It's Tim the Traveler! |
Hi and thank you for visiting!
My name is Timothy Tye. I am a web publisher also known as Tim the Traveler in the travel world, because of the many travel websites that I create. Writing the web is the best job in the world that started out as a hobby. I enjoy it so much that I now write full time for the web. It allows me to indulge in my passion and satisfy my curiosity about the world.
I write my websites for two main purposes. Firstly, I want to create a place where people can find information about the whole world, made easy to read and illustrated with some of the most beautiful photographs. Secondly, I want to bring God's Good News to all countries of the world. By describing the whole world, I hope to be able to do just that.
It all started with my passion for traveling and photography. With that came writing travelogues to describe my travels. Since then, I've spent less and less time traveling and more of it in researching and documenting. I need to make it clear to readers that I have not visited nor am I intending to visit many of the places appearing on my websites. Doing what I do now allows me to travel the world without leaving my desk, and armchair travelers who read my websites can do exactly the same thing. Although I began writing my websites to entertain myself, I realise that over time, I have been able to educate and entertain tens of thousands of travelers and travel enthusiasts every day, providing them with useful travel information and knowledge.
My passion lies in travel writing. Most of my websites are related to travel. I live in Penang, Malaysia, but I my websites describe the whole world. I am Chinese. My mother is Hokkien, my father is Sin Leng, a subgroup of Cantonese. Nevertheless, I am glad that I can make myself understood in English.
Although I have been playing with the web and building websites on free hosting as early as 1996, the first serious website that I created for myself was AsiaExplorers, started back in 2003. At that time, I was still holding a job (marketing communications manager for a computer company whose name rhymes with "sell"). Today AsiaExplorers is still my biggest website, with over four thousand travel articles, but I've expanded to describing not just Asia, but the entire world. To make sense of world and everything in it, I created many more websites, some centering on particular cities, such as the Travel Tips Series, and some on whole countries, such as My Travel Guide Series.
Nothing escapes my pen (or should I say, my keyboard), and my own hometown is described in microscopic detail in Penang Travel Tips while the country I live in is described in Exploring Malaysia.
The beauty of writing on the web, as opposed to writing in print, is that I can easily update my articles and keep the information up-to-date. That would not be possible with printed text, which would require a revised edition. To pull together the different travel sites, I created My World Travel Guides, EarthDocumentary and World Greatest Sites. Also related to travel are Travel Photography Workshop, Book Hotels Online and Budget Accommodation Guide.
Tim in Yamanaka-ko, Japan |
Two websites not related to travel that I happily author include Happy Jobless Guy and The Flowering Garden. Happy Jobless Guy is a website that celebrates my state of unemployment. Although I do not regularly update it, it is one of the websites that have touched many lives, especially those who were made redundant by unfavorable economic situations. Happy Jobless Guy is not a website about earning a living without working. I am still working, and very hard at it too, but I now work for myself. And people who follow my advise in Happy Jobless Guy will be working for themselves as well. The Flowering Garden is a website that I started with my wife, because we both love flowers, but do not care to do any gardening. So, the next best thing is to place our garden on the web, where we can enjoy flowers that continue to bloom 365 days of the year!
The photographs appearing on my websites are either shot by me, or attributed to photographers under licensing terms as captioned. My own photographs - those that do not bear an attribution to someone else are mine - are all copyrighted. Some have been licensed to appear in a variety of media, including guidebooks, magazines, calendars and other websites for advertising, editorial, promotional and other uses . If you need to use any of my photographs, just write me a mail, letting me know the purpose and duration, and in the case of magazines, your circulation size. I will advise you the fee involved.
Tim in northern Thailand |
Now I can spend my time doing my writing as well as on my personal travels, and the more time I have on my hand allows me to do my research in greater depth. I work from home and I absolutely enjoy it. I live with my wife in our small apartment (small is good, I am neat, but housekeeping is not my forte), where I have a custom-designed study room. The room is very small but cosy. It has a wall of dark-wood cabinets filled with my books. I love books, but a lot of my research is done on the web nowadays. Still, I enjoy a visit to the bookstore every now and then to look up the latest titles, though lately I have to depend on Amazon as the local bookstore is too limited.
All my articles are written at a workstation, with three monitor screens side by side, two back-up notebook computers and, when I travel, a digital album, several camera bodies, lens and tripod. It is impossible for me to travel light. Even a trip to a neighbouring town feels like I am moving house. (Oh, I have cut down tremendously since then. When travelling locally, I often bring only just a small compact camera, especially if I have no intention of getting a creative shot. And I smile to see the people around me with their DSLRs.)
Tim in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina |
When I write, I embark on a mind trip of exploring and discovering. But more than just writing for fun, I now do it with a consciousness that what I write should not only entertain me, it should also provide the information that people are looking for, information that will help them as they follow in my wake.
Some of my articles are the result of spending much time hunting for information, asking questions, interviewing people, talking to the locals, searching for that hard-to-find document, and all the while trying to make sense of this wonderful world that continues to intrigue and amuse. Often the information does not come when I am right in front of an obscure building; it is the result of lots of research done afterwards, far removed from the building itself. These are the things I enjoy, to hunt for information, to assemble them, and then to present the results to a worldwide audience in articles which, I hope, make the entire process appear effortless.
I love hearing from you. If you care to write, you'd be surprise that I do reply, to as many email as I can possibly manage. Once again, thank you for reading. I am most grateful.
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