Hi! This is Chin volunteering to write here. When we were discussing what we should do for the website, Yun said we should have our own blog. I was like “HELLLL NOOO, I ain’t doing it! Hating writing, man.” But here I am, wanting to share my latest hobby inspired by a blog post by a Taiwanese guy 大同.

I am going to Vietnam in a month, and I made my first travel booklet! 📖

WHAT I USED TO DO

I LOVE traveling. I enjoy exploring the city by strolling around and am happy with whatever happens. I like to have a rough idea of how many days it takes to be in one city so I can book my hotel & transportation in advance. I would start by saving some points of interest on Google Maps because detailed planning was never my thing. Here is how my itinerary usually looks like. I’ve been doing this for all of my short and long trips. 🛬🛫

WHAT I DID THIS TIME

But this time, I decided to make it prettier and turn it into a PowerPoint. I was SO proud when I finished it lmao. (I just simply listed out the places where I plan to visit and the flight time 🤷‍♀️)

THEN I FOUND SOMETHING BETTER

Then I decided to check online and see how others make their travel booklet. I was literally: 😳😳😲😲😅 I am so glad I checked. These Taiwanese people are crazy. They prob devoted their lives to this, some even said they spent up to 6 months for their travel booklets. Here is one that I really liked, very simple: DT Journal. I was so inspired and wanted to make mine!

These travel booklets are basically your own handmade travel guide books. Most of the time, these people plan their trips by learning the history of the local tourist sites and picking out the ones that interest them. Then, they will plan out the routes that’d be the most time efficient. So they would write down: when they are going, why they are going, what they should purchase as souvenirs. They put every detail information like writing a travel book but for personal use.

Some people would even go above and beyond and draw their own images and make their own icons for their booklets.

SO I STARTED MY FIRST TRAVEL BOOKLET!

I don’t know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator or anything that’s art related; I only used PowerPoint and sometimes Paint (very amateur 😂). Here are some rules that I go by:

• Use the same font

• Use the PPT default color

  (pick a color theme and stick with it)

• Use the same font size

• Make sure the icon/photo are the same size

  (I didn’t create any of the icon nor take any photo, I got them online. This is solely for personal use.)

I think before you start making your travel booklet, you have to decide WHO and WHY you are making this booklet and keep that in mind when you are making it. Because when I first started, I wanted to make it for myself, so the first few pages are very simple. Then I thought I should make this for my mom and her friend who are traveling with me. Since they don’t read English so I translated my booklet to Chinese. Then I also wanted to try out different styles to see how it would look like.

The cover page is the hardest for me and I saved it for the last. ONE HUGE lesson that I took from this is…

I CAN CHANGE THE COLOR OF THE ICON!! 😮

I used Icons8 for all of my icons, after you click on the icon you want, on the left hand side it says “recolor” it’s very obvious but IDK why I didn’t see it until I was on my last page of my booklet. Wish I knew it earlier.

For photos, I used Pixabay and Google Image.

INSIDE THE BOOKLET

These two are my favorite pages. I used SmartArt in PowerPoint to make the schedule and inserted a few pictures that I think are relevant.

On the left page I included some information about Vietnam and Hoi An.

Vietnamese food isn’t uncommon in either USA or Taiwan. But there are some special Hoi An dishes: Cao Lau and Banh Bao Banh Vac. I have no idea if they are good or not, but most reviews on Google says they are delicious. And I don’t ever wanna miss out the chance of being a foodie. Although Banh Mi 🥖(Vietnamese French Bread) is quite common, there is a store in Hoi An that is known to be the best in Vietnam. Can’t wait to try them!

On the right page I listed out a few things that are “must buy” in Vietnam. Well, I only listed the things I am interested: cashew nuts, instant noodle, dried fruits and coffee. 🌰☕🍌

I want to talk about how I decided to make my last page.

I saw a lot of people would crop a part of map and put it in their booklet and I wanted to play with it, too. At first I used the same icon for each tourist spot on the map and draw lines to connect it to the description. (Like on the left page) But the whole page becomes very messy even before I finish the page, and it was very hard to place the corresponding text. Then I decided to place different icons for each tourist spot on the map so I can match the text to the map without drawing lines. (On the right page)

On the right page, for the 12:00 restaurant that we will be going, it’s a famous French restaurant but there isn’t much history behind it, I have nothing to talk about so I got a bit stressed when I was making it. Then I decided to just wrote down how to make reservation there lol. Sometimes we just fill in the blank with information that we don’t need, and that is OK. There’s nothing to stressed about 🙌🙌 (unless you are selling your booklet, then that’s a different story)

Hope you like this! If you want a copy of this booklet, send me your email and I will send you a copy! 😊😊😊

And comment below if you want to see travel booklet on other cities I’ve been to and I will try to make it happen!