Before the trip, I spent about 250 hours on the internet doing pre-trip research. During the trip I spent about the same amount of time on the internet doing research, checking train schedules, booking hostels and hotels, writing trip logs, etc.. I probably spent about $250 dollars for access.

In Europe there were plenty of internet cafes and many hostels had pay terminals. Costs averaged about $2.50 an hour. To my surprise and relief internet access in Nepal and southeast asia was available almost everywhere - even in Namche Bazaar, a small Himalayan mountain village 25 miles up the trail to Everest base camp that had no roads and no phone lines (satellite phones and internet).

The small, way out of the way island of Koh Tao, Thailand had internet cafes everywhere. Even Luang Prahbang in Laos, a country that just installed its first escalator a few weeks before, had plenty of access.

During my pre-trip online research I came across backflip.com - a site were one could get a free account and upload bookmarks that would then be accessible from any computer in the world. By the time I had finished my online research I had accumulated about 150 bookmarks - many of which I would want to access during the trip - so I used backflip.com, even adding more bookmarks as I traveled.

You can download these bookmarks here or access them at my backflip site (I made them public) at http://www.backflip.com/members/thetraveler

The most often used bookmarks:

hostels.com - site for hostels, some that you could book through the site
hostelworld.com - site for hostels, some that you could book through the site
iyhf.com - site for International Youth Hostel hostels
oanda.com - currency conversion
weatheronline.co.uk - worldwide weather forcasts

I set up and used a Yahoo email account with folders for email I was to accumulate: flights, hostels, guides. I also had an extensive email address list including one with multiple addresses for my friends and relatives who would receive trip logs. I used "draft" messages to store urls for quick reference (without having to go to backflip.com and log in there).

At first I was reluctant to book and reserve hostel rooms online with a credit card - knowing what I know about spyware and keycatching programs, but soon I gave in and risked it.

For money - I carried two credit cards from two different banks whose balance would automatically be deducted from two checking accounts with about $10,000 in each to start (I also had ATM cards for these for cash). I always carried one ATM and credit card for the same bank, in my velcro wallet in a velcroed and zipped pocket of my convertable travel pants and the other set of cards in my big pack. I figured that the non-transportaion expenses of the trip would run about $10,000 and if I lost one set of cards from a bank, I had an ample amount in the back-up. During the trip I tried to spend down each account equally. I usually took out the equivalent of $250 at a time for daily expenses. Except for Switzerland and the UK, local currency was no problem because it was all in the Euro, so I didn't have to worry about getting too much local currency and then having to change it when going to the next country.

I carried $2000 in traveler's checks for emergency, as well as 2 one hundred dollar bills, 2 fifties and 2 twenties which I carried in a thin zipper pouch on the backside of a 1 inch wide Eaglecreek nylon belt.

For local phone calls I usually bought country phone cards. It was much easier than dealing with enough coinage ...... and many pay phones no longer used coins. For long distance I signed up of Lonely Planet's Ekno service where you type in your account number and PIN and then can dial, using money in your pre-paid account. This was a big mistake. Many times I could not make long distance calls using their service even though I logged in successfully. They said that this was probably because I was using a pay phone - well, duh, where did they think their users were going to be calling from? I often ended up buying these pre-paid long distance/international phone cards that were a lot less expensive as well.

The majority of the time I traveled in Europe I stayed in hostels. I tried to book my nights as far ahead of time as I could. Pretty much throughout the trip I had a rough idea of where I was going to be week by week - but the actual towns and cities I would only decide on about a week ahead of time, sometimes less, as weather sometimes was a factor in which direction I would go. In most towns and cities there would be a number of hostels to choose from. To pick the best I relied on my Lonely Planet guidebook descriptions and the descriptions I found online at the hostel sites. Sometimes, if I were going to be staying more than one or two nights in a city (like Paris) I would only book the first 1 or 2 nights and be able to move should the first one prove unsatisfactory or if I found something better. It was generally OK to do this because I was traveling in the off season - however, I only booked one night for my four days in Barcelona and there happened to be some kind of festival happening nearby on that weekend and I almost didn't have a place to stay for the second night (I had a Servas host for my last two days there).

During the trip I received a lot of useful information from fellow travelers I would meet in hostels. I was talked into visiting the Isle of Sky in Scotland in my first hostel in London. I received several reports about rain in New Zealand that would be starting in earnest the month I had initially planned to be there (march) - and eventually moved those dates up. I was also warned about the cost and language hassles of traveling in Japan by several travelers and shortened my stay there as well because of it and I am glad I did - there were a few frustrating times in that country when I had wished I had skipped it altogether.

As to paperwork and documentation I carried: 1 current California drivers license, 1 expired California drivers license, my passport, prescriptions for glasses and contacts, written statement regarding the prescription drugs I carried and the Steri-kit, my travel health immunizations card, a International Youth Hostels card, an International Teachers Identification card for teacher discounts at exhibits and museums (which turned out to be totally useless), some business cards and about 30 passport photos for visas (I ended up only needing two for my diving certification).

In case any of my documentation was lost or stolen, I had xerox copies of the important documents and kept them separate from the originals. I also scanned them and put the files in a directory in one of my websites - without links to them so that only I could be able to download them with the directory and file names.