by Russell Smeaton

Created on: June 25, 2010

When I first started to travel there was no debate about blogs or journals. The option to have a web blog simply didn’t exist. Hotmail had only just come out and the vast majority of the countries I was travelling in had sporadic internet access to say the least. So I, like many others, wrote a journal. It was a great way to try and look cool whilst sitting alone in a cafe. I guess I even had dreams of attempting to publish my travel stories before I realised that there are a many a better writer than myself.

I still have my old journals complete with stains, old tickets and smells of various places. I still love to read them to remember what it was like to be travelling around. They detail the experience in a very personal way. I only intended the journal to be private and so what I wrote was for my eyes only.

So why then have I chosen to side with web blogs? I’m going to attempt to address this debate in my usual rambling and long winded way so be patient, get yourself a cup of tea and I hope you bear with me.

Firstly, the world has changed since when I was a lad. Internet Cafes have sprung up everywhere. Blogs, social networking and general web access is so much more prevalent than it every was and I have whole heartedly jumped on this band wagon. I have a Facebook account, I email on a daily basis and I have even been known to Twitter from time to time.

I often think of a journal as being the most personal – like a private diary. A web blog can still be personal. After all, it is my own web blog. If people want to read it, all the better, but it is ultimately for me to write about what I find interesting. I see this as my online journal. I think culture has changed and it has become more common for us to share our personal life with complete strangers. Look at the rise of reality TV. In England, these are more popular than ever before as our love of other people’s lives reaches new heights.

To write a blog I have to find a place to sit down and write it online – my trusty journal could be updated anywhere from a bus to on top of a mountain waiting for sunrise.  But the problem of locating places to get online is becoming less and less problematic. Most hotels offer wireless connection these days. A recent trip shocked me by the fact that I could get online in a cheap back packers hostel. I was shown to a room full of my fellow unwashed travellers all bashing away at grimy keyboards. Even in China you can find places

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