L'Entr'acte

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post to give you a blog in two parts – the first announcing the winner(s) of our “Guess how much we paid for Valentine’s Day Dinner” contest and the second is related, but a slight detour from our usual travel posts.

Part One: And the winners are…

India is a remarkable place to travel not only because the culture is like none other we’ve ever experienced, but for two frugal travellers, it’s extremely easy to stay within, if not well under your budget!  So, many of you were close…the ballpark 200-250 rupee guesses (thanks, Joel and Noah) were a bit low (that’s about US$ 5.00), but indeed a good guess as we’ve had many meals that were close and/or under that.  The free guess (thanks, Paul) would have been nice, alas, ain’tnothing free in India.  Taking photos (such as the one below) can cost you up to US$2.00.  But the TWO ladies, very near and dear to our hearts, who guessed the same price at $9.00 are:

TIANNA HUSTON and KELLY MCCARTHY!  Indian goodies will be in the mail soon…

We, in fact, paid $9.50 for our splurge of a V-Day dinner.  We shared a delicious Special Veggie Thali (a platter of squash and veggie korma, rice, chapatti, and some other delicious mouth-burning side dishes – US$2.50), a PalakPaneir dish (spinach and potato) + chapatti (US$2.50), one mango and one papaya lassi (US$2.00), and a yummy dessert of nutella, banana, and coconut crepe (US$1.50), plus tax and tip, bringing us up to $9.50.  We probably won’t ever have a V-Day meal that cheap again. 

Congrats, ladies.  We think you two and your respective hubs and fams (yay, Kent, Jake, and Jimmy Mac!) should visit India sometime to try out your price-guessing skills first hand.  

Part Two: A Day in the Life…

Whether it is through the occasional query on family Skype calls or in the emails from friends that read “I know you’re busy…,” I’ve been sensing a curiosity as to how we spend our days on the road.  I would like to take a short break from our usual site-specific post to give you a glimpse into a day in the life of Steve and Sarah.  Of course, every day is new and different with each passing country, city, and cuisine, but there are several daily occurrences that have become as familiar and predictable as…say...a hot shower used to be. 

If you’re curious – read on, if not – Steve will be telling you all about our travels in the Indian state of Goa shortly.

(Please note: Times are relative depending on jet lag, bleating goat noise outside our bedroom, or the frequent need to just go with the flow.)

6:30-7:30ish  Wake up: Sarah is usually cradling her Mona Lisa pillow and Steve is cocooned inside his sleep sack (photos below).  Mona has come in handy, acting as a.) a stuffed animal-surrogate, b.) apillow for airport sleeps, or c.) a meditation pillow for the brief attempts at the end of our yoga sessions.  The sleeps sacks have also come in handy when we’re a.) too cheap/frugal to rent a room with sheets or b.) tooweirded out by the sheets provided.

7:30-7:45ish  Yoga (yes, Geraldine, yoga).  Happily, yoga has started most of our days.  Our sessions usually last about 30-45 minutes and hardly have us doing no-hand headstands in Hampi, but making (and having) the time for a little stretching in the morning has made our long-walking days and sore backs from harder-than-we’re-used-to mattresses all the more bearable.That, and our arms are looking buff. :)

8:30ish Post- (and sometimes during) yoga music.  Out trusty iTunes has come in handy by reminding us of home with some familiar tunes.  Paul Simon, Gillian Welch, Ray LaMontagne, and The Great Lake Swimmers have set some nice, homey tones for the days.  

During this time, we also embark on some shower and washing up journeys – most of which have consisted of conserving water via Navy showers (turning off the water when soaping up) or bathing in buckets left in the bathrooms.  About 30% of our showers have been sans hot water, but then again, over 80% of our weather has been tee-shirt weather.  It’s an easy trade off.  We’ve both gotten quite good at the bucket baths and brushing our teeth with bottled water.  And, it’s also worth mentioning, I have a new and immense appreciation the western toilet.  I’ll leave it at that.

9:00ish  Breakfast – sometimes included in our accommodations, sometimes not.  We tend to cling to western favourites (eggs, fruit salad, muesli, yogurt) and also, we’ve tended to stick to one place once we find a place we like.  The servers are often sad to see us go when we (mainly Sarah) share that “it’s our last morning here!”It’s nice to feel like regulars on the other side of the world.

9:45ish Packing the bag for the day – Sunscreen, check!  Camera, check!  Bug spray, check!  Kleenex, check!  Digestion-aiding enzymes, check! Books, check!  Water, check!  Money, check!  “Okay, come on, Sarah….let’s go….”  (Yeah, I tend to take a little while to pack up where as Steve could fall out of bed and go.)  Sometimes the bag-packing feels a bit like Mom sending me off to the first day of school with all new my pencils, erasers, folders, lunch boxes, gym clothes, locker combinations, etc., but on the rare occasion that Steve’s gotten a sunburned neck or Sarah’s had the sniffles, it’s nice to have all the supplies readily available.

10:00-1:00ish  A fun local activity!  This can be anything from visiting Buddhas in Bangkok, to touring ruins in Hampi, to roaming through neighbourhoods in Ubud, to browsing for pieces of local art in Sydney.  We find we’re usually good for a solid 3+ hours before the hottest part of the day sets in.

1:00ish Lunch – this can be anything from a local cheap eat to a picnic on the grass with the Tupperware we bought in Melbourne (one of our best purchases by far).  Our picnics tend to consist of hard-boiled eggs, fresh veggies, cheese, and (in India) some “just open and serve” lentil dishes.  

2:00-4:00ish Another fun local activity!  If we were hard-core tourists in the morning, we’ll make our afternoons more low key, or vice versa.  Of course, we always allow ourselves the downtime needed to not run ourselves into the ground during these five months.

 4:00ish  Cold or hot drink and a read – we’ve naturally fallen into the habit of having an afternoon drink (iced tea, lassi, chai, etc.) coupled with either reading, writing, journaling, knitting, catching up on emails, or just people-watching for a few hours before evening time.  Steve’s been a superstar with his writing (book, blog, etc), meanwhile, Sarah alternates between knitting a baby blanket for her childhood friend and hub’s (yay, Kelly and Jake!) baby due this summer, reading, or journaling.  This downtime has been such a lovely part of the trip.  The act of disappearing into a book and/or world-escaping activity has made the exploratory parts of the trip that much more doable.  

6:30-7:00ish  Dinner – like lunch, we’ll either sample the local cuisine or have a picnic at home.  Often this is a great chance to reflect on the day, or to just enjoy each other’s company with a glass of wine and silence. 

Evening time – During this time, we end up doing any number of activities: catch a local dance performance, slowly stroll home the long way, look through our photos, write on the blog, pop in for dessert somewhere, or, really, anything we’re up for.  

So there you have it: a day in the life of Steve and Sarah.  Our days have been so filled with many wonderful things that it’s important to be flexible at any given time during the day to allow for more wonderful things to happen.  But as creatures of habit, the above-mentioned schedule tends to be a fairly regular one.  That is, of course, unless we must take a 12-hour sleeper bus across Indian states, succumb to spending the day in bed due to an unhappy tummy, or are just feeling like lounging on the beach/in a park/at a café from 9:00am-4:00pm.  Part of getting to know the places we’ve visited has been about just being ourselves in different locales.  It’ll be fun to see how new places and additional people (yippee Mom and Pete!) throughout the rest of our trip will alter our daily goings-on.  

In the meantime, the journey continues…

One, Two, Three...JUMP!

We usually don't get to philosophical on this blog, but I hope on the eve of the journey you'll forgive a little verbal wandering. A screw up with the flights has Sarah departing with Zephyr in 7 hours (ug 6am flights) and me following a little while later with Flora. Crazy upheavel on the last night but I suppose that's how it goes. In the end the few hours till liftoff were chopped in half and now we're standing on the brink, which has me thinking of a few moments from the past.

I transferred to Wesleyan when I was a junior, and at age 20 made my way across the country in an old Volvo with two old friends to live on the East Coast for the first time. I expected to find red and gold trees, harbors, and ivy, and while I found the brick and the professors, I also found out the trees didn't turn colors till the fall and what you got instead at the end of the summer was hot, sticky humidity. The inside of my miniture brick-sided room heated up during the day to the point where I realizing sitting outside in the beating sun was cooler. But what you also have in New England is ponds. On the west coast, ponds are little mudholes that form in the hills when it rains and dry up soon after, but on the East Coast, they are entirely different creatures. They are small lakes, hidden in thick forests, bordered with beaten down granite cliffs. And they are also how college students coming back to campus escape the heat.

 I went to Miller's Pond for the first time in the middle of the night, when the heat had abated just enough for the breeze through the car window to be pleasent. We walked the half mile from the parking lot by the light of the moon through the trees and finally crept forward with our toes onto the edge of the cliff. It was impossible to see the water below us in the dark expanse, much less to know if the landing was clear to jump. I felt fear in my chest and thought about backing out, but the others around me (Pete H included) assured me it was alright, and in the end I leap out into the night. For an instant it felt like I wasn't falling at all, like there was nothing to hit, but then I splashed into the freezing water, heart pounding and cool for the first time in days.

It feels a ltitle like that now, standing on the edge of a journey where we have no idea what lies on the other side but knowing that if we take that leap we'll land somewhere amazing. It's frightening to be sure, but also envigorating. 

I've posted a few shots of the very clean and empty house to ground us during our travels, to remind us of the home we've left and have to look forward to on our return in June. 

Good night everyone, the 3am alarm is rapidly approaching, as is a very big day.

Malaria pills...check. Camera...check. Cat...cat?!?

A big welcome to those of you who are now receiving our updates via email and to all our patient readers who have been checking the blog on the web and waiting for us to stop talking about it and finally hit the road. The long wait is nearly over. After bittersweet goodbyes at our respective offices (Hey Arts Umbrella and BCCEWH folk!), Sarah and I have spent the weekend finalizing the lists, packing the house, and doing the first pack of the backpacks. And in less than four days, we'll be out of the house and living in our backpacks 'til June.

Here's a few shots of the fun mixed in with some thoughts about how we'll do the blog.

 Sarah, Zephyr, and the empty packs. They are so light all by themselves. Sigh.

There are lots of types of travel blogs. They run the gambit of styles, but tend to either be of the tedious-details ilk ("I just changed my socks!") or the infrequent but deeply reflective type ("I totally just reached a new plane of consciousness, man...."). We're going to try to shoot the gap between these two styles.

I won't bore you with the complete list of what goes into these bags, but here's a few highlights - malaria pills, universal adapter, sleeping bag liners (for those "budget" accommodations), and a sterilized needle pack. Zephyr is making a concerted bid to be included in the packing list.

So, by shooting the gap I mean we will do our best to not bore you with mundane details, but we'll also try to provide enough interesting details with enough frequency that you have somewhat of a feeling of climbing into our packs with Zephyr and coming along.

We'll see how far that yoga mat makes it...

The general idea is that every three days or so, we're going to pick the one event, experience, person, etc. that we found the most fascinating and we'll write a post about that. Pictures and potentially even videos will be included so you don't get dreadfully bored just listening to us jabber on.

The packs have been packed, and remarkably, are not back-breaking to wear. We'll see what happens after hiking a few miles though...

So that's the full scoop on the blog and our packing process. If we can't take you all along with us, we'll at least try to keep you in the loop.

Less than 4 days till liftoff!

A Quick Word on Visas

Visas are a lot like car insurance. Lots of money, lots of hassle, very low perceived value. Ok they get you in the country of your choice and all that, but still, come on, nobody really likes insurance or Visas (apologies to the Visa and insurance sales forces).

Allow me to explain. We are visiting 12 different countries (counting the EU as one for this exercise). 7 of these countries require a Visa (Australia, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Turkey, Egypt, and the EU).  Only one of these countries allow you to get a Visa 90 days in advance (Australia) and the rest its only 60 days! That means I'll need to be applying for Visas while on the road, which seems just crazy town to me. Besides the fact that each Visa appears to cost around $100 or more, which adds up after a while. Thank you thank you thank you to Thailand, Israel, Morocco for not requiring this process, much appreciated.

If anyone has had experiences with this and can offer some advice, that would be much appreciated.

ok ok ok.... but holy crap!

Ok, it's been a little while since Sarah and I have updated the blog. We've been to Seattle and all over Florida and have lots of writing to do, but that will have to wait, because we just booked our first piece of the trip. Holy crap. The receipt just came through for our travel insurance, which is being booked at the same time as our tickets.

A few words about travel insurance. Buy it. Ours covers the entire cost of a flight back home in case of emergency, medical insurance around the world, baggage insurance, etc etc. 850/per person for 5 months. A hefty price tag, but seriously worth it for the piece of mind.

Now that the trip is officially being booked, we'll post the final itinerary soon so you all can make some travel plans to come and join us in exotic locales.

PS. 217 days to go till liftoff.

Leaving on a jet plane part duex

Steve here - I heard from a number of people requesting more how, why, and wheres concerning round-the-world-ticket techniques from our previous posting. So I'm back to fill in a few of the details and  practicalities of booking. If you're here to read about the travel adventures, we'll be back to that soon, this is going to be a nitty-gritty article.

Step #1 - Figure out where you want to go. And be flexible.

It's a big place, the world that is, so when planning to see it you must make a list. Sarah and I started years ago cutting articles out of magazines, saving links to a Google Group, emailing them to each other and tagging the emails for future reference. One of our best resources has been the advice of friends who have been to many various locales and can recommend some great spots.

Dream wide and far but when you put your list together though, don't let yourself be fixated on too many locations. Pick three or four that are absolutes and put the rest in the awesome-if-we-can-make-it-happen category. You might find out that Bali costs 600 RT to get to while Bangkok costs 75. If you're planning on spending 5-7 days in each area, this is a huge price difference. A lot of adventures can happen for those $525 extra dollars.

Step #2 - Find a travel agent you trust.

Going into the trip, I figured I could do this all myself, book the flights, find some deals, etc. I mean how hard can it seriously be with expedia, travelocity, and the rest of the internet to help? I was thinking this right up until halfway through our meeting with Allison when she was able to pull up airline hubs, detail variable pricing through different partner airlines and destinations, and let us know she was already holding flights through her contacts at different airlines in some of our key locations for prices that were far lower than those I'd researched. Wow. Travel agents have the inside edge and the 35-50 they are gonna charge you per flight - extremely worth it. If you're going to NY for the weekend, listen to William Shatner and book your own flight. If you're traveling around the world, go with the experts. If you are in Vancouver, we recommend Allison Reshef from Travelmasters.

Step #3 Think circles, not straight lines

As we found out, the cheapest way to travel is to locate a hub of a major airline that is roughly in the geographical center of your travels in one area, then fly in and out of that city. In our case it is Hong Kong (Cathay Pacific has flights to Sydney, Bali, Thailand, Katmandu, and India, then off to Rome) and Istanbul (Turkish Airways flies to Rome, Cairo, Tel-Aviv, Greece, Casablanca). Because the airline doesn't have to deal with partners, they can give you quite low fares. In our case, the round trips ranged from $75 to $600, which each RT dumping us in a new locale. A few hints for picking your hubs:
- Look at the most difficult places to get to on your trip. For us it was Katmandu and Tel-aviv.
- Find the airlines that fly there.
- Go on that airline's website and look at the other places they fly. See how many destinations match up with where you want to go.
- Create a short list which you can go to your travel agent, who will be able to tell you the hubs and price out different options for you.

The shortest distance between two points is a line, but the cheapest is most definitely not.


Step #4 - Be creative about your traveling methods

For the most part, a plane is a plane is a plane. Some have smoking in the back, some have chickens, but mostly they are just big metal tubes. The real traveling is what we do outside of the tube. There are lots of inventive ways to get around besides the plane and I highly recommend researching some of these options, or, just leaving it up to what you find along the way. We decided for instance, that we'd like to visit Tunisia, but we looked at it on the map and decided it would be much easier to take a boat across the Mediterranean then it would be to fly. And the boat you don't have to book in advance, you just show up with a backpack, hop on, and all the sudden you're in Northern Africa. At least in my experience growing up on the west coast of the US, the distances were so large that planes were the only way to go, so I have to try hard to keep distances in mind and remind myself to get out of the metal tube whenever possible.

That's it for now, happy traveling!

Leaving on a jet plane...

We haven't done a collaborative posting yet, so here goes our first shot:

  Steve: We finally had some snow in Vancouver! It was falling fast and heavy as Sarah and I headed over to Travel Masters in Vancouver to get moving on the round-the-world tickets. As it turns out, the airlines are crafty and have figured out that people were buying round the world tickets in order to travel on the cheap, so over the past five years, they jacked up the prices. Star Alliance (which is Air Canada, United, and others) wanted to charge us $12K...a piece. Crafty and completely not happening. Fortunately, our friend Joanna's older sister, Allison, is a superstealth travel agent with crafty skills all her own.

Sarah: It's an amazing feeling to escape from life for a couple of hours and chat about every possible way to make an amazing trip happen.  Whereas mine and Steve's decision-making conversations err on the side of "what do you want for dinner?" or "do you think it's a better idea to pay the BC Hydro bill with a credit card or through the bank?" our conversations this past weekend (in Allison's patient presence) were more along the lines of "How about checking out the pyramids since we'll be in that pocket of the world anyway?" or "I saw some gorgeous photos of Bali on a blog the other day - can we go there?"  Daydreams take on a whole new meaning when the possibilities and $40 r/t plane tickets are literally at yours (or your travel angel, Allison's) fingertips. 

Steve: As it turns out, when you are talking world travel, the shortest distance between two points may be the shortest, but it is definitely not the cheapest. The ideal flight pattern for cheapness is, as Allison describes, "the flower pattern." You choose a hub of a single airline (the center of the flower) and each flight transfers you through the hub to the next location, using only that airline. After much stealthy computer work, Allison worked out that our two hubs should be Hong Kong (via Cathay Pacific) and Istanbul (via Turkish Airways). This was very exciting (see Sarah's reaction above). So, the flights will look like this:

SFO- Hong Kong - Sydney (Cathay)

Sydney - Hong Kong - Thailand (Cathay)

Thailand - Hong Kong - Bali (Cathay)                                                           

Bali - Hong Kong - India (Cathay)                                                             

India - Hong Kong - Rome (Cathay)

Both Cathay and Turkish fly to Rome, so then the second flower begins:

Rome - Istanbul - Tel Aviv (Turkish)

Tel Aviv - Istanbul - Cairo (Turkish)

Cairo - Istanbul - Greece (Turkish)

Greece - Istanbul - Casablanca (Turkish).

Then we find a floating vehicle of some type (I'm thinking rowboat) to cross over the Gibraltar Straight to Spain and begin our 6-week Eurorail pass journey with the only set in stone destinations being France to connect with Sarah's family and London from whence we'll sadly take the flight home.  (Side note: when we returned home in an excited state our new, wonderful neighbor, Drew, said, "How do you fly home after that?"  Good point Drew, talk to us again in May 2011 and we may be setting up shop in Switzerland.)

Sarah: So, the ball is finally rolling.  In a new direction, that is.  We're unable to book anything now (though with mine and Steve's trigger fingers when it comes to booking things in advance, it was a real exercise in restraining oneself) because we need to wait until 330 days prior to departure.  Who knows why that magic number is preventing plane tickets from burning holes in our underwear drawers, but we must wait regardless.  Allison seems to think that we can start booking things in March 2010.  Until then, we're supposed to "spend as much as humanly possible" on our credit cards where we earn aeroplan points.  I don't think we'll do that, but it's good to know that we may be able to use some of our points toward the trip.  Incidentally, back in March of this year, I made some phone calls to Air Canada to find out about round-the-world tickets (because like novices, we thought that was the way to go...until this past Sunday), and they said that we wouldn't have enough to buy a ticket so, essentially, we shouldn't bother.  With that advice, we booked ourselves flights (with the thousands of miles) to California for Christmas and then to London to be with the Haynes famiglia (Hi Haynes family!  See you soon!) into the new year.  Moral of the story?  You can use miles to fly you around the world cheaply, but using miles to be with family is just as wonderful. :) Speaking of which, stay tuned for some blogging from the Bay Area and Londontown....

So, Steve?  How do you think this joint-posting thing went?  Okay?  Think we're going to confuse the masses?

Steve: I think it went fine. However, we need more shoutouts. Everyone loves shoutouts. Gabe! Noah! Rob! See - instant crowdpleasers.

Our Little Black (and green, yellow, and red) Book

So, traveling around the world sounds like a great idea in concept - yea! amazing places, people, culture, wow!  - but, I have one word for you. Visas.

It's a depressing realization that as freely as we all travel around the States and Canada, that does not mean it will be that easy everywhere. Fortunately there are books like the one on the left to help out. We picked The Traveler's Handbook up recently and I've got to say it's invaluable. It details when you need visas, what to do to get them, and how long in advance you need to make the arraignments. Also gives you a little bio of each country, some dangerous areas to watch out for, a few spots not to miss, and other such relevant travel-related info. Excellent.

If anyone had come across any other books/resources for world travelin, we'd love to hear about them!

A caution. Do not read this book at work, in traffic, or in any other situation in which you feel trapped, tied down, or bolted to the ground by any other means. It will make you want to run to the nearest airport, train station, or submarine and just pick a destination you've never heard of off the wall and go.