New website at Hejorama.com

The new website has been published so there’s no more need for this blog. Make sure to check the Renaissance of the project Hejorama at hejorama.com. That’s where the fun happens now !!

Hejorama will be back on September 10th !

Summer 2010 will be remembered as a really busy one for the team behind the project Hejorama. We have spent the first part of the year thinking about our project and where we wanted to go with it. A lot of new ideas have emerged and we became quickly convinced that there was way more to do with it.

What has always been a simple side project for 3 Parisians travellers is about to become something real, new, different and awesome. Something we will always be proud of and hopefully that the rest of the world will enjoy as well.

We have spent the whole summer designing a website that will fit our ambition. We have wrote a manifesto to describe our vision. We have gathered a team of travel enthusiast like us. We are starting something new for a generation of travellers that has just emerged.

We are shutting down the current website as it’s no longer our vision for the project. The Renaissance of Hejorama  will be revealed on September 10th on Hejorama.com.

Web-o-rama : Travelers currently around the world (part 1)

This is the first part of a series about people traveling around the world and writing about it on the web. This will lead to the opening of a new part on the website syndicating this content. As usual our goal is not to do another travel sites directory but rather focus on the content we like.

Travel is our passion and the Team Hejorama spends a lot of time reading everything about travel on the web. But we especially enjoy following the people who are currently in a RTW (round the world) trip. So here is our selection of people you should follow too if you miss traveling and want some daydreaming material instead of working !

Let’s start with the Superstars for this first part : Nomadic Matt and Gary from Everything Everywhere.

Continue reading for the reviews

Wonderlust kings

It is time to share with you, one very important song for the team Hejorama : Wonderlust Kings by Gogol Bordello. We love this band and the frontman Eugene Hütz is seriously awesome. Alex just saw them live last week in London and Ben is going next week in Paris. Live, they are even better. Honestly, one of the best shows ever.

But this song in particular is our favourite because it describes perfectly our travel philosophy. We knew the lyrics for a while but it really struck us when we started working on our manifesto that this song is literally our manifesto. It’s exactly our vision of traveling and our philosophy. You can consider it a preview of our coming manifesto that we will publish soon and defines the ethics and philosophy of our Wanderlust.

Continue reading for the lyrics and the music video

How to fight the “jet lag” effect

When I was a kid, I went to visit twice my family in New Caledonia which is about 20,000km away from Paris and has a +10 time difference. Each time, it would take me at least 3 days to recover from the 24h flight and the jet lag. And of course same would apply when I came back in Paris. I became quite traumatized by long-haul flights and when I started travelling frequently I made some research on how to fight jet lag and tried my best every time to circumvent this effect. Here are my observations and advices on the subject.

Jet lag, medically referred to as “desynchronosis,” is a physiological condition which is a consequence of alterations to circadian rhythms; it is classified as one of the circadian rhythm sleep disorders. Jet lag results from rapid long-distance transmeridian (east-west or west-east) travel, as on a jet plane.- From Wikipedia

Tools : Budget Your Trip

I would like to share with you this web app that we recently discovered : Budget Your Trip. I went on vacation to NY last week and I thought it was the perfect occasion to give this website a test ride.

The site is structured around two main parts : a section where you can find estimated costs for all the countries and the actual budget your trip tool.

Continue reading for the full article review…

Web-o-rama : our favourite “gear” sections

There’s a section you will find on every traveler’s blog : the gear section. While it’s most of the time just a list of items carried by the traveler, some are better than the others. We really like to read these posts because they are really helpful when you are planning a RTW yourself and it’s always fun to see the evolution through the updates. Here are the ones we like the most :

Continue reading for the full article…

Rio survey in Monocle

Monocle cover - edition 31

Like the rest of the Hej team, I’m a big fan of Monocle. This month edition features a really interesting article about Rio in Brazil. You can get a preview at http://monocle.com/rio/.

The survey explores the different aspects of the life of Rio and its Cariocas (Rio inhabitants) with interesting short interviews of personalities from the city. You can understand how Rio is becoming a city full of opportunities and working on solving its problems with results. It seems that the new mayor understands quite well the challenges that Rio is facing and has interesting solutions for the favelas, the environment and the transportation. It’s also important to note that Rio will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. This is an amazing chance for them to show the world that Rio has become a major city to be known for more than the favelas gangs and the bikinis on Ipanema.

I also had the chance to talk to people knowing the Brazil well and to be honest, I’m now so convinced by the potential of the city that it’s definitely on my list of my possible destination for my next expatriation. The compromise between a pleasant lifestyle and a fast economic development (implying work opportunities) seems very promising. I have to make more research on the subject but thanks to Monocle I’m now more aware about Rio !

We’d be very interested to read from your experiences with the Brazil and Rio in particular. So please comment !

Alex

PS: Brazil on Hejorama

Disaster in Haiti

Haiti

The Hej team would like to express his great support to all the families and victims of the tragic quake that happened in Haiti. For some reasons these natural disasters keeps happening to countries with already huge difficulties and problems. They already needed our help before that and now more than ever !!

Here’s a list of way to donate money to help Haiti :

The Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org/

UNICEF – www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake

Mercy Corps – http://www.mercycorps.org/

Doctors Without Borders – http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

And more on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8456730.stm !

And remember that there’s a lot of other countries that might not have been devasted but where people suffer and need our help. All the previous organization listed for Haiti are doing amazing jobs and needs donation of course. But we think a great way of helping is Kiva – http://www.kiva.org/, a non-profit organization for microcredits that is doing an incredible job. They have a field partner in Haiti and that could be a great way to help rebuilding the country on the long term.

Happy new Year 2010 !!

The Hej team wishes you a happy new year with a lot of fun and travel