Making memories in Maisan, Korea. April 1997

There are plenty of naval-gazing travel blogs out there and from the start of this one in 2003, I’ve tried to be more useful than that. This is primarily a blog about how to travel well for less, how to get more out of your travel budget and maybe learn something, grow a little, and become a better person through the experience.

But this morning I heard a report on NPR about how it was 20 years ago today when Rodney King gave his “Can’t we all just get along?” speech in Los Angeles. This was in the midst of the 1992 riots after the four white police officers that beat him up (with TV news cameras recording it) were acquitted. I was watching it all on a TV screen in a bar facing Central Park in New York City. I was having drinks with the Charlatans UK, one of the bands I did marketing for at RCA Records.

So how did I get from there to here? I thought it would be fun to look at where I was and what I was doing soon after that, then 5, 10, 15 years later.

Almost exactly two years later, I was in Los Angeles myself, but only on a layover on my way to Japan, the first stop on my first round-the-world journey. I hadn’t traveled all that much before, honestly. Lots in the U.S., a few trips to Canada and the Caribbean, but nothing all that exotic. This was my time though. I had gotten fired from my job after being way too honest with my boss way too many times. My girlfriend’s company had gone bankrupt. We had talked about traveling long-term and if we were waiting for a sign, these were two big ones. We sold most of what we owned, rented out my condo, and hit the road.

Five years after that Rodney King speech, my journal was my “Easy P.P. Spring Notebook.” I was on month six of a one-year English teaching contract in Korea. My now-wife and I had traveled through Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel before settling down in Korea to replenish our finances. Over the course of the year, we worked our tails off but managed to save around $30,000. (That financed another year of travel and gave us a big cushion when we returned.) We traveled a lot around South Korea, sometimes seemingly being the only foreigners in town, and gained the kind of cultural experience you can only get from living somewhere for a while.

Ten years after those L.A. riots, in April 2002, I was in the midst of enjoying 9 weeks of severance pay after surviving four rounds of layoffs and getting caught in the fifth. This was the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and since I’d returned to the U.S., I’d been working for a tech company, writing just at night and on weekends. I was based in Nashville, but the home office was in Silicon Valley—tech bust central. But I had started writing my first book and now I had time to really get on it. Plus I had more time to spend with my new baby, who was a year and a half and chattering away already.

Fifteen years after those drinks while the riots raged, in 2007, I had mostly cut ties with any non-writing jobs and was making a living writing, editing, and ghostwriting books for business clients. We bought a little beach house in the Yucatan state of Mexico and all traveled to Guatemala. I got invited on a press trip to South Africa and Botswana and I took my wife to Peru, where we hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. I launched Perceptive Travel. This blog turned four. I won a Grand Prize for a story I wrote from a travel journalism association, then won a first prize a year later.

Twenty years after the music biz gig in New York, here we are. I just spent a year living in Mexico with my family and we’ll return there for two years next summer. This year I’ll travel to four countries in Eastern Europe on my own, then go to three countries in Southeast Asia in July with my family. Before the year is up, jaunts to Nicaragua, Boliva, Colombia, and Chile, and speaking at TBEX in Colorado. I’m living in Tampa, FL, creating new memories in a new place.

When you look back at your milestones 20 years from now, what will you see? Great experiences and growth, or the same ole same old and stagnation?

Just because you travel doesn’t make you a better person than one who doesn’t—or a person who truly can’t afford to do it. But at least it means you’re not sitting still. If your life is not changing and you’re not being challenged, you’re slowing down before your time.

Here’s to your next 20 years being full of exciting surprises.

Most travelers, moneyed or budget, come into Mexico via Cancun, Mexico City, or Puerto Vallarta. For the first and third options, you probably won’t want to stick around there too long if you’re traveling on the cheap. There are greener pastures—or perhaps I should say brighter beaches—bus distance away.

The Puerto Vallarta bus station is kind of isolated and rinky-dink though. Plus the buses to places an hour or more away don’t leave all that often, some just once a day. It’s close to the airport, so it makes sense to go straight there as it’ll cost you less than 100 pesos in a taxi or if you’re not loaded down you can catch a local street bus. But there’s not much to do around there, so here’s a lowdown from spending hours there on this current trip.

First, when you come out of the airport, you can ignore the gauntlet, go left, and head over the pedestrian overpass to the other side of the street. Have a bite to eat at Tacon Marlin right at the bottom. Great seafood tacos and burritos. I had the big smoked marlin burrito, some veggies, and a soda for $6.

Then get a taxi right out front as they’re pointed in the right direction there—to the bus station. If you’re hard core you could walk it with a backpack in probably 45 minutes or less, but it’s a dusty busy road. If so, turn right at the big Corona factory.

Here’s what you need to know when you get there:

1) The Super Voy convenience store inside has a left luggage center. They charge by the hour but it’s reasonable. Less painful than paying to go to the bathroom, which is 4 pesos.

2) Once you’ve got your bus ticket, you can check your e-mail at an internet cafe a few blocks away. Leave the station going right, then take a right again on the main street. Keep walking until you see it on the right. Less than a buck an hour there.

3) For parents, there’s a playground a block or two after that if you keep going. It’s in pretty good shape by Mexican standards and the kids will love it because it’s not so antiseptic safe as the ones at home. All metal and things go fast!

4) If you have your own laptop or tablet, you can log on with it at the internet cafe, or instead go to Fat Tony’s and have some pizza. They’ve got free Wi-fi. Right out of the bus station, left one block, on the right. Open every day but Tuesday and this is the only place to get a beer besides the convenience store.

5) There are lots of cheap eats around from street carts once the sun goes down. Slim pickings before that.

6) The Oxxo convenience store lights up the street and is the usual collection of unhealthy food and sugary drinks. They’ll recharge your Mexican prepaid phone though if you have one (so will Super Voy in the station) and it’s good for snacks on the way. There’s also a pharmacy next door.

7) ETN and Primera Plus give you a drink and snack when boarding, but neither has a lounge at this station. You need to be on Futura or Pacifico for that and buy an upper-class ticket. Electrical outlets are really hard to find though, so use one at the internet cafe or restaurant if you need to recharge before the ride.

Adios amigo!

This year I’m flying round-trip to Budapest, round-trip to Southeast Asia, and probably to South America and back—without buying plane tickets. No, I’m not going to any of those places on a press trip: I’m cashing in miles.

Many people are surprised to hear that I’ve never attained elite status on any airline. I rarely see the front cabin of the plane. It’s not that I don’t fly a fair bit, but it’s generally a mix of different airlines and there aren’t enough really long-haul flights in there to add up to 25,000 or more miles accrued in one year.

It’s also partly because I get a lot of free flights by the judicious earning and use of frequent flier miles. In the past I’ve flown gratis to Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and a half-dozen places in the U.S. This year I’m flying for free round-trip to Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Here’s how much Continental says just my second leg from Hanoi to New York would have cost if I’d bought this route (on Singapore Air) outright:

Yowza! Obviously I wouldn’t have taken that route and spent so much on my own dime, but that fact I was able to do it for 32,500 miles shows what kind of value you can get out of travel hacking. It can make a massive difference in how much it’s going to cost you to take an international journey.

How I did it – quick case studies

1) Free flight to Europe. My first free flight is going to be in April/May, when I’m going to Budapest and back and visiting three other countries overland. That was 40,000 miles on American Airlines. This barely put a dent in my AAdvantage balance. Sure, I’ve flown them and their partners now and then, but I pumped up the balance in a huge way by getting both a personal and business AA credit card from Citibank. The first gave me a bonus of 30,000 miles after spending a few hundred bucks on it. The second one took more effort—I had to spend $4,000 in six months on it—but I used it to buy things I was going to pay for anyway and put my rent on there one month to get over the hump. For that I earned a staggering 75,000 miles bonus.

Now I’ve got enough left to fly to South America and back (or one-way in business class) and still have leftovers. And I keep earning miles when I use the card, miles when I fly, miles when I dine out at the right restaurants, etc. Join the Travel Hacking Cartel and you’ll get regular updates on how to cash in regularly.

2) Free flight to Bangkok and back from Hanoi. The carrier I use most often (besides Southwest) has traditionally been Continental, now merged with United. That’s because it has better Latin America coverage than most, especially Mexico, going through Houston on the way. Because of the great Star Alliance they belong to, you can cash in Continental/United miles for all kinds of other great airlines. So I’m flying from Tampa to Bangkok with my family—all of us free—on a combination of United and Thai Airways. They’re having to buy a one-way home, but I’m coming back from Hanoi on mileage. It’s going to be a very long trip via Singapore and Frankfurt, but on the best airline if you’re going to be stuck in economy: Singapore Airlines. I couldn’t get any closer to home than D.C. though, so I took the flight to NYC and will see a couple friends before the last leg on a cheap one-way ticket to Florida.

How did I manage this? Again, a mix of flying, credit cards, and other moves. All three of us have been saving up miles for a while, so my wife was able to transfer some from her account to my daughter’s for $75. And I had to spend $35 to top off my account to get to 65,000. And we each paid the taxes, which were around $40 each way. But considering even a one-way flight from where we live to Bangkok is $1,400 and rising, not bad. What put both my wife and I over the top on miles though was getting an airline credit card from Chase that gave us 30,000 miles each. (And it lets us check in one bag free on domestic flights.) Almost enough on its own for a one-way flight to Southeast Asia and close to what you need for a round-trip to South America or Europe.

I also have regularly bought things through their mileage mall online, taken advantage of special promotions, and earned a bit here and there from car rentals and hotel stays. I even got 1,000 miles once from installing a shopping toolbar then taking it down a couple months later. I found out about some of these opportunities from blogs, others from the Cartel.

3) South America in the Fall. I’m going on a tour through Bolivia and the Atacama Desert of Chile in November. I’m having trouble finding a free flight into Bolivia at any time, but if nothing else I know I can get home from Chile on miles as there is plenty of availability. Once again, a little extra effort up front will dramatically reduce my travel costs when it’s time to fly. With the price of oil continuing to go up and the U.S. economy improving, flight prices are unlikely to get any cheaper. It pays big dividends to use another currency besides your income.

The Travel Hacking Cartel

As I’ve said before, if you’re experienced at this and don’t mind browsing lots of different blogs and message boards on a weekly basis, you can find lots of tips and tricks for free. If your time is precious though and you’d like for it all to just land in your inbox—with some hotel points deals as well—then a Travel Hacking Cartel subscription is an easy investment to justify. They guarantee you enough points to get four free domestic tickets a year or you get your  money back. Where would you go with 100,000 miles? And is it worth less than 10 bucks a month to get there?

All-inclusive for 3, at $108 per night

Magazines and websites constantly run stories about finding great travel deals and vacation bargains. Usually they highlight some nifty new website, the latest apps, or some Twitter stream that you have to catch at 3:30 pm each Thursday. Really though, it’s not complicated. Here’s the one-sentence answer on how to save the most:

Pick the right place, at the right time, and pay less than what most others are paying.

Pick the right place

Destinations are not priced equally. Internationally, a trip to Japan can literally cost you five times more on the ground than what a trip to Indonesia will cost you. Denmark will be exponentially higher than a vacation in Bulgaria. Two weeks in Chile or Brazil will cost you three times as much as two weeks in Nicaragua or central Ecuador.

Quito lunch

If you start with an expensive destination, all other cost-cutting attempts become much harder and less effective.

Even within countries though, major capitals and popular tourist resort areas occupy the top end of the scale. Compare New York City to Austin, Cabo San Lucas to Guanajuato, or Prague to any town in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic. Sure, we’d all like to spend a week in Paris, but if you’re looking to lower expenses, head to the villages instead.

At the right time

Nearly every destination has a high season and a low season. The optimal time is in between—the proverbial “shoulder season.” This is when the weather is still good and everything is still open, but the tourist hordes and peak prices have gone home.

In some places this is easy to figure out, like Europe in the spring or late autumn, the Caribbean or Mexico after the spring break crowds and snowbirds have left. In others it’s not as obvious, but a quick glance at a guidebook or destination website will usually clue you in.

The tough one for parents is always our summer, when school is out. But even then, it’s not high season in the southern hemisphere, in African safari country, and much of Southeast Asia. It’s not high season for cities in the U.S. You can find rock-bottom deals in places where it’s sweltering outside: think Las Vegas, Scottsdale, and Florida outside Orlando. Avoid the obvious and you’ll be rewarded.

Pay less than what most others are paying

If you open up a common online travel agency site, book your hotel, and add on a few local tours, you’re probably paying top dollar. You can almost always do better.

Hotel chains spend millions of marketing dollars to make you believe their 20 percent off deal or $100 spa credit thrown in is some terrific bargain. If you go shopping around on the likes of Expedia and Travelocity, it’ll look that way too. Contracts with those online agencies ensure that nobody is showing a price much lower than anyone else’s.

There’s a whole other booking system though that’s hidden–it’s even called “opaque booking.” You know this system by the brand names participating in it: Hotwire with its hidden hotel names, Priceline with its bidding on properties you can’t identify. Then there are the membership flash sale sites where you have to get the e-mails from the likes of Jetsetter, Vacationist, SniqueAway, and TripAlertz. Plus there are a few semi-hidden ones operating in between the light and dark, like LuxuryLink and SkyAuction.

You can iron out most of the uncertainty on Hotwire and Priceline by using online message boards that will clue you in, but if the idea makes you uncomfortable or you don’t want to commit your money up front, there are other strategies to take. The best one is to avoid the international chains entirely and book an independent hotel. You can find these in guidebooks, on websites dedicated to the destination, or on value-focused sites like EuroCheapo for Europe and Travelfish.org for Southeast Asia.

My sub-$50 hotel in San Cristobal de Las Casas

Sure, if you’ve got hotel loyalty points banked up you want to spend, by all means go with the corporate hotel or resort using that hard-won currency. But in many cases you’ll pay far less and get more personal service by staying at an independent hotel that is less visible but really wants your business. If you’re staying for more than a night or two, you’ll also have a better chance here of negotiating for a better rate or an upgraded room. Just ask a long-term traveling backpacker—they’re doing this every week.

This “pay less than most others” strategy applies to dining and attractions as well. Avoid tourist restaurants, sniff out the specials, and ask real locals (not a concierge) where they like to go. Find the local coupon books and consider using something like the Entertainment Book or signing up for Groupon or Living social in the place where you’re headed.

There’s one expense I haven’t mentioned in all this and it’s a sizable one: airfare. In today’s mostly transparent climate for flights, finding a real airfare deal is not easy no matter where you’re going. Use miles to pay for long-haul flights when you can and watch for specials. Many sites will let you search all flights from your own airport to spot the bargains or will send you a weekly rundown on sales. If you’re not dead-set on a certain place, you’ll find many more opportunities to save. In other words, return to #1 because that’s a different angle on “Pick the right place.”

For more timeless advice on getting more for your travel budget, pick up the book Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune, available in paperback and for the Kindle. 

It takes money, not a magic wand, to get into this place

How can you afford to travel so long?

That’s a question familiar to anyone who has packed their bag and taken off for months, a year, two years…or more. In the eyes of most infrequent travelers, who only view travel through the lens of a short vacation, it’s an expensive endeavor. You save up all year or you put a fortune on your credit card that takes a year to pay off. So how can you do that for so long?

It’s a very different type of travel, of course, and a different mindset.

Three nights in Orlando equals _____ elsewhere.

I just took my wife and daughter to Universal Studios theme parks in Orlando. We could drive there from where I live now, so let’s take airfare out of the equation and just look at ground costs. I actually got three nights in a very nice hotel for free from winning first prize in a travel writing contest earlier this year. So I paid half this much, but the rate below is what most other guests staying there were paying. Here’s a 3-day tally of the damage (and we spent less on souvenirs and sodas than your typical visitor):

$780  -  Swan & Dolphin hotel 3 nights

$331 – 2-day park pass to Universal Studios & Islands of Adventure (with AAA discount), 3 people

$352 – meals at theme park and hotel

$ 30  -  parking at theme park, 2 days

$ 33 – parking at hotel, 3 days

$ 55 – souvenirs, locker charge, gas, tips, other misc. (No $100 Harry Potter robe purchased)

Grand Total – $1581 for 3 days

So, what do you think a backpacking family of three could do with $1,581? That would cover two weeks to a month in a whole lot of The World’s Cheapest Destinations. Or it could be a darn great week living it up in some of the “honorable mentions” even, like Mexico or Panama.

It’s a different kind of comfort and stimulation, which is part of the equation in long-term travel. But just taking what a typical family spends on the theme park tickets, overpriced meals, and parking for the day would cover a whole lot of thrilling adventure activities in a place like Guatemala, Ecuador, or Vietnam.

One last note: these theme parks are jam-packed every weekend and school holiday with families laying out this kind of money. Recession or not, people are obviously willing to pay a lot—and wait in line a lot—for a few minutes of artificial thrills.

Did we have fun? Absolutely. I love amusement parks and my daughter was overjoyed.

But go travel long-term in cheap destinations and you can make those thrills last much longer. (Well, unless you go to Petra…)