Road trips: A word from Noah

by Miguel Gluton

Noah has asked me to make sure that everyone knows all the facts about our recent road trip in Thailand. He’s still learning to read and write but talking he has definitely mastered so I am writing this for him.

Before going to Thailand, Dad bought a GPS app for the iPhone with maps for Malaysia and Thailand. It’s great. It even knows where hotels and petrol stations are. But there’s three things you need to know about our road trip in Thailand that Mum probably hasn’t told you.

Fact 1: The GPS app is smarter than Mum and Dad.

The GPS knows lots of stuff that Mum and Dad don’t. It doesn’t get left or right confused. And it doesn’t get us lost. Which solves a lot of yelling and gets me to the beach faster.

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Fact 2: Actually, the GPS is only slightly smarter than Dad. But not Mum.

On our second day of driving, Mum was trying to get directions to our next town when she accidentally programmed in HOME. That’s Penang, almost 8 hours away! We drove for 10 minutes before Dad realised we were going the wrong way. Even with a GPS Mum can still get us lost.

Hayley: She’s also crashed the car twice!

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Fact 3: I am smarter than the GPS.

I’m six. That means I’m super smart. I know long dinosaur names and everything about them. I even know about animals that were around before the dinosaurs. I can also beat Mum at memory without her even letting me win. I will probably also have super powers when I grow up. Dad might have a superman shirt but I will be able to beat him with my super powers.

Dad told me that the GPS is smarter than everyone in the car except Hayley and me. I believe him!  

Well I believe I’m smarter than the GPS. Hayley … I’m not so sure.

And now a note from Mum: The iPhone app we bought was the Tom-Tom app and it was honestly fantastic. The maps were amazingly accurate, even down to the location of service stations, major road works and hotels. When we took a wrong turn it recalculated the journey. It handled ferry crossings and was pretty spot on with time estimates. You don’t even need a local sim card for it to work. The app uses the iPhone’s built in GPS. We have it on the iPad as well but the GPS doesn’t seem to work as well. Maybe it’s because it’s not a 3G iPad. It’s possibly the most expensive app we’ve ever bought but well worth it.

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