Archive for the ‘Bargains’ Category

If you’re trying to book a vacation now, you must be wondering how on earth anyone manages to travel on a budget.  Cheap airfare is nowhere to be found, car rentals are the highest they’ve ever been and hotels are way more than you expected.  Why is that?

Summer is high season.   With kids out of school, more families are traveling, so demand is up.   When demand goes up, so do prices, and that’s what happens in summer.    So can travel in July and August ever be affordable?

Yes, if you’re a savvy budget traveler.

The most important thing to do is to plan in advance.  If you want to go somewhere that involves plane travel or renting a car, think about it well ahead of time.  Then when the airlines are having a sale, you can get your plane tickets at a discount.  Same goes for car rentals — if you book way ahead, especially if you use Hotwire or Priceline you can get a far better deal than if you book  just a couple of weeks in advance.

For accommodations, think about alternatives like booking dorms at a university campus.  You can get rooms all over the world at colleges that are anxious to bring in a little extra cash over the summer.  (But you can do even better if you plan in advance and go house-sitting somewhere exotic.)

Remember that there are certain destinations that can be done on a budget, but not in summer.  One example is Disneyworld. You’ll never get a good deal there when children from all over the North America and the world are flocking there.  So if you have to plan around your kid’s school vacation, go at a time like Thanksgiving, when you can get great bargains and also have good weather while everyone else is in the cold.

Friends suggested that we make a video.  I had no idea we  even had the software on our computer, but turns out we do.  So I just uploaded my first ever video to YouTube — now I’m trying to make the link here so you can view it.  We hope you’ll take a look at it, and rate it too (by clicking on all 5 stars, make sure you don’t click on the 1st star as then it gets rated as a one-star video and you can’t change the rating.)

Sometimes we hear folks saying they’d love to travel, but the expense of  eating out all the time makes it too expensive.  If you let it, eating can take a major bite out of your budget — but it doesn’t have to.  You can get good, cheap eats everywhere.

We love Asian food, so naturally we couldn’t wait to eat our way through Vietnam and Thailand last year.

In Ho An, Vietnam we were hit by a typhoon and were stuck in our hotel for a day and a half.  No worries — there were a row of Mom-n-Pop eateries right opposite.  Breakfasts were delicious fruit shakes and chocolate pancakes, lunches and dinners were stir-fries and pho (noodle soup/stew crammed with greens and veggies and if you want it shrimp, chicken, beef, pork, etc) — all for under a dollar.

In Chiang Mai, Thailand our favorite eaterie was at the food hall at the enormous shopping mall close to where we were staying.  On the spot they custom made dishes of rice, veggies, noodles, chicken, fish, etc — all for about 75cents!

Closer to home, in the USA when we’re traveling we try to go to places like Sweet Tomatoes (Florida) or Fresh Choice (California) where the one-price-buffet food is so plentiful, one meal will last you all day.

In England go to Indian restaurants and in France, Middle-Eastern is your best bet. In South America many restaurants have a comida corrida — instead of ordering a la carte you order the lunch special, usually a 3 course meal for three to five dollars.

Don’t forget from time to time to pack a picnic.  And remember that you can generally cut your eating expenses by a hefty percentage by cutting out alcohol — hey when you’re traveling, you’re having such a good time you won’t need to drink!

When you’re camping at a National Park, or hiking in  Cappadocia, the last thing you want is to be bothered by the everyday concerns that being on the phone or internet can bring.  But at other times when you travel, having communication with the outside world will be vital, and for budget travelers the cost of these communications can vary enormously.

When we were in Florida, one of the hotels we were staying at charged $5 a week for wireless access.  We considered going to the next-door Starbucks instead — until we realized that we’d probably spend more than  $5 on beverages.  (Since we booked with Priceline, we couldn’t ensure free wireless access before booking.)  Most hotels nowadays either provide free internet access or have a nominal charge, but a  friend recently emailed us from Las Vegas and told us the hotel she was staying at  charged a whopping $12.95 per day for internet access!  She’d been comped the room so didn’t mind, but she wanted us to warn other travelers to look out for those kinds of crazy charges.

If you’re going on a cruise, onboard internet charges are  exorbitant so make sure you do your emailing when you’re in port.

Globally, don’t assume that internet access in  small countries might not be available.  When we were in Vietnam, we stayed in hotels that cost around $10 a night — and even the smallest of them had several computers in their lobbies for free customer use.  We were easily able to keep a blog (you can find it at http://www.travelpod.com/members/windwalk) and add to it daily. On the other hand, my sister is in Turkey right now and has had very limited access to the internet.

As for telephones we know many folks love Skype, and that’s definitely an option to look into (skype.com) but here’s another one:  Magic Jack.  The Magic Jack is a jack where one end plugs into your computer and the other end goes into a phone. It’s just $20 a year (buy it online at MagicJack.com or in retail stores)  and whether you’re in Mumbai or Manchester, your calls will cost nothing!

Study trips and Retreats: Are They Worth The Money?

Many people use their vacations as an opportunity to learn something new, or to improve their knowledge on any given subject.

People go on immersion courses to learn a foreign language; they go to golf school to improve their game; they go to a country that has meaning for them and study it in depth.

There’s no question that some of these trips can be extremely expensive. Many universities offer their alumni study trips that are 3 or 4 times the cost of a trip if you planned it yourself.  That’s prohibitive for many of us.  Tours like Smithsonian Journeys, which offer museum-based lectures and guided study tours, Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours which leads trips on military history, or the National Trust Study Tours are simply not within the purview of the budget traveler.

That doesn’t mean you can’t take those same trips.  If you want to learn about a foreign country, you can plan the trip yourself for a fraction of the cost, and get just as much education as the university would provide you.  (We explain how in our book.)

San Cristobal, Mexico, a popular language-study destination

If you’re trying to improve a skill, it’s important to know what your main goal is, and whether taking a trip is the best way to achieve it.  Friends of ours saw a golf retreat advertised in New Mexico.  It sounded fabulous — but it was way out of their price range.  So they decided to take a 3 day long weekend and devote it to practicing and playing golf.  They booked a group lesson for the beginning of each day, then spent the day practicing what they’d learned.  They decided they probably got to practice and play more than if they’d gone to golf school.  And as for not having the surrounding beauty of the mountains in New Mexico, they decided to make their own, affordable camping trip to explore those mountains in depth later that year.

Depending on what you want to study however, certain trips can be very affordable. Many people go on Spanish immersion courses to Central and South America.  Don’t book a package through an organization.  Decide what city you’d like to study in, then book a language school in that city.  They’ll be able to organize inexpensive lodgings for you.  The city and country you choose is important.  Oaxaca is a popular place for studying Spanish.  It’s a gorgeous city, and while it’s much cheaper than many American cities, it will cost much more than if you choose to study in Guanajuato in central Mexico, or one of the cheaper countries such as Guatamala.

Some companies offer immersion trips that include staying with a Spanish-speaking family. Not only is this a much better way of learning the language — you’re forced to speak Spanish all the time — but it’s obviously much cheaper too.

But there’s one way that’s even cheaper than this — working as an au pair.  Europeans know all about this already.  Being an au pair varies from place to place, but it’s basically like being a live-in babysitter.  Many, many young men and women travel Europe and learn the various languages by staying with a family and looking after their children.  Sometimes they might do a little light housework too.  Americans fear this might be slave labor — it’s not!

Europeans are very respectful of their au pairs and know that this has to be a win-win situation for the family and the au pair. So there’s a limit on how many hours au pairs are expected to work.  Often the focus is on helping get the children ready for school in the morning and then being available to pick them up from school in the afternoon.  The daytimes and some evenings are your own.  You can go to language school or if you feel you’re already practicing the language enough simply by being with the family, you can go off and sightsee or do anything else you choose.

We just took a two week trip to Florida and were really happy with the prices we ended up paying.  But we could have paid hecka more!

Our flights were with Continental from Guadalajara to Florida.  When we started pricing them, most airlines were charging close to $600 or more.  Then suddenly the price dropped, and we booked it fast — for under $400!

Our next task was to rent a car.  We went onto all the websites that claim to provide car rentals at a discount, and were shocked by how much they were charging.  Two weeks rental was going to cost us anything from $500-700.  No way!  Even Hotwire, advertising a “hot” price, was charging over $14 a day which with all the taxes and extra costs worked out at over $400.  Priceline’s best rate was similar.  So we went decided to name our own price with Priceline.  We offered $9 a day — and it was accepted immediately.  (Boy, were we sorry we didn’t start with $7 or $8!)  Our total for the car was under $300.

Our trip to Florida involved finding hotels in multiple destinations.  For all of them we ended up naming our own price with Priceline, and we got some fantastic deals.  We never paid over $50 a night, and we saved anywhere from 30% to 50% on our nights’ lodgings.  Our first hotel, in Tampa, was the Baymont Hotel and Suites.  Great pool, excellent fitness center, hot buffet breakfast — and we paid just $35 a night.  We were so comfortable there we decided to spend one extra day beyond the 2 we booked.  We asked the hotel if they would match the price and they were shocked we’d been able to get it that low (but they did end up matching it!).  Our favorite hotel was in St. Petersburg beach where we had a waterfront suite that normally goes for $100, for just $40.

So remember — always consider naming your own price at Priceline.  You really can get better deals than you’d expect!  Just start planning with enough time that you can start real low, and build up (you can only name your price once a day and if it’s declined, you have to wait till the next day to try again.)

Retired friends of mine just spent a month in a fabulous five bedroom mansion they had all to themselves in Santa Fe.

They weren’t related to the owners, nor had they ever met them, yet their stay in this modern adobe home complete with swimming pool and stunning desert views didn’t cost them a cent.

How?  A few months ago, we told them about several websites where you can sign up to house-sit other people’s homes.  They duly registered on housesitters.com and listed themselves as available for house-swapping or house-sitting anywhere in the world.

Fairly quickly they were contacted by several folks interested in their services.  The folks in Ireland chose someone else, but a couple in Cabo and a family in Santa Fe chose them.

They picked Santa Fe, excited at the prospect of exploring New Mexico, but a little apprehensive about going into the home of complete strangers.  They exchanged emails with the home owners, and when both parties were satisfied that there were no axe-murderers involved, they agreed to the gig.

They’ve had a marvellous time and their emails have been thrilling to read — especially the last one.  “Hey guess what?”  Sharon emailed us, “we just got an offer to house-sit in Thailand.  We’re going next month!” And not just anywhere in Thailand but to one of the most gorgeous beaches in the world, Koh Samui.  Ah, the life of the retired.

Marywinne Sherwood of Northern Carolina has taken many memorable trips. She’s bicycled across Scotland and walked across England from St. Bedes to X. But one of her favorite vacations was one she took much closer to home.

“I was in a team assigned to build steps off the Virginia creeper trail, named after a railroad that used to climb the mountain circuitously carrying logs in the last century. Now they’ve turned it into trails. The landscape is beautiful — waterfalls, rivers, trees, hemlock. There are bridges that cross over the rivers and trees, and we were assigned to build steps. They use rebarring cement, and have this big sledgehammer and huge drill and we would hammer the rebar down. Everyone cheered each other on… It’s so gratifying to look back and see what we built and know people will enjoy walking down to the rivers edge to go fishing and have a picnic.”

Marywinne took part in a Sierra Club Service vacation, in conjunction with the National Forest Service. She’d done one before in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in southern Virginia. She did trail maintenance, which means walking along the trails and cutting back the brush or building up slopes where trails have eroded. She’d also done one in Maui, “but I was disappointed because most of it was touring.” Yes, you have to be a special kind of person to prefer sleeping in shared, unheated cabins in the forest and be willing to do heavy manual labor, come rain or shine. But 65 year old Marywinne says it’s absolutely worth it. “It’s so gratifying to look back and see what you’ve done, knowing that you’ve added something to make a place enjoyable, not to mention the camaraderie of the group. The Sierra Club has special people who love the land and appreciate the environment . At night people sit around the campfire and sing songs — it’s like Camp, which as a child, I loved.”

Marywinne doesn’t do service vacations because they’re cheap. She does them because she loves bonding with other people, and making a difference. You have to want to do this kind of work. But if you love being outdoors and enjoy this kind of environment, service vacations through the Sierra Club and the American Hiking Society are an ideal way of having an affordable vacation.

There are other kinds of service vacations too, ones that might be less strenuous, but just as important. Global Volunteers links volunteers to 150 teams in 19 countries doing everything from community work to teaching English. Amizade organizes housing, environmental and healthcare projects in 10 countries.