Category Archives: Travel

How to Stop Motion Sickness

Health, Travel
My Experiences of Travel/Motion Sickness

There are many theories about the cause of travel sickness, and as someone who has suffered pretty badly from it from the moment they were put in a car as a baby, I can testify that if you suffer from travel or motion sickness then it can really affect your life.

Some say it is psychological (say this to me and my hackles rise whilst I think of as many ways to inflict pain on you as I can!), others that it is an imbalance in the inner ear. I am not a medical person, all I know is that I have tried most things out there to help prevent motion sickness and some work better than others.

I personally suffer from travel sickness in pretty much any mode of transport that you can name, be it cars, buses, planes, boats, trains to the slightly more obscure lifts (elevators), rides in waterparks and in the IMAX screen at the cinema! I also had a problem when I once went in a Formula 1 simulator car and had to get out after about 30 seconds as I thought I would throw up!

I don’t know whether travel sickness is hereditary but I do know that my Dad also suffers very badly and cannot be driven anywhere so he is even worse off than me. People say that you grow out of it but I haven’t really found this to be the case – perhaps it has got a bit better or maybe more manageable with age as I am no longer as sick as I used to be as a child – I remember pretty much every holiday that we had I would have to stop on the way to be sick.

Anyway, the truth is there doesn’t seem to be any magic cure so us sufferers just have to do what we can to manage it.

Different Methods of Motion Sickness Prevention

So here are some of the methods I have found and tried to help prevent motion sickness:

Before You Travel
Try not to eat a really heavy meal before travelling, particularly greasy or friend foods. Have something light and have some water to take with you.

When Travelling
Make sure if it is at all possible, that you have plenty of fresh air when travelling. Wind down the window slightly in a car, go up on deck in a boat and make sure the air vent director is turned on and pointing towards you on a plane. Also if you are in a car or a bus then try and sit somewhere you can see where you are going and can see the horizon. Focusing in front of you and watching where you are going really helps to stop motion sickness.

When trying to prevent motion sickness, make sure that you do not read anything, or in extreme cases don’t even look down when you are travelling. As soon as you do this (for example to send or receive a text message) and your focus is taken off the horizon, you will probably start to feel worse and motion sickness will kick in. Trying to keep your head still and going with the motion of the vehicle helps so if you can, lean your head against a headrest. I have also found on a boat that when i felt bad, if I actually lad flat on the deck I felt better but this was a last resort!

One other thing that I have found to help prevent motion sickness is to chew gum whilst you are travelling. Whilst unfortunately this may be banned on some forms of public transport I have found that it really helps on things like short car journeys where I don’t want to take a travel sickness tablet.

Motion Sickness Tablets
I tend to take a motion sickness tablet only if I am going on a long journey or a particularly rough one – for example by sea. I have tried many types of motion sickness prevention tablets and most of them work pretty well but they do tend to have some side effects so it is worth trying different ones to see what suits you. I find a lot of travel sickness tablets give me a dry mouth and pretty much all of them make me drowsy, which is fine if I am getting on a long flight but not good if I only have a short trip and need to be alert at the end of it. Once I took a tablet and fell asleep at my boarding gate which was not a good idea!

Travel Sickness Wristbands

These can be bought from health shops and often from airports and chemists. The way that travel wristbands work is based on acupressure points on the inside of your wrists. Each band has a semi-spherical type bead that puts pressure on this point in your wrist and so is supposed to help prevent motion sickness. I use these wristbands quite often when I am travelling in a car and also combine these with tablets when on a boat or plane. I feel that they can help a little bit but if the motion gets extreme then only the tablets can help. They do have the obvious advantage though of not making you feel drowsy or to suffer from any other side effects.

Motion Sickness Patches
OK so this is one thing that I just discovered when researching this article. I have to admit I hadn’t heard of these motion sickness patches before.  However, at present I am not able to try then out as they appear to only be available in the US and I am in the UK. So if anyone has tried these out it would be interesting to hear from you. They say they are 100% natural so this may mean that they don’t make you drowsy like the tablets do, although they do appear to have some side effects. there are a few good reviews for them but when there are less than a dozen reviews I guess you have to take them with a pinch of salt.

Ginger Tablets
Ginger has for a long time been known to have properties that help with stomach upsets. For this reason I find that they are good to take if motion sickness has already set in – they can settle your stomach and prevent the nausea. I have used these on boats and planes and they have worked for me.

You can also take them before travelling which I recommend if you think it is going to come over you suddenly as sometimes I find I am too sick to take anything so it’s too late.

Hypnosis and Subliminal Suggestion

This is something that I have not tried and I would be interested to hear from others who have tried this – feel free to leave your comments below as to whether it has worked or not. I know that there are subliminal albums available that you should listen to for at least a few weeks, but again I have not experienced these yet, although think I might well try this soon, as I feel like I have tried everything else!

Using O2 Abroad

Travel, ,

If you are a UK customer of O2 and you are travelling abroad you may want to take note of what might happen if you do not turn off your voicemail while you are gone.

I speak to you from experience of having incurred quite a few charges for calls that I did not even take (and who did not even leave me voicemails) whilst I was on a recent business trip. I had a local phone so I did not plan on using my O2 phone whilst away. However, each time somebody phoned me and I did not answer I incurred two charges – one of £1.25 listed as my own phone number as the destination and one for £1.50 going to this number: 7802091901.

So, each of these calls that I did not answer cost me £2.75. Ouch.

The thing that comes out of this is that if you go abroad you should turn your voicemail off if you are with O2 (I am not sure what other networks charge). I have been advised that if you do this then you will not incur charges for incoming unanswered calls.

The way to turn off voicemail for O2 is to dial 1760. When you want to turn voicemail back on dial 1750.

Hopefully this will stop other people incurring other unwanted costs on their mobile bill 🙂

Window Seat or Aisle Seat?

Travel

As someone who travels a lot I often think about my choice of airline seat and which one I should opt for! My staple choice is to choose an aisle seat on the left hand side of the plane that is about half way back.

But which one is the best one to choose? Well it does depend on a number of factors. If you want to see the view and get some nice pictures then you should obviously choose a window seat. What you do need to do though if you are really bothered is to check which will be the best side of the plane to be on as the window seat on one side may have way better views than the window seat on the other side of the plane.

Aisle Seat?One reason though that I choose an aisle seat is that when you are in an aisle seat you can choose to get up and walk around as much as you like without bothering anyone else. And it seems that research supports this theory as more people suffer from DVT who are situated in non-aisle seats. I would imagine that this is because when you need to ask for one or two people to move every time you want to get out of your seat, you are most likely to do this as little as possible. DVT has a higher incidence when you are not moving around so those in the aisle seats that get up more often are going to be less at risk.

Window Seat?

If you are on a short haul flight (say below 4 hours) then you are less likely to be affected by this so the choice between aisle seat and window seat may be less clear. Maybe then it will depend on how well you sleep on a plane and what time of day it is. Maybe if you are on a short flight that goes of an evening or night time, you may just want to sleep. So if you choose a window seat you are not going to be bothered by anyone else.

However, on longer haul flights with a higher risk of DVT then an aisle seat may be a better choice and may even give the chance to stretch your legs into the aisle every now and again. Even better, if you can get a bulkhead seat then you can get even more legroom. However, beware on the bulkhead seats that you may be sat next to a screaming child!

 

London Sightseeing Pass

Travel, ,

If you are looking for an all in one London sightseeing pass to see a lot of the top attractions in London, then look no further than the London Pass.

For a one off payment you can see many attractions (I will list some of the most popular London attractions included below) either over the space of 1 day, 2 days, 3 days or you can get a 6 day pass.

So, some attractions that are included are:

  • Tower of London
  • London Zoo
  • Windsor Castle
  • Westminster Abbey
  • Hampton Court
  • Tate Modern
  • Thames Riverboat Cruise
  • St Paul’s Cathedral
This is just a selection of the top attractions included, there are many more besides, check out details of the London Pass, which can be ordered up to a year in advance.

 

 

Carrying Golf Clubs on Oman Air

Travel,

I was recently flying to Dubai and trying to find the best priced flight which would also allow me to take my golf clubs on the airplane. The cheapest flight came out with Oman Air so I tried to check their website about whether they let you take golf clubs for free or not.

However, I couldn’t find any information about taking golf clubs on Oman Air on their website at all – in fact I did not find their website hugely helpful to be honest. I did find an email address to send any enquiries to about luggage but that came back with user unknown, so they had obviously not updated their website when that person had left.

Anyway, I did eventually fina another contact email address and sent an enquiry to them to see if you could take golf clubs for free. It took over a week to get a response and that answer was a bit cryptic but the long and the short of it was this:

You can take golf clubs on Oman Air but not entirely for free. Essentially the first 9kg of your golf club bag is free and anything over that you have to pay for. However, your baggage allowance is 30kg so if you do not use up all of your 30kg, say you only use 20kg, then you will only be charged for the extra over 30kg .

For me the information came too late as I had already booked and flown with another airline but maybe this info can help someone else!