How to Spend Rainy Days As A Backpacker

Life as a backpacker isn’t all champagne and skittles, discovering a new city, getting your passport stamped, hiking mountains, trying new food. It has its boring days too. The torrential rain days, as happened this week to me in Hong Kong. While I don’t particularly mind these boring rainy, wet days, they can be an excuse to stay in a hostel or in your shared flat and just surf online. Here are 10 ways to keep yourself occupied online during these “boring” backpacking days…

1. Make Sure You Have an Internet Connection

Sitting, cooped at home need no longer be boring, and it’s essential to have an internet connection. The internet is the perfect way to have fun on a rainy day vacation with nothing else to do. These days, I’d find myself a bit lost without it. You’ll also note that I include Free Wi-Fi as one of my hostel top 5 essentials.

2. Choose a new browser

There are many different internet browsers available and it could be fun to download and install a new browser if you are not happy with your current one. I’ve done a bit of experimenting with this – I hate Safari. You can choose from Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera or a few others that are available online.

3. Play online games

Many websites offer a wide range of online games. Some of these are bigfishgames, BeFunGames, friv, shockwave, miniclip, Addicting games and many more. One can choose from a wide array of games that include strategy, mind games, puzzles, cooking games, fashion games, arcade games, battle or racing games or many other types of games available on the internet.

4. Social sites/networks

Social sites are hugely popular and are a great way to while away some time.  Create or log on to your account on the various and surf through the newsfeed enjoying yourself. You can easily end up spending hours having fun looking at the various posts and browsing friends’ profiles or posting those thousands of photos you have. It can get addictive though so make sure you log off now and then.

– Jonny on Twitter

– Don’t Stop Living on Facebook

5. Gamble online

Rainy vacation days can be a little depressing and may tempt you to step outside, go to a bar or do something unwise and waste away money. The truth is you can also do this online these days. In case you want to have fun and test your luck, online gambling is the ideal choice. Whether you try Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Razz, Studd, Draw Poker and other games you are sure to have fun. Also, you can try Rush Poker and Rush Poker mobile, so basically you can play wherever you have a wi-fi or 3G internet connection. You can also do football bets online, but as ever go easy on it – it can get addictive, as Northern Irishman Keith Gillespie found out: How Not to be a Football Millionaire Keith Gillespie My Autobiography

6. Listen to music or watch videos

As well as using iTunes, you can just search for new platforms to download music and watch videos. Obviously YouTube is the big one. Watch their videos or search for other fun or informative videos on the various sites offering millions of songs and free visual entertainment. I’m big into Podcasts at the moment. My favourites are BBC Radio 5 and Love Affair Travel.

7. News websites and celebrity gossip

If you are a news or current affairs junkie, the internet is the perfect place to keep tab on the current news through various news websites. TV news channels and newspapers have their own websites offering news in real time. Other websites keep up to date with the shenanigans of celebrities in various fields. Enjoy hours of browsing celebrity gossip.

8. Read or write blogs

A simple search will throw up umpteen blog sites that let you read what thousands of bloggers have put up on their blogs. Don’t Stop Living is registered on a load of them and it’s an easy way to read blogs – scan for the articles you like and click on them. Read blogs relating to various topics or better still create your own blog and pour your heart out or write about something you love. I’d recommend buying Nomadic Matt’s book on Making Money from Your Travel Blog – this rainy day could be your ticket to bigger and better things. Remember Don’t Stop Living started shyly 7 years ago and is now 1600 posts strong!

9. DIY video tutorials

If you are into DIY projects you are sure to find thousands of tutorials or informative videos that help you learn some more.  It is easy to learn various crafts or even get tips on gardening or home projects with so many people sharing what they know. These days I watch a lot of entrepreneurial workshops and videos – it’s my latest fad!

10. Stream Live Football

As someone who doesn’t own a TV, streaming live football is often the only way I can keep up to date with my teams. I use Sport Lemon quite a lot to stream the football and the Facebook Group HD Sports normally has the goals as they happen.

So don’t get angry or waste you wet days on your travels, stay busy online, in fact you can even earn money online on these wet days to keep you on the road for a bit longer.