I recently went on holidays to Singapore and Borneo and on this trip I feel I really harnessed what makes Twitter great for me. I went on holiday with my partner Caro who up until this point had never left Europe and I also happened to go on holiday during my birthday. Expecting pandemonium on the text front (birthday wishes and are you still alive texts) I decided to send a link to my public twitter timeline to all my family and Caro's. I felt liberated... Now instead of texting everyone I was alive I just sent a message to my twitter account (which is connected to my mobile) and instantly I had reached my target audience without sending a few expensive texts to the variety of people who care about me or for finding an internet cafe (which I must say is quite difficult in the jungle). I also had the added benefit of tweeting real time when I got attacked by a leech in the jungle sharing a peculiar moment in my life and I had the added benefit of when receiving a text from a family member instead of texting them back directly I could contact them all with the possibly interesting reply.

I only found two downsides with this experience:

1) For some reason my texts from Singapore did not get to Twitter. Why I have no idea, but I had no feedback back from the twitter service or network provider saying the update had failed. So I had 2 days of not being able to broadcast my activities unknowingly. This caused problem number 2) - my Dad got worried. Since I had sent a text to Twitter saying I had arrived in Dubai (which was successfully broadcasted) my Dad knew I made it halfway to my destination, however he was then to wait 2 days before finding out I had arrived in Singapore safely (because of point number 1). Not ideal.

However I have to say overall Twitter is a great companion to bring on your travels. I will definitely be using it again!