Saturday, April 14, 2012

Travel Planning

I read an article on the Vagabonding blog about pre-trip planning and I felt like adding my own perspective to what was written there. I am based in New York but have traveled the last 6 years in 20-30 countries. The longest trips have been in east Asia, primarily in China.


Where to go:

I am not sure how you could not know this already. I mean, in the whole world, surely there must be something that interests you; some place or some thing you want to see before you "kick the bucket." If not, you're probably not reading enough or hanging out with enough travelers. If you're really starved for ideas, meet up with a few Couchsurfers and ask them to tell you their traveling stories. I have rarely walked away from such encounters without fresh additions to my list of places to visit. Personally, I am trying to do less on each trip and focus on individual countries each time I travel rather than travel through many countries on a single voyage, though I am constantly failing at that. Worthwhile trips I've taken include any roadtrip around the United States which I've done 4-5 times now, travels around any part of China especially getting off of the east coast, Cambodia, Laos, India, Jordan. and many others. Upcoming trips include biking in New Zealand, wandering in Myanmar, and a wedding in Colombia. I'd love to drive from the US all the way down to Argentina or all the way up through Canada as far as possible. I still haven't touched Africa except for Egypt. I want to go overland from Sichuan up through the Silk Road area into Xinjiang and up into the mountains on the the Karakoram Highway. How about Eastern Europe and Turkey, or maybe Kazakhstan? I met a guy once at a Couchsurfing meetup who had just sailed from Portugal to the Carribbean. There are too many choices!


Time vs Money:

If you're going to spend $800-1200 USD flying to another continent, wouldn't it make sense to try and spend as much time there as possible so as to maximize the value of that expensive ticket? That's especially the case if you're traveling somewhere less expensive than your own country and taking advantage of cheap dorms, Couchsurfing, street food, and other ways to spend almost nothing on a day to day basis by going local instead of staying in hotels and eating in restaurants meant for foreigners and their wallets.


Overdoing it:

Sometimes trips are just to one place. They are to one country or one city. Sometimes a trip is more of a journey from place to place and then to a hundred other places around the world. We all have to work out how many places in one trip is too many places, usually by making the mistake of trying to cram too much into a single journey. There's no right answer. I live in New York City. I've lived here for eight years or so. I still see new things all the time. So can you really do a place justice in a few days? Well, if you have no choice it is better than nothing, but probably not, so try not to overdo it. Also, checking off a list of tourist attractions may be what you want to do, but everyone I know who has taken the time to find the local side of things in any way has never regretted it and has seldom looked at travel the same way afterwards.


First steps:

I always start with Wikitravel. It's free, it's fast, and they provide reasonably concise overviews of countries and cities so you can get a sense of what you're getting into. They have good sections on getting in and out, visas, airports, domestic transportation, important things to see, do, and eat, and safety if that's a consideration wherever you're planning to visit. The Wikipedia articles are also another good thing to spend some time reading to give you a sense of the history and the current situation in the place you're planning to visit. I've also lately become a fan of travelindependent.info, another good site for overviews and practical advice from experienced voices.

Since I am vegetarian, I do food research next. I search for vegetarian and vegan restaurants and read about the local food and figure out what sort of native dishes I'm going to want to try. In the past I have emailed vegetarian/vegan Couchsurfers who live in the countries I'll be visiting not only to make plans to hang out when I'm there, but to ask them for general advice on what dishes for which to keep my eyes open. One CSer in Cairo turned me on to Koshary (a national Egyptian dish made of pasta, lentils, tomato sauce, and fried onions) for which I am ever grateful and might have not known about otherwise. You don't need to be vegetarian to do this sort of research and get the benefit of local advice before you even land. If you are vegetarian, HappyCow is the most complete world-wide directory of vegetarian and vegan restaurants out there. I made my own directory of vegetarian restaurants I have visited (about 400 now) and want to visit (a lot) called More Than Salad.

Another thing I like to read about and spend time on is language. Learning ANY of the local language goes so far that to not put forth any effort into doing so is a tragedy. Start with writing down simple phrases in a notebook. You can find travel guides to just about any language online. If you are going to have more time in a place and are more motivated, get an "Idiot's Guide" or something comparable with situational vocabulary and basic grammar and do some reading. If you don't know any native speakers, you can find them easily online either via Couchsurfing or using language exchange websites like SharedTalk. Tim Ferriss wrote a great guide towards quickly assimilating new languages. Of course you can also pay for audio lessons and software like Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone if you are really into it, which I am. You will be amazed at the smiles and enthusiasm you will get from locals when you speak in their own language, especially in a place where tourists don't typically make the effort. It makes an amazing difference in how you are treated, even if you only speak a few words and botch it really badly. Bring a little notebook and everytime you want to know something, just ask somebody "How can I say this?" You will build up a little vocabulary in only a few days that will add an amazing new dimension to your experiences.

Finally, you can get travel books if you're into that sort of thing. The obvious ones are Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, the latter of which has been my preference. There are of course many others such as Insight Guides, Footprints, and one-off books for individual countries as well which can be great. Check out the awesome but out of print Asia Overland and Southeast Asia Overland books. Also I recently found a great one called "To Myanmar with Love..." which is a whole series available in other countries as well. If you're going to several countries, you may not want to lug around several books. Recently I printed out maybe 10 articles of interest from Wikitravel and took them to the copy store near me where they bound them for me into a little book for a few bucks. Then whenever I'm done with a place, I can tear out those pages and my travel book gets lighter as I go. For real books, just go to the bookstore and flip through them, or search for things like "Best guide book for Algeria" or something and you will turn up all kinds of recommendations. Amazon of course is good for more reviews of books than you could ever possibly want, though as always with online reviews, take them with a grain of salt. Also worth mentioning is the Kindle and similar electronic reading devices. I have a Kindle and though it is good for carrying reading material, I have found that so far the travel books that are now available aren't working well for me primarily because the images of maps are too low-resolution to be useful, and the little maps of neighborhoods and cities in those books are incredibly useful. This really renders the books useless on the Kindle which is a great disappointment and I hope somebody notices this and fixes it soon.


Couchsurfing:

I have been using Couchsurfing for over 6 years and it has improved my travel experiences more than anything else. For those who do not know, CS is a website where you can search for people in the places you will be visiting (or they can search for you), then read all about them and contact them to hang out or crash on their couches. Some people host others in their homes, others do not. The greatest value of CS whether you choose to stay with people or not is you will meet locals. The value of having a friend (or many friends) to contact in every city you visit anywhere in the world cannot be overstated. These people can take you out of the guidebook and help you actually understand what it means to live in a city, not just to pass through while you check tourist attractions off of a list. Think about how often you visit tourist attractions in your own city and how many of them are truly exemplary of the city you call home. Probably not that many compared to the places you frequent in your everyday life. Chances are if you call yourself a traveler (or a vagabond) more than a tourist, you want to try and get to the heart of a place and its culture and people, not just stand on the outside looking in. Although it is possible to do this without something like CS, it is much harder. The CSers whom I have met (hundreds) are so open that it is like having an instant friend, in some cases one who you feel you have known forever and there is so much good will and trust that it will transform any travel experience you have into something much greater.

So, when you know where you are going, you can search for people in that city who sound interesting to you and with whom you feel you have something in common. Then you write to them and tell them about yourself and plan to meet up when you visit their town. Also, Couchsurfing has online forums for each city and country where many people post group events, gatherings, parties, concerts, questions and answers and where you can do the same. Many cities have weekly meetups which can be a nice way to meet a large group en masse. Also, CS is not something that you only need do when traveling. When I am home in New York, I constantly meet people from CS and share with them my own view of the place I live beyond the neverending list of tourist attractions to visit here.


Tickets:

Everybody has their go-to sites, but a few I specifically wanted to mention. In the US there is this tremendously useful site called Airfare Watchdog that regularly document airfare specials and I have numerous fantastic deals there. It's particularly good if you don't necessarily have a destination in mind and want to go where it's affordable. Kayak's interactive map which allows you to explore the world visually by airfare prices and other variables is worth a mention though I typically do not buy tickets through Kayak. I most often start with Orbitz for fares originating in the US and heading elsewhere mainly because Orbitz is the only site I know of that tells you the actual, real full price with all fees and taxes included right up front without showing you a fake price. It drives me nuts how you see one price on so many sites, then you think it's a great deal (or used to think) and then click it to find out that it's a few hundred more. Orbitz shows you the final price on the first page of results. If anybody knows other sites that do this, please tell me, but I think it's tremendously valuable and I wish all sites did it. Bootsnall has a bunch of interesting airfare tools that are a little quirky but can occasionally land you better deals especially on round-the-world tickets, but I haven't used them so much lately. They are still worth playing around with, especially for one-way tickets.

One other thing to mention is that the long-haul ticket from your continent to the continent where you're headed is going to be the most expensive part by far. If you have more time than money, then you can get over to the continent as cheaply as possible and then use domestic carriers over there to move around. For instance, I like to travel in east Asia. If I wanted to go to somewhere in southeast Asia like Phnom Penh or Yogyakarta, and I tried to book the ticket through Orbitz or Expedia or some ticket broker catering to western customers, the price would likely be outrageous. However, if I instead focus on getting a cheap ticket to a big city like Taipei or Hong Kong which I might find very cheaply, I could then hop on local carriers like Air Asia and get a ticket to Cambodia or Indonesia for less than $100 USD, or in some cases less than $50 depending on where you are going and when. This is just one example but it holds true in most situations. You just need to figure out what are the big cities near to where you want to be and how cheaply can you get there from your home. Get a cheap round-trip or one-way to the continent to which you're headed, then figure out the rest when you're there. Even better, consider overland travel on buses and trains if you have time cause if you really want to do it right, you're better off slowing down and looking out of the bus window or maybe off the back of a motorbike than down from the clouds.


Accommodation:

Couchsurfing is an option, though I personally like staying in hostels so I can come and go when I please and not have my schedule linked to anybody else's. Also, common areas at hostels are good ways to meet people casually immediately upon your arrival, hear stories from other travelers of where they have been and where they are going, and have people to share meals and walks with casually without needing to necessarily hook up with your Couchsurfing friends immediately. Also, CSers usually live in the place you're visiting and work or study full-time, so hanging out with some other travelers in the day to go do some of your touristy activities is a nice option to have. Also, if you're on a long trip, it's common to meet up with people at a hostel who are headed in your direction which makes for companionship if you want it as well as splitting the costs of transport as well. So for online hotel research I read reviews on Hostel World or if you want to get a sense of how much actual hotels cost in a place without hostels, TripAdvisor isn't a bad start.


Communication:

Having a local phone is useful for calling hostels/hotels and CSers/friends. Using your phone from your country is going to be insanely expensive both for you and for anybody who wants to call or text you, so just get a local SIM card on the ground if you want a phone. You may need a friend who speaks the local language to help you get it working, but a lot of these places cater to travelers and visitors so maybe not. You will need to check on what the fair prices are, but that's another thing you can find out through searching online or through CS. You don't necessarily need a phone of course but if you're staying somewhere for months I have always found it useful. For calling back home there are cheap hostel phones, calling cards, and of course these days Skype and related VOIP technologies which make it free and easy pretty much anywhere you have fast internet access. For those who don't know, you can buy cheap Skype or Google Voice credit and call phones, so in case your parents don't know how to use computers, you can still reach them cheaply when abroad.


Being there:

Everybody has their own way to travel, and there is no right way or wrong way to do it. Just enjoy yourself and spend the time in a way that makes you happy. That said, slow down as much as you can. Consider that the local experiences you can have by spending time in non-touristy and residential neighborhoods and by meeting and getting to know locals more than just in passing will be just as valuable (maybe more) to experience as the famous tourist attractions. Consider that instead of being an outsider, you can actually experience a place as if you live there if only for a few days or a few weeks. Finally, you probably won't see everything so instead of trying to cram it all in, stop and smell the roses instead and remember you can always come back and see more next time.