Blogs

Bastille Day, July 14th, 2005. Fireworks from the balcony of my friend’s villa on the beach at Juan les Pins in the South of France, between Cannes and Nice.

All along the French Riviera, various towns and cities have Firework displays throughout the summer. Cannes has a pyrotechnical arts festival every year on July 14th, 21st, 29th and August 7th, 15th, and 24th. Check out more information in English here.

I made some classic mistakes when I took this photograph. I forgot a tripod and didn’t scope out the best vantage points. Here’s advice from Boston Globe Photographer, David Kamerman. With his tips, hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes that I did!

Since 4th of July is a classic American holiday, click here to see my friend, Stanley Hu’s online album of the 2004 Boston Fourth of July Celebration.

And here’s a handy guide to Firework Displays all over the World! Tell us where you've seen amazing fireworks around the world, or where you've spent your 4th of July in the comments below.

Happy Independence Day and be safe!

Zicasso is proud to announce our Quarterly Travel Photo Competition Winner! Shu-jon Mao contributed Oncoming Storm from his trip to the Caribbean.

Oncoming Storm

In Shu-jon’s own words: “Photo taken as we shuttled back to the S.V. Polynesia, a 245 foot sail boat, after a day's visit to the beaches of Anguilla and during an oncoming rainstorm. This was one of the most scenic stops during our 7 day cruise around the Caribbean islands.” Here’s the full announcement in our Travel Photo Competition section.

I like to call myself a recovering Travel Photographer, and what I’ve always admired about the genre, is the serendipity of the experience. Shu-jon captures an unique travel moment in a beautiful composition. This is representative of why I travel and photograph. Photos like Oncoming Storm are an inspiration to travel, discover the world and share them with the community.

Thanks to all our talented participants for their photographic contributions. Don’t forget to submit your summer travel photographs for Zicasso’s next Quarterly Photo Competition by September 15th, 2008! Safe travels!

We're pleased that the Wall Street Journal featured Zicasso in an article on page D1 today, titled Online Help for Trip Planning. The article describes online solutions that help travelers who don't have time to research and plan a vacation. And that, of course, is exactly why Zicasso exists: To provide personalized, hassle-free trip planning for busy, discerning travelers!

During our first two months, Zicasso, together with our network of quality travel company partners, have helped numerous travelers plan and book complex itineraries to every continent…yes, even to Antarctica! If you have a good idea of your destination country, it's simple to get started on Zicasso -- simply fill out a Trip Request, and we'll get you matched with up to three travel companies whose experts will submit itinerary bids for all the services you need. Each itinerary is carefully designed and personalized to your needs by an expert agent.

Or, if you'd first like to start with browsing sample itineraries to get inspiration on where to go and things to do, you can check out Zicasso's Sample Trips. The Wall Street Journal article mentioned Zicasso along with a few websites as sources of sample itineraries generated by their user communities. However, unlike other sites, the Sample Trips on Zicasso were developed by professional experts at our travel company partners – each itinerary can be further refined, customized, and then booked. I invite you to check out our directory listing of these Sample Trips and get inspired to take that special dream trip!

Brian K.Y. Tan
Founder and CEO
Zicasso

Zicasso is ideal for busy, discerning travelers who want help to plan a complex trip. There’s a lot of flexibility on the types of travel arrangements available. Here’s an overview of the choices, together with some of my own experiences. Knowing what works best for you makes your planning more efficient.

Zicasso can be used to plan and book completely customized trips or fixed packages, depending on your needs. The main types of travel arrangements our travel companies can offer include:

• Independent travel, customized – Only accommodations and transportation needed, no guides needed. Itinerary is typically a completely customized to your needs. This is sometimes also called “self drive tours”




• Independent travel, fixed components (also known as “vacation packages”) – Similar to the independent travel above but with fixed trip components (e.g. 5 days / 4 nights with specific flight + hotel + car rental). Not customizable




• Private guided tour – Customized tour with a guide, just for you and your party




• Escorted group tour – Packaged guided tour in which you join a group of other travelers on a fixed departure date




• Others / Specialized Trips: these include Safaris, Adventure Tours, Nature Tours, Eco Tours, Study Tours, and Cruises

Welcome! After almost two years of hard work, we are truly excited to announce that Zicasso is finally here to fill a gap in online tri p planning and booking: To make the experience both personalized and hassle-free. That is the core of what we do, and we welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Let me first share some background of how we got here. My co-founder, Yuchun Ku (also my wife), and I share travel as our common passion. I’ve been to 38 countries and she’s been to 45. Throughout our travels, we found that when it comes to taking a simple trip, say we’re going from San Francisco to London and just need one flight and one hotel, we can book them quite easily online. However, for anything more complex—say we’re planning a two-week trip to visit various places in India or Peru or Spain—it can often take us over 40 hours to plan and book things online. On top of that, we couldn’t book many of the needed services online. Like tour guides, or if we needed train or bus or ferry tickets, or if we wanted to make sure we have tickets to a popular water puppet show in Vietnam….

For any food lover, Malaysia is a paradise offering a gastronomic adventure like no where else. There are at least two factors which make Malaysian food so special and so, so good! First, the country has been a melting pot of three cultures which introduced its own rich history of great cuisine: Malay, Chinese, and Indian. So you can get great food from any of these three cultures in Malaysia, plus a fusion of them, creating tantalizing and creative combinations of spices and cooking techniques. Second, Malaysians are obsessed with food; arguably food is the country’s # 1 passion. This has created very high standards and competition amongst food vendors, from restaurants to street-side hawkers—word gets out quickly on whether a dining spot is good or mediocre, and patronage level adjusts just as quickly.

OK, so we didn’t just lie on the beach the whole time at Langkawi! We spent a day with Irshad Mobarak and his excellent nature tour company, Junglewalla. When Yuchun and I travel, we enjoy mixing in wildlife and nature exploration along with culture, history, and beaches. Langkawi offers impressive biodiversity for nature lovers since the island has beaches, mangroves, rainforests, and tall limestone hills. It’s also home to over 200 species of birds, many of which are quite colorful.

We were fortunate to have Irshad as our guide. His passion as a conservationist really came out as he generously shared his extensive knowledge about the environment, the mangroves, birds, animals, and plants of Langkawi. He was entertaining as well, e.g. when he went into how the sea eagles find their mate for life!

In a dramatic change of pace from start-up life in Silicon Valley, Yuchun and I just spent four days in Langkawi—an idyllic island paradise in the northeast tip of Malaysia. A great beginning to our three weeks of travel in Southeast Asia over the holidays, covering Malaysia, Laos, and Cambodia.

“Wow, that’s a cool shot! Where is that?” That seems to be a common question for everyone looking at that caravan of camels on our home page. One of our community members, Dexter D., took that photo while traveling on an escorted tour in Morocco and has the following description of it:

Hey folks, welcome to Zicasso’s blog. We’ll be using this blog to post information about our company as well as share travel tips and insights from us and travel experts from different parts of the world. This is also where we’ll post random musings on the state of the travel industry, technology, and personal updates. It’s a good place for you to interact with us and leave comments.

“So what is Zicasso all about? Yet another online travel website?,” you might be asking. Well, yes…but a rather unique one! I’m really excited to tell you all about it. But it’s kind of hard, like really hard, to talk about what our solution is before we launch. So first, I’ll talk about what problems we want to solve.