About Travelfish

Travelfish is a small, privately held Australian company producing original travel content to Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. You can read some brief information about some of the people behind Travelfish here.

General

Overview
Travelfish is always growing -- we try to add as much content as quickly as we can. Please be patient, but at the same time if you have any suggestions on how we can improve the site as we grow, please let us know.

Is this site free?
The information you see online in its present format is free and will remain so to both members and non-members. The Travelfish Guides are not free but are instead sold for a nominal fee.

I want to know somewhere nice to stay in some place not listed in your site, can I email you to ask?
Sure, and we'll help you out if we can.

Some of the information I read on the site is incorrect. What should I do?
Please let us know and we'll look into it.

Listing Comments

Why do I have to be a member to make a comment?
Because we say so. Seriously, you need to be a member to give us some control over what appears on the site. We want comments to remain relevant and useful.

I made a comment but "it failed because of illegal characters". What does that mean?
It means you entered a comment that contained unusual characters, such as %^&*. Letters and numbers should be fine, but if you still have problems let us know.

I'm affiliated with a listing and disagree with what you have written about the listing or with a comment another user has added. What should I do?
Please contact us and we'll look into it. If a user comment is not relevant to your listing it will be removed. If your complaint is regarding what we have said we will investigate.

Listings

What does "This record was added on: " and "Last Updated: " on the profile pages mean?
The first refers to the day the record was entered into the database, and means it was most likely researched a few days prior to that. The second refers to the last time the record was altered. It does not mean we necessarily went back there again.

Do you stay in every place you list or review?
We do not stay at every place we list, however, as for example with over 100 guesthouses around Khao San Road, it's simply not feasible. But every place listed has been visited by the researcher and where possible he or she has had seen at least one room. We do stay at a lot of places, but we do not identify them.

How long does it take for something to get listed?
As little as five minutes. If a researcher has a good meal, he or she can go to an internet cafe, enter the details, and post them up immediately. Depending on who you ask, a traditional guidebook is at least six to twelve months out of date by the time it hits bookstore shelves.

What are the stars for?
Everything is rated by stars on a scale of one to ten. Sometimes due to space restrictions this is averaged and displayed as a scale of one to five. The idea is to give you an idea of roughly how good or bad a place is. We try to be consistent, but if you disagree please add your own comment.

Troubleshooting

Cookies
You need to enable cookies to be able to log into Travelfish. If you are using Internet Explorer, you should be able to access the site with the default privacy settings. If you think you are allowing cookies but are still unable to access the site, please let us know and we'll look into it.

Problems accessing the Member Centre?
A very small number of people have reported problems accessing the Member Centre. When they try to add an e-Fish to their aquarium, they get logged out of the site. We believe this to be caused by some versions of ZoneAlarm, particularly the latest versions with web filtering. If you have are experiencing a similar problem, please let us know.

Terms of Use

Travelfish is not responsible to you or anyone else for any loss, damage, liability, cost or expense suffered in connection with the use of Travelfish or any of its content.

Travelfish is provided "as is" and we make no warranties or representations about it or its content. We exclude any liability which may arise as a result of the use of Travelfish, its content or the information on it.

We will never be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or loss of business profits or revenue arising out of the use of Travelfish.

About Travelfish

Is this site independent?
Absolutely. Our researchers review places anonymously and record their views honestly. We do not shy away from saying a place is a dump or promoting somewhere we think is great. No payment of any kind is accepted or requested for any listing on the site. We do not accept free accommodation, nor any other kind of freebie, in return for coverage of any kind -- positive, negative or anything in between.

We do however, accept complimentary books for book-review purposes. Where we have accepted a book free of charge this is clearly marked in the review. Not all reviews are based on free copies -- sometimes we do buy them -- really!

If you have a book you'd like us to review, please contact us and let us know a bit more about the title(s). We only review books we feel are relevant to our readers and while our focus is on guidebooks, we are open to all manner of literature -- just no pulp fiction about the Bangkok bar scene please. Authors/publishers will be given right of reply on any review should they not agree with what we have to say.

Who are your researchers?
Our researchers are independent travellers who have mostly settled in the region. Although mostly Australian, we have also employed Thai, English, American, Singaporean and Canadian researchers.

I want to use some of your content, photos or maps can I?
Maybe. Please contact us.

Who draws your maps?
We do.

Why do the maps have trees throughout the cities when there are not really many trees?
Call it wishful thinking on our behalf.

Thank you

Mega thanks to Wayne who travelled all over the countryside for us from the get go.

Big thanks to Mark for his photos of southern Lao bus stations and other major tourist destinations.

A huge thank you to Mangoboy and his tireless bug testing. All the bugs that remain are of course ours.

A massive thank you to the Sydney team who keep the paperwork under control, the newspapers in the mail and the good solid stream of advice uninterrupted.

Thanks to the beta testers - you know who you are.

Thanks also to the Tourism Authority of Thailand for their assistance.