Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations

Cheap Travel Advice Roundup

Once again, I’m scouring the web for cheap travel advice that doesn’t suck. (So you don’t have to read all the advice that does.) Here’s a collection of tips and tricks worth following.

The Frugal Travel blog has a great rundown on various ways to find the cheapest airline tickets. My trial period test was a bust on cFares and I don’t trust Kayak as much as he does. Sometimes I’ve found better deals at other sites by using this widget and popping up different sites. But Kayak wins at least half the time. Just remember though that some airlines aren’t listed on any of these engines: you need to go direct to check RyanAir, Spirit, or Southwest, for example. And I agree that for international flights, Vayama seems to do the best.

The Vagabonding blog has a review of a new application on the web called Budget Your Trip. I haven’t used it, and it sounds like The World’s Cheapest Destinations book is still a better help for budget travelers, but it looks promising for comparing costs in various countries.

Speaking of Vagabonding, there’s an interesting “How I Travel” piece with Rolf Potts at BootsnAll. I share his sadness over group areas in hostels/guesthouses turning into places where zombies stare at screens instead of talking to each other. Getting a late start to travel? Be encouraged that he got a passport at age 25, I got one at age 27. (You didn’t used to need one for Canada or Mexico though…)

I was quoted in this good MSNBC article on how to bargain your way to better hotel rates. The deals are often there for the asking—if you know when and how.

To get a real deal on flights—free—you’ve got to know how to earn and then actually use those frequent flyer miles. Randy Petersen provides a detailed rundown on how to better your chances on The Perrin Post.

If you are not convinced that flying is safer than flying, check out this CNN article on Aviation safety rates. Here’s my favorite quote: “…If you were to take a flight every day, odds are you could go 3,859 years without an accident.”

New LP Guidebook for Honduras

I’m not normally posting about a new guidebook that comes along for one of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, but when there’s been a three-year lag between the first and second editions, in a place where lots has changed, it’s a bigger deal. So let’s welcome edition #2 of Honduras and the Bay Islands from Lonely Planet.

First editions of a guidebook are seldom as good as competitors’ who have been at it longer and that was true for Lonely Planet’s first Honduras guide. It seemed incomplete, lacking in confidence, and not all that much help when it came to the maps. The original author has been replaced by Greg Benchwick, who has researched other LP guides from Alaska to Chile. The improvement is clear throughout, from accuracy of the information to better maps for secondary towns. The maps for places I’ve been to are accurate and useful.

What about the content? Well if the Moon Handbook for Honduras is a Thanksgiving banquet, think of this as a tasting menu with small plates. It’s half the length of the Moon guide, at 292 pages counting the index, yet the list price is $3 higher. (List of $23, $16 at Amazon.) For the average traveler staying for two weeks or less, however, this book is probably enough. It covers all the right areas with enough information to get you where you need to go. The lodging prices overall seem to have followed posted rack rates—which nobody really pays—but better to get a happy surprise than to pay more than you expected. Especially now, with tourism in a rut, you can get very inexpensive lodging in Honduras. If you base your budget on the rates in here, you should have plenty left over for fun.

This guide follows the dependable and easy-to-flip-through LP template. It starts with an enticing photo on the front (the approach to dive resort Anthony’s Key), includes some nice color shots on the inside, then gets right to the usual clear rundown on what you need to know. Toss in the smattering of Spanish phrases, some clear maps, bus schedules, and enough cultural info to get you up to speed, and you’re set. Being half the pages of the Moon guide, it’s also half as heavy, which could matter if you’re on the move and packing light. It’ll get you from Utila to Roatan and from Ceiba to Gracias easily and give you plenty of ideas for places worth seeing.

I couldn’t really recommend the original edition of this guide as it seemed incomplete. This version of Honduras & the Bay Islands is a different story and is worth picking up for your trip to a destination that is, in many respects, the best value in Central America.

Only going to part of Honduras and don’t need the whole guidebook? You can downloads parts of it in PDF form on the LP site—follow the link below and search “Honduras.”

Get it at Amazon

Get it at Lonely Planet

Cracks are Showing in Malaysia

THE SUDS-SWILLING THREAT TO SOCIETY

Malaysia has for decades had a reputation as a place that was stable to the point of being kind of boring. A strictly controlled media, a mostly Muslim population keeping a lid on anything too fun, and yet people of Chinese and Indian descent managing to get along okay with it all and keeping their cultures intact.

Things are taking a turn to the dark side lately though and something tells me this is going to be a signpost in history where future writers go, “It all started back in early 2010 when…”

There are a few moving parts, so you should really go read this full article, Malaysia Says Muslim Women Caned. What were they caned for? For having illicit (and consensual) sex. CNN says one of them spent a month in prison. Another has been sentenced to caning for drinking a beer. For real! If she were Chinese (or a tourist) it would be okay, but since she’s not she’ll get lashed.

The other seemingly unrelated things that are in this narrative are that severed boar’s heads (the real ones, not the lunchmeat brand ones) have been showing up on the doorsteps of mosques. A powerful opposition figure has been hit with a probably bogus sodomy charge—for the second time even. Eleven women were detained for “unlawful close proximity to members of the opposite sex.”

All I can say is, “Yikes!” Malaysia is getting interesting, but not in a good way. If the fundamentalists take over, non-Muslim tourism there will become about as popular as it has historically been in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

And Malaysia has been one of the cheapest places to live for retirees because of the My Second Home program. But do you want your second home to be in a place where a woman can get caned for sipping a beer? Stay tuned…

Buy Some World Music, Help Out Haiti

Want to provide some relief to Haiti by just buying some music?

Putumayo is re-releasing its compilations French Caribbean and the children’s CD Caribbean Playground and will be donating 100% of the proceeds from the sale of each CD to the Red Cross for Haitian relief throughout 2010. These CDs are available at retailers around the world or you can click on the links in this paragraph to get them at Amazon.

See more about the collections and listed to samples at www.putumayo.com.

See the Perceptive Travel archives for lots of world music reviews, including other albums from Putumayo.

Machu Pichu Access Still a Mess

If you were planning to head to Peru anytime before May, I hope you’ve been to Machu Picchu already. Recent rains, floods, and mudslides in the area have cut off the main route to get there or get out: the train line. It could be April before things are back to normal.

Here’s the rundown from the latest South American Explorer newsletter:

Repair work on the connections to Machu Picchu is ongoing, with the current word being that the back road – via Santa Maria & Santa Teresa – will be open in the next 2 weeks. Also, there are plans to increase the availability of Helicopter tours to Machu Picchu from Cusco. The situation on the train link between Aguas Calientes and Ollantaytambo/Poroy is that it the intention is to have it back in operation in 8 weeks (possibly by the end of March), however this is dependent on the weather.

For further info, please visit our web page: http://www.saexplorers.org/clubhouses/cusco

So there will be some kind of back road through the jungle or you can pay up and come in a helicopter. Or you book that trip to Peru for when it’s not rainy season instead.

Remember, this is an inconvenience for travelers, but be glad you don’t live in Aguas Calientes or live in a building that was next to the river. (Check out a scary photo in this CBC story on the floods.)