terry_hayes18•20d agoMost Upvoted

My old hostel notebook vs the apps, maybe I'm just getting old

I was sorting through a box last weekend and found my notebook from a 2012 trip through Vietnam and Cambodia. Every hostel, every bus fare, even the street food stalls with the best pho, all written down in pencil. A friend laughed and said she just uses her phone for everything now, which got me thinking about how much the game has changed. Hostel dorms used to be $5 a night in Hanoi, now I see $15 for the same bunk, and the apps never tell you about the guy who runs the place and gives you a free scooter repair tip. I still keep a small notebook on trips, costs $1.50 at a dollar store, and it's saved me more than a few times when my phone died. Does anyone else still do paper backups, or am I just a dinosaur here?

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thomas_johnson3519d agoTop Commenter

That $1.50 notebook is doing more work than most travel apps honestly. I pulled mine from a 2018 trip to Morocco last week, it had the name of a dude in Fes who fixed my busted sandal strap for free and pointed me to a hammam that cost like 2 dirhams. Phone died at a bus stop in some tiny town, no charger, no wifi, but the notebook had the handwritten bus schedule and the guesthouse owner's cousin's number. Apps are great until your battery hits 5% or you got no signal in a mountain pass. Yeah, paper's clunky and you look like a tourist scribbling notes, but it never asks for an update or a login. You're not a dinosaur, you're just carrying a backup that actually works.