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Clock Project. Photo: Andrew Magill / Flickr
Slow and steady wins the race, but sometimes it’s the hare that gets the best travel deals. The great productivity website Lifehacker had this article on the virtues of being late: How to plan an awesome, last-minute vacation on the cheap.
The article covers everything from choosing the destination to booking a flight to finding a place to stay. Flights are often the biggest expense. Reserving your flight as close to takeoff as possible allows you to reap a big discount, because the airlines will sometimes slash airfares to keep the plane from flying with empty seats. As long as you’re not heading into a major holiday, that strategy is solid.
However, the article didn’t cover one of my favorite aspects of travel: food. One of my top tricks is to look up restaurants on Chowhound, a popular discussion board for serious foodies and gourmets. There are hot discussion threads on cuisines from all over the world, for a wide range of budgets.
Do you have any stories of snagging great deals on the fly? Please share your stories in the comments.
“I came to realize that I traveled best when I traveled no faster than a dog could trot.”
–Gardner McKay, Journey Without a Map (2009)
“The whole point of traveling is to arrive alone, like a specter, in a strange country at nightfall, not in the brightly lit capital but by the back door, in the wooded countryside, hundreds of miles from the metropolis, where, typically, people don’t see many strangers and were hospitable and do not instantly think of you as money on two legs. Arriving in the hinterland with only the vaguest plans is a liberating event. It can be a solemn occasion for discovery, or more like an irresponsible and random haunting of another planet.”
–Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
8-bed dorm room at Barnacles Hostel Galway. Photo: Barnacles Hostels / Flickr
Hostels are a mainstay of the budget travel circuit. Share a dorm room with strangers, shave off a big percentage of your accommodation costs. They do come with some drawbacks however, as this article from The Sydney Morning Herald describes: The problem with staying in hostels.
Although for me, the “problem” the author writes about is my favorite benefit of staying in hostels: meeting other travelers. I can’t imagine how lonely my trips would have been had I opted for private rooms in hotels. As for getting distracted, I think it’s really a matter of self-control and politely saying “no.” If you only have one day left in your trip and you’re really set on visiting a certain site, then just go. There’s no shame in politely declining an offer from a fellow traveler to hang out in a pub.
I can see where he’s coming from, since I’ve encountered some of the problems he’s described, as well others that didn’t make the list. For example, people who snore. Whenever I walk into a hostel room and see 10+ beds, my heart sinks. I know the odds favor that at least one person will be a heavy snorer. Yes, I’ve also had people stumbling in late at night while drunk, or waking up insanely early to pack because they have a 6 a.m. flight. But you have to take the bad with the good.
Did you start out sleeping in hostels, but have moved up the accommodation ladder a bit? It’d be nice to stay in small guesthouses with private rooms, but still have a big common area that encourages conversation. For more discussion, you can check out this post: Three modes of travel.
How do you feel about hostels? Please share your stories in the comments.
“The Caribbean holiday is a mass-marketed product as well as a place. Like a tin of fruit cocktail, the promise of a holiday experience has been manufactured out of the material and ideological resources available to contemporary culture. The “destination,” as they say in the business, is an integral part of the identity of the Caribbean holiday product at the same time as it’s strangely irrelevant: basically everything with sun and palm trees will do.”
–Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature (1991)
Age: 28
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Quote: “ It’s exciting to buy stuff when you’re in the planning phase. It makes you feel like you’re already in the process. But resist the urge – you need much less than you think.”
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“A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people’s existence that are rarely reflected in journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. Despite the internet and the revolution in communications, there is still no substitute.”
–Colin Thubron, quoted in “Home truths on abroad“, The Guardian, September 19, 2009
Where are you at in your life? Are you working in a career that you know is clearly not for you? Have you spent your days since college in a cubicle working in a job you feel no passion for? Or maybe you actually love your job but the long hours and little vacation time is burning you out? Have you dreamed of leaving it all behind for a while to travel and experience the world?
If this is you, then consider taking a career break, a sabbatical, or a leave of absence from your job. If you live in a country like the United States that doesn’t exactly embrace this whole philosophy, realize that while it may be challenging, there are plenty of others like you who have done it, are planning to do it, and are dreaming of leaving their jobs behind for a while to traverse the globe.
BootsnAll recently had an entire week dedicated to career breaks. If you have dreamed of taking a career break yourself but are worried about how it will impact your career, why don’t you take take advice from those who have done it before. The vast majority of people who take career breaks come back more inspired and more focused on what it is they want out of their lives. And most who have taken that plunge come back more confident, finding it to be a positive on their resumes. A contributor to the article Why a Travel Break Can Be the Best Career Move You’ll Ever Make, Nancy Sathre-Vogel, says, “I added a special section to my resume called ‘Proudest Moment’ and have our bike journey to the ends of the world explained there. I feel it’s a huge benefit to others so want to make sure it’s prominent. Anybody who doesn’t want to hire me because I spent four years biking around the world is somebody I don’t want to work for anyway.”
Check out the whole article: Why a Travel Break Can Be the Best Career Move You’ll Ever Make
If this is a topic that interests you, then you definitely need to check out what the folks over at Meet, Plan, Go! are doing. They are hosting their second annual event in 17 cities across North America on October 18. The events are meant to bring people together who have taken career breaks, are planning one, or simply want to find out more information about doing something that’s so uncommon in our society. If you are near any of these cities, you should get your tickets now and get ready to be inspired by like-minded people:
For more information on career breaks plus all the tools to help you prepare for the trip of a lifetime, don’t forget to sign up for BootsnAll’s monthly RTW Travel Newsletter.
Foreign currency and coins. Photo: Philip Brewer / Flickr
It’s the dream of many backpackers: to express our creativity through stories and photos on our travel blogs, and make enough money to keep traveling. Nomadic Matt is one of the more notable examples of people who have achieved this goal. In a recent post, he reveals the details: How I make money and afford to travel.
Throughout the piece, Matt addresses head-on how a blogger and his readers can clash over the thorny issue of monetization. The sad downside of success is that the bigger your audience, the more likely you are to attract critics and detractors. He explains his stance on ads, for example:
Just like you read magazines with ads, you’ll find blogs with ads. If you think I do this as some sort of insincere way to make money, I think you’ve found the wrong website to read. I love what I do and the ads help me do it just like the ads help keep National Geographic running.
Turning a profit from publishing content is nothing new, as Matt astutely points out. I think the main issue at stake is it’s easier to resent an individual vs. an organization. If your local bank makes a lot of money, it doesn’t bother you. But if you have a neighbor who constantly flaunts his Ferrari, platinum Rolex watch, and Neiman Marcus clothes, that might tick you off more. We react to personalities more than institutions. Not implying that Matt is blinging it up, by any means. He works hard for his success, and that’s to be admired.
There will always be self-proclaimed purists who insist that commercializing any form of expression will ruin it. If readers buy a blogger’s products (such as e-books), it gives the blogger real support and assures continued writing output. At the other extreme, some web publishers lose their way when “sponsored posts,” free press trips, and ad revenue gain priority over delivering value to readers. Is money the problem, or the love of money?
What’s your opinion on bloggers making a living from their blogs? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
“Traveling makes one modest — you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
–Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt
