RTW Travel Articles from July, 2008

Anti-TV snobs are really missing something on a RTW

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I’ll admit it. I like TV, and that doesn’t always make me popular with other travelers. So many of my fellow road warriors are part of that cult that swears they don’t even own a TV, that I actually believe a few of them. And that’s fine with me. When you are living at home if you choose not to own a TV at least you know what you are missing. But while on the road you might actually consider trying to watch some boob tube in certain locations, for the reasons I’ll describe below.

Television can give you a more honest look at culture than anything else

When you travel to a city and then stay in the historic center you are seeing an idealized view of how life in that country really is. You might spend the afternoon at an art museum and then the evening in the nightlife district, but 99% of the real population isn’t doing that because they are working during the day and then watching a bit of TV at night. Spending a day at the Louvre might help you understand what Paris was like 300 years ago (or maybe it won’t), but it doesn’t tell you a thing about the city today. (more…)

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Thumb drives are a RTW traveler’s best friend

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

While many people will continue to debate whether or not you should bring a laptop computer with you on your RTW trip, I think it’s pretty clear that everyone should be bringing at least one USB Flash drive, also known as a “thumb drive,” with them. If you aren’t yet aware of what these things do, they are extremely small solid-state storage drives that are very durable and very cheap.

They can hold as much as 32 gigabytes of data, although those are still quite expensive as of this writing. The 2 and 4 GB sizes are the most popular as of now. You just insert this tiny thumb-shaped thing into a USB slot on any computer, and the thing will appear on the desktop as another hard drive. There are no moving parts so they are very durable, and they get their power from the USB connection itself, so you never have to worry about plugs or power converters. (more…)

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Off-season destinations work well on a RTW trip

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

If you are early in your itinerary planning for your round the world trip, you might be tempted to try your absolute best to string the cities and areas together in a way that gives you the most possible visits during “high season.” That’s understandable, and since you’ll be going to so many places it might not be too difficult, but it also might not be wise for a couple different reasons.

One fairly obvious concern is cost. If you spend summer in Europe and then make your way to South America just in time for its own summer, you’ll be paying peak hotel rates and airfares each step of the way. Since expenses are such a concern for nearly every RTW traveler, you might actually be better off trying to do the exact opposite as the above.

The other part of this issue is that when you travel to a place during its peak season you’ll have the most competition for hostel beds and cheap hotel rooms. Those of us who like to wing it and book places as we go on a RTW can be severely hampered by this situation because it means either booking beds way in advance or sometimes having to stay in undesirable places or neighborhoods. (more…)

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Special July fares for RTW tickets

Monday, July 7th, 2008

With the rising cost of airline tickets on even the simplest of round-trip itineraries, you might just have assumed that around the world tickets would be so astronomically expensive as to make such a trip unthinkable. You might have assumed that you’ll have to postpone your RTW trip indefinitely, or at least until gas prices drop a bit or you’ve managed to save up that extra few thousand to cover airfare. Well, the good news is that although you may have trouble finding things like cheap international airline tickets on simple routes, we’ve got some great deals on RTW tickets for July.

The routes on this month’s special fares list start in either San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles. The first takes in the highlights of Asia for $1799, including Angkor Wat, Bangkok, Xian, and Tokyo. The second gets you from South Africa to Bali to Bangkok, al for under $2300. And even our most expensive RTW trip deal for July is under $2500 - and it’ll let you see two of Europe’s most amazing cities (London and Paris) as well as world-class destinations in South Africa and China as well.

Here are the July RTW ticket deals - these prices are good through July 31, 2008.

• San Francisco - Singapore - Saigon / Ho Chi Minh - surface - Hanoi - Luang Phrabang - Angkor Wat (Siem Reap) - Bangkok - Xian - surface - Beijing - Tokyo - San Francisco from US$1799 (plus taxes)
• New York - Cape Town - Bali (Denpasar) - Singapore - Bangkok - Hong Kong - New York from US$2299 (plus taxes)
• Los Angeles - London - Paris - Cape Town - surface - Johannesburg - Hong Kong - Beijing - Los Angeles from US$2499 (plus taxes)

And if these itineraries don’t tickle your fancy completely, that doesn’t mean you have to twiddle your thumbs until next month’s deals come out - start planning your own customized RTW trip in seconds and hit just the cities you want.

Tags: airline tickets, rtw tickets
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Seeing a concert while traveling is worth considering

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

When you are planning your RTW route you might be considering either going to a city when a festival is taking place, or possibly making sure you are visiting a city when there isn’t a festival going on, but you probably aren’t thinking about planning your route partly around random concerts. As someone who’s done the concert thing quite a few times in my travels, I’ll tell you that it can be a blast and probably isn’t as complicated as you might expect.

Finding out who’s playing where and when

Of course, the first thing you need to do is find out where an artist you like (enough) is playing and when. Years ago that was very difficult, but today it’s a snap. Not many people seem to know about the concert trade publication called Pollstar, and they don’t really market themselves to consumers, but still they do a great job keeping track of nearly every tour in the world. Simply go to Pollstar.com and you can check itineraries of artists or schedules for cities for everything up to one year in advance. Most concerts don’t get scheduled until 3 or 4 months before they happen, so you can’t expect the site to predict events that aren’t yet confirmed, but if you keep checking you’ll see everything. (more…)

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