make this jacket a snap. It’s also got small openings throughout the fabric for something called the “personal area network,” allowing you to connect wires and cables from a device in one pocket to those in another. The Quantum also includes touch-screen accessible pockets for fans of PDA’s, iPhones and the iPod Touch.

Combined with the jacket’s breathable and water resistant shell and the optional fleece and you’ve got one tough, durable piece of outerwear.

Where: www.scottevest.com
Price: $250

iPod Touch – 8GB

Have you heard of this crazy iPod gadget? I hear they’
re totally popular now. OK, OK…you probably know all about the iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch at this point. Rather than dwell on the obvious, let’s talk about why the iPod Touch might be the perfect digital media solution for all you travelers out there.

First and foremost, the iPod has built-in Wi-Fi. If you’re not looking to spend $5 bucks at the internet cafe every time you want to check email during that trip to Spain, the iPod Touch lets you log on, surf the web and send a hello to the family without breaking the bank. Second, it has all the digital music, game and movie-playing goodies you’ll need to keep you entertained on those long plane or bus rides.

And perhaps most useful of all, you can even turn the IPod Touch into a “personal digital guidebook.” Let’s say I’m going to be touring around Seattle during the day. Instead of lugging around that Frommer’s book all day, you can just pull up the Wikitravel (or Gadling) page on your iPod Touch. Now even when you move out of Internet range you’ve got all the information pre-loaded and at the flick of a finger.

Where: http://store.apple.com
Price: $229 for 8 GB

No Reservations: Seasons 1, 2 and 3 on DVD plus Book

If there is one travel TV show that has kept us consistently entertained and delighted over the past few years, it’s definitely No Reservations. Say what you will about the Amazing Race or Bizarre Foods – the fact of the matter is no travel show on television is as consistently hilarious, interesting, blunt and entertaining as No Reservations.

If that someone special in your family is dreaming of some travel this holiday season but won’t be able to go there in person, why not buy them a couple seasons worth of No Reservations on DVD and the behind-the-scenes book? You can get the complete First, Second and Third seasons on Amazon.com. Yes, we admit – we are 100% in the tank for Anthony Bourdain.

Where: www.amazon.com
Price: $69 for Seasons 1, 2 and 3 and the No Reservations book

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Gadling’s Gift Guide: $0 – $50

by Grant Martin on

iStik Magnetic iPod case: $20
Need a good way to secure your iPod or minipod to your jacket or running shorts while you’re on the road? Try out the Magnetic iStik. This little device lets you stick your music box almost anywhere on your body without having to worry about it rolling around or falling out of your pocket. For running, its a necessity. Check out Gadling’s review of the iStik then get one for about twenty bucks at goistik.com.

Sigg Water Bottles: $18 – 25
Its true, Nalgene bottles are officially out of style. The new big thing? Sigg water bottles, the metal miracles that don’t (potentially) bleed into your Gatorade and that are also pretty hip to carry around. Every good adventure traveler needs at least a couple of water bottles to carry on the road, down the slopes or up the pitch, so you can’t go wrong with an investment in one of these. Plus, a portion of all sales to back to the environment. Pick them up at Amazon or Ebay for a good price.

In-Ear Headphones: $10 upwards

In-ear headphones are the new big thing in noise abatement technology — rather, you can do it two ways, with a noise cancelling circuit or by flat-out plugging your ears with these earbuds (or, sometimes both, but you usually won’t need that.) The advantage to this tight-fitting method, of course, is that the audio can be softer, and thus better for your ears. And without a noise cancelling circuit, the technology is quite affordable.

Having spent a lot of time in airplanes this year, we can tell you from experience that all you need to ensure a quite ride is the ear-plugging technology — the noise cancelling stuff works ok, but its probably not worth the investment.

Usually, pairs start at $10 and can get as costly as over $100, and each person reacts differently to each headset. CNET is a great place to start your research.

Orbit MP3 speaker: $40

If you’re planning on having people over to the hotel room to have a few drinks and grease the wheels, you’re going to need to be pumping some tunes. And we know that your iBook is God’s gift to technology, but you just need more oomph behind your speakers if you’re going to be making an impression.

Try out Altec Lansing’s Orbit MP3 speaker, a compact little device that produces a room full of happiness. You can read how well the system works in Gadling’s review and if it strikes you, pick one up at Altec Lansing.

The Moleskine: >$12

A good travel notebook is a key component to any prolonged travel, something that will hold up on the road, not take up too much space and maybe, if you’re lucky, even look pretty snazzy. Italian company Moleskine‘s notebooks do just that, and they’ve recently expanded their product line to include a variety of formats including city notebooks (with maps!)

While you can’t get a Moleskine directly from their website, Amazon has a wide variety of products. You can start your research from their search page.

Patagonia Men’s Capilene 1 T-Shirt: ($36 before 20% off with coupon code)
No one wants to hang out with the sweaty guy. But you can still jog, hike, mountainclimb or stroll in the park while staying dry if you throw on a Patagonia Capilene shirt. You can stay cool, dry and stylish while hanging off of a cliff or hanging out with your friends. They’ll appreciate your improved hygiene and you’ll appreciate the price if you use coupon code 87211 at Moosejaw.
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Christmas festival in Sweden offers a special holiday treat

by Jamie Rhein on

Yesterday, my daughter and I were treated to a trip to Jul på Fredriksdal, the Christmas festival at Fredriksdal Open-air Museum in Helsingborg, Sweden. Friends we are staying with in Denmark found out that this festival only happens one weekend each year. This weekend was it.

From the music, to the animals in the barn, to the glögg, this video shows exactly what the festival was like–exactly.

We stayed until after dark when the paths were lit by candles along the ground and strands of twinkling white lights in the trees and bushes.

The one thing I wish I had bought was one of the straw animal decorations you’ll see in the video. We walked to another area after I went into the building where this particular craftsman was located. I thought I would wait in case there was something else I wanted. There wasn’t. Unfortunatly, we didn’t have time to go back.

My friends wish they had bought a jar of the lemon honey which was in the building where the dancing took place. It was also near the straw decorations. The moral is: When you see something you like, buy it.

Talking Travel (and Singapore) with economist Bryan Caplan

by Aaron Hotfelder on

“I used to think the same things as everyone else,” economist Bryan Caplan said in a recent podcast, “and then I started reading economics.”

I too was a pretty conventional thinker once upon a time, and then I began following provocative economics blogs by the likes of Tyler Cowen, Will Wilkinson, and Chris Blattman (all three Gadling interviewees– really, click the links!)

One of my new favorite bloggers, Bryan Caplan recently visited the unusual city-state of Singapore and wrote about some of the most interesting aspects of his trip at his blog, EconLog (see here, here, and here, for starters).

Bryan and I recently chatted about Singapore’s rather unconventional policies, some misconceptions that are often shared about the country, and why travel memories are the most valuable to those who live longest….

Singapore is often thought of as an authoritarian dictatorship and it’s strict laws are well-known– corporal punishment is still employed, drug trafficking is punishable by death. But at the same time, it seems to be undergoing a period of liberalization. Why, in your view, is this happening?

Well, I think it’s not true that it’s a dictatorship. It’s a British parliamentary system and by the accounts of international observers the elections are not corrupt. Really what you have is just the ruling party has managed to win up to 60% of the vote in every election for the last 40 years. Which I’ll admit is strange, but I was thinking about it more upon getting back, and I realized that when you think about Singapore as a city rather than a country, there are lots of cities where one party has been in power for 40 years in the United States. For example, the Democrats have been in charge in San Francisco for longer than a single party has been in charge in Singapore.

So it’s not true to say that it’s not a democracy. You could make a case that it’s not a liberal democracy– you’ve got corporal punishment and a wider use of the death penalty. But in terms of liberalization, my main guess would be that it’s modernizing like other Asian countries, and as countries modernize they become more Western, and the attitudes of the population become more similar to those of other developed countries.

And the Internet has a lot to do with it. On the one hand, the standard media are quite dull, but they have a very active blogosphere that the government doesn’t censor, and that’s where a lot of intellectually alive people are getting their information. The only Internet censorship they have is that they have a token list of about 100 porn sites that they block, but that doesn’t make much difference because there are a lot more than 100 out there.

What policies has Singapore adopted that have allowed it to flourish?

There’s a lot going on in Singapore, but what is unique about it is that its government is much more willing to follow policies that economists think of as economically efficient. They’re much more willing to use incentives, and they’re one of the few really free trade countries.

What about the immigration policy in Singapore?

It’s very interesting– about 25% of Singapore’s population is foreign-born. It’s certainly not free immigration but it’s a much less restrictive policy than in, say, the United States. It’s a lot easier to get low-skilled laborers into Singapore. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the public is very deferential to the government. One of the main kinds of complaints about the main party is that it does allow in a lot of immigrants. Probably if there were a vote just on immigration policy, Singapore would keep out a lot more people than it does.

What are some misconceptions that residents of Western countries might have about Singapore?

People think it’s not a democracy, or they think the elections are corrupt. And those seem to be false. The idea that it’s a rigid, rules-based society, there’s something to that, but it wasn’t nearly as rigid as I was expecting. I blogged about the fact that on the walls at the civil service college there are a bunch of things that make fun of government and government policy.

Before I went to Singapore, they asked me what I’d like to talk about and I said public opinion in Singapore: Do they actually support these unusually economically-efficient policies? Some Americans I talked to said they’ll never talk about that, that my trip was going to get cancelled. But it was nothing like that. They set up a very interesting lunch with one of their main sociologists who works in public opinion. Later that day I had the same discussion with an audience of civil servants. And not only were they happy to talk about their government’s policies, they were enthusiastic.

What were some of their feelings about the West?

I think they think they are the West. They identify with the US more than with Britain because of television. The older generation still feels British while the younger generation feels American.

One of your colleagues Alex Tabarrok says that people tend to have a status quo bias about travel– that if they knew their lives would be longer, they’d travel more, and they’d also travel more if they knew their lives were going to be shorter. Do you feel the same way?

Alex thinks that’s a paradox. But my thinking is that if I knew I was going to live longer, I’d travel more. If I knew I’m going to live less, I’d travel less. With a longer life, you have more time for experimentation and to see what else is going on in the world. And also your memories are like a durable good– you get to keep them with you for as long as you live. The longer your life is, the better the memories are to have. But if I knew I had six months to live, I probably wouldn’t go anywhere. I’d probably stay home and enjoy the things I’ve worked for.

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Besides being an economics professor at George Mason University, Bryan Caplan is the author of the outstanding book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Photo of the Day (12.07.08)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

I don’t think this Chinese Terracotta warrior ever expected to become a 21st Century sex symbol. Flickr user troshy seems to be worried about this guy’s popularity though, so he gave him some cool aviator shades. I know nothing about the rules regarding touching or interacting with these statues, but I do really like the contrast – it ends up looking like a 200 B.C. US Weekly photo. Pretty hilarious.

Have any unique travel photos you’d like to share with the world? Why not upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr? We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.