Tips Posts

In North America, it’s pretty easy to get by without carrying much cash around. For the most part I pay for all my smaller purchases with debit these days. If I have a larger purchase to make, I generally use my credit card to accumulate some points. But outside of North America and Europe, it’s been my experience that cash is generally still king. And while having a credit card is great for emergencies (such as being able to get a hotel or a flight in a pinch), I generally make a run to an ATM machine once a week and pull out enough cash to get me by. Local currency is best for obvious reasons, but it also helps to carry some foreign cash as well. In most places I’ve been to, many establishments will usually accept either US dollars or the Euro as well as local currency, so […]

Almost all airlines have some type of frequent flyer program designed to reward individuals who fly their airline repeatedly. While I’ve collected them periodically, I’ve never really obtained anything substantial using my accumulated frequent flyer milage. When I set out on my adventure back in January of 2011, I had a goal in the back of my mind to finally achieve some type of elite status on an airline this year or the next. I have worked with many business people who had either silver or gold elite status, and I imagine bypassing a huge lineup or getting the odd free flight is a pretty great feeling. Here are some tips for how to collect frequent flier mileage so you can earn free flights. Choose Your Main Frequent Flyer Program Despite being a rather seasoned traveler, I have come to the realization recently that I’ve wasted some of my mileage […]

Not that long ago I lost my only accessible set of keys to my Mazda 3 Sport. I have a spare set somewhere, but thought at the time that they were probably buried in the back of my storage locker in Chilliwack. Going out to Chilliwack to get them may have been an option if, you know, the key to the storage locker wasn’t also on the same keychain that was lost. Ultimately I had to tow my car to Mazda and get them to give me two new keys, both of which were entered into the onboard computer to allow them to actually start the car. Since that time I’ve reclaimed the set of keys that were lost as well as my spare set of keys. That’s great in that I now have all those items back, but unfortunately neither the FOBs (the wireless units that open and close […]

Canadians who just show up in Thailand are usually given a 30 day tourist visa without any hassles, or so I’m told. But given how I’m heading there for two months, I require a visa that is valid for a longer than normal duration. Generally people in my scenario can simply do a visa run, where basically you exit the country and return a short while later. In Buenos Aires most people would simply head over to Uruguay for the day and obtain a new 90 day visa upon return. But truthfully, I didn’t really want to have to worry about that while in Thailand, so I decided to get it all done beforehand. In most major cities visas can be acquired at each country’s respective consolate. So I went down to the Thai Consulate in Vancouver the other day and started the process. To apply for a visa to […]

I wrote a post recently about my travel metrics from the last six months. One of the observations I made was that I had spent roughly $500 a month on average for airfare. Given that I gave my apartment up in British Columbia prior to leaving, airfare is one of my only extra expenses I have when I travel. Taken together with a $90 a month storage locker and roughly $50 a month in travel insurance, that’s a rough cost of $650 a month that is in excess of what I would normally spend back in North America. If you do the math, a person will realize that they can actually make money traveling the world, at least when compared to the typical expenses they would spend back home. But I also made the observation that it cost nearly $450 a month to keep my car on the road here […]

One of the hardest parts about traveling with technology is lugging all of your gear around with you. Once you arrive at a destination and rent an apartment, you can store some items and only carry along a few things at a time. But when you’re in the process of traveling to or from a destination, you have to have all your items on your person for a period of time. I’m actually using the MEC Pangea 40 litre backpack as my main travel bag. For small trips I only bring the backpack with me, but for my major travel between destinations that I plan to live at for more than a week, I store everything that isn’t technology related in a suitcase and bring that along on the plane. My Backpack In terms of technology, I currently have the following items in my backpack when I travel. 13″ Apple […]

Given that I’m about to head out on my second round of travel this year, I thought it might be fun to tally a few metric from my travels so far. First, some quantitative metrics: Flight Segments: 15 Flight Distance: 51,908 (kilometers) Total Flight Costs: $4,240 Total Cost / 100 km: $8.17 Countries Visited: Six Next, some qualitative ones from this segment: Favourite Experience: Visiting a penguin rookery in Ushuaia, Argentina Favourite Restaurant: Lupita, Las Cañitas, Buenos Aires, La Cabrera is a close second Best Photography: Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina Notable Drinking Adventure: Drinking Guinness from a self-pour in Limerick on my birthday In terms of the next round, I currently have 8 flight segments booked representing 37,000 kilometers at a cost of around $2,200 ($5.94 / 100 km). That will take me from Vancouver to Japan to Thailand to Malaysia to Auckland to Australia […]

When I left my apartment back in November of 2010, I put the majority of items into a 8x9x10 storage locker. I spent about a week selling off most of the big furniture (which would have been harder to store), and basically just ended up with a pile of boxes. I didn’t hesitate at the time to put all my belongings into storage. I knew I would be gone at least four months, and likely more. But it’s now July, which means my belongings have been in storage for seven months. At a price of roughly $100 per month for the storage locker, that means I’m up to $700 to store a bunch of boxes. At some point one needs to evaluate whether or not keeping some of those items is worth the cost. I had a friend who moved away years ago who put most of his items into […]

I was downtown a few weeks ago and parked my car in a parking garage. Somehow over the course of the day though I accidentally misplaced my key chain, which has of course my car keys, my house keys, and several other keys. While I’ve misplaced my keys for a few hours before, I’ve never outright lost a set in my life. Prior to going traveling I always had a spare set around, usually over at my sister’s house, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But my current set of spare keys is actually either in my storage locker back or over at my dad’s house. Given that the storage locker key was on the ring, and that my dad was away on vacation for several weeks, I immediately realized how screwed I was. I spent an entire day trying to track them down, mainly at a few […]

Prior to setting out on my last adventure, I went down to Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) here in Vancouver and tried to find a backpack to take with me on my trip. I was looking for a backpack with the following qualities: Should fit as carry-on for most airlines Should have room for a laptop and my iPad Should be large enough to carry basic necessities like a few changes of clothes and toiletries With these criteria in mind, I eventually settled on purchasing the MEC Pangea 40, which is a 40 litre travel backpack that’s constructed so it will fit as carry-on for most airlines. How It Stood Up? Should fit as carry-on for most airlines – Well, it definitely fit as carry-on for all of the major airlines I attempted to fly on. That included Continental, LAN Argentina and Air Lingus (Ireland). The only time I had any […]