Karis: So you're a pretty well-traveled woman. Where are you headed to next?
Tanya: Well, we have trip to China, Nepal, and India planned for this winter break of 2015.
K: Wow, that sounds awesome. That does sound kind of expensive though, especially from Anchorage. How you find such affordable flights?
T: Well originally I started looking at prices for flights before the available dates for the trip were actually open. And I wasn't getting really accurate price quotes for flights. I was getting flights that looked like a round-trip from Anchorage to Beijing that were priced around $2000 a person, $1500 a person. And then when the available dates that I wanted were open, I realized that they quickly jumped up to around $5700 for two people, mostly because it's during Christmas break.* I can see why they went up, but it also made it way out of our budget. So one way that I made it cheaper was to change our flight starting points. I did a number of ways through Orbitz, and I ended up finding out that instead of doing a round trip from Anchorage to India or Anchorage to Nepal or Anchorage to Beijing, it was easier for me to look up Seattle to Beijing round-trip tickets. And that ended up giving me a price quote of about $1000 per person for round-trip Seattle to Beijing. And if we look at JetBlue or some of the other cheaper airlines that we can fly Anchorage to Seattle, we can easily get two people round-trip tickets from Anchorage to Seattle for $600. So with that said, we saved huge amounts of money, over $2000 just with that trip alone. Actually, probably a little over $3000 we saved just on that flight.
Something else I like to do is, I like to clear my search engines, because they have time stamps, and they will flag your IP address for how much you're actually searching on their website for specific flights or itineraries. So if you clear your search engines or if you clear your data from your mobile apps if you use, say, Orbitz app or something like that, then it resets that, so then Orbitz can't jump the price up on you. It thinks you're a new user every time.
K: Wow, I didn't realize any of that. Those are really good tips, actually.
T: I told you last week. <laughs>
K: I knew you told me the search engine thing before, but I didn't realize that even on the app that you use, like if you have an Orbitz app. I guess I really didn't think about that.
T: Well yeah, because if you think about the apps, it stores your data from what you use on your apps, whether it's your high score on a game or whether it's, you know, searches you made, or things that you saved or tagged in those apps, so, it saves that data, so clear your apps and you'll get cheaper prices.
I also like to look for flights on Mondays through Wednesdays. Those seem to give me cheaper flights than flights Thursdays through Sundays, which seem to jump up easily by four or five hundred bucks.
Another tip I like to do is I like to get my tickets as soon as possible. Not because they're the absolute cheapest prices. But one, I want to make sure I get my ticket. Two, it's easier to budget, because I know it's already paid for in advance, it's done. I know me and my spouse get to sit next to each other because we're not getting these last minute middle seats. So it does offer quite a bit more comfort with everything.
K: Awesome. Okay, so you get there, you get to your place. Where do you stay when you travel to these other countries, and where do you look to find that information?
T: We travel on the cheap, mostly because we're there for experiences, not living the high life, luxury wise. I'd rather spend our money and our time outside getting experiences. So we don't really care if we have a super, super nice hotel to where we can actually stay in and enjoy it. We usually look, or I usually look on HostelBookers.com. I find quite a few pretty decent hostels slash cheaper end hotels on that website. I also will look on Orbitz, because you can collect Orbucks. So if you sign up for Orbitz, if you sign up for their rewards program and make sure you log in every time you make a purchase, you actually earn money by spending through them. So it's nice if you're a frequent user, because you're actually going to end up getting double the money because you get the Orbucks rewards, and then you also get the money from whatever rewards credit card you use to pay Orbitz. I also use Orbitz to book hotels. In fact when I was looking at hotels for China, there's some hotels that are really nice looking, better than some of the moderately priced hotels here in the U.S. For six bucks, thirteen bucks a night. If you look at the hotels that are $120 a night, it's essentially like a flat. You get a living room and all that, so it's definitely different in cultures, areas, regions you travel, based on prices, but I like to check those two sites.
K: Along with that, how do you find things to do? How do you make your schedule, in terms of what you're going to go see and what you're going to go ahead and skip out on?
T: Well, this is why I like to plan so much. Because we're not spending all this money and time to go and not know what our options are. So whenever I'm planning a trip, I like to first, pick a country. So say we're going to China, we really want to for sure check out the Great Wall. And with that, what are the aspects of the Great Wall? So, there are, you know, 14-plus sites that you can go to on the Great Wall. And so we need to be able to pick and choose, one, what's more time efficient as far as what's close to our hub/city we're staying in. And then what would offer the sites that we would most want to see? So we pick out those types of things, and then we become specific, but we know back up options in case those choices are not available for when we get there. So other things I like to do, is I like to see if there's any coupon codes or any kind of advice or tips on Trip Advisor. They tend to have pretty good stuff, and a lot of stuff is really accurate and really helpful on Trip Advisor. I definitely will look for, say, Badaling, that part of the Great Wall, and Trip Advisor search it, and read a bunch of comments on that, see what people found most efficient as far as going with a tour or going independently, and how they went about their independent travel, or does somebody have a bus or car or rental vehicle that is cheaper to do versus a taxi. So, that's one way to do it. But yeah, generally, I mean, you're going to a country that you actually want to visit, or there's something in that country you want to visit, so for that reason you're going to kind of know what you're going to want to do. And along the journey of searching that particular thing you want to do, you end up finding ten other things you want to do. But sometimes just typing in a good old Google search of, "best sites in China" or "top tourist activities in this country or city" will definitely will pull up a lot of interesting things. But with that said, I don't like to go to a whole lot of just touristy areas. And that's something else you can just Google, and you'll find all kinds of blogs or travel advice columns, those types of things.
K: So you talk a lot about your planning. Can you describe your trip planning process?
T: Yes. It all starts usually six to twelve months in advance. Mostly so that we can start preparing, well, for me in particular, start planning my PTO, making sure I'm going to have enough time off to take for that trip. And then I usually write out kind of a rough sketch of a week, or say we go on a two week trip, then I'll have a two-week little calendar, and I'll try to block out times for a flight. How much time would I need for a certain flight to a certain place? And based on that you can kind of get a rough idea of what kind of time you're looking to spend in each place. From there you have to take that list that you previously came up with in order to want to go to that country in the first place. So in China, it'd be nice to see a panda that's not in captivity, or not being, you know, made for profit via zoos or something like that, but I don't know if we're going to see that. But the Great Wall, a panda, Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, those types of things in China would be nice to go to. And so I write those down, I'll do a search on those specific websites to see when they're open, when are their hours, is there a certain time of the year that they are closed. Because a lot of panda reserves are closed during the winter because the pandas are just not very active, so they don't have it open. So that will kind of dwindle down your activities list based on what fits when you're going. So, from there I like to, again, get the information, so I know what's open when. I also like to write down from the central city how far does it take to get to each location. How close are these locations to each other? That way I can know how to bundle those activities for the day. That way you can really maximize your time, and you also have an idea of other options of things to do in that particular region should something go wrong or should your taxi take you the wrong place. You kind of have a better sense of how that region is set up and what you're capable of doing with the time you have. So from there I have a list of, again, things I want to do, things that we are capable of doing, and things we're not. And then I like to link other countries after that point. So for China, we know we're only going to need three days, because there's not a lot that we want to spend time in China looking at. We'd rather go spend time in Nepal. Because Nepal and China and India are so close together, it would be more worth our time to do it that. So after that, I know that India, we mostly, you know, it'd be nice to go check out different spots in India, but we also know we want to go to Seychelles and the Maldives. The Maldives are off India's coast, so that's something we can do with southern India. So I'm not so concerned with doing southern India this time, but we do know we want to do Taj Mahal. So Taj Mahal, we ended up figuring, or I ended up figuring with our schedule, based on what we need, we'll be able to be in the Taj Mahal area for Christmas Eve and Christmas. I ended up seeing on the Taj Mahal website that they are open every day except for Christmas and a couple other holidays, and they actually do some special viewing during Christmas Eve. They allow a certain number of people to view the Taj Mahal at night time which is pretty special, because they only do it on that one day. So that fit perfect with our schedule. So I researched that, and you have to make sure you get your tickets a day in advance, so with that said, we need to make sure that fits with our schedule. Or we hire a tour agency to actually cover that for us. So again, a lot of research with what you want to do, knowing the ins and outs of when's it open, when does it close, what time of the year it's working, any special events or discount opportunities that you may have while you're there. All those play a big key role. And then just linking those intercontinental flights together that fit within your schedule. And from there, I like to also write the prices. I write the prices of everything so I know how to budget. If there are larger priced items, like getting visas, which are pretty expensive because we don't live in an embassy city, we're able to budget, we slowly pay off the trip, that way have no balance on the trip after or during the trip. We spend our money on having fun, having experiences, getting souvenirs, and it's something that is a stress relief, because we don't have that giant credit card bill to come home to.
K: That's so much helpful information. So, you kind of already answered this question, but how far in advance do you advise others to start planning for a trip?
T: Depends on your budget and your financial capabilities. We are fortunate enough to be in a position where we can kind of just plan and go. A lot of people, though, need to plan for a couple of years before they're able to take a trip overseas. And if that's your case, then I would say, even without knowing where you're going to, but knowing you want to travel, just start saving money, and then when you start actually figuring out where you want to go, start looking at that information of again, the destinations, and your time frame about six months to a year in advance. If you're new to it, I would do it about a year in advance just so that you still get some of the accurate information, but then you also get the cheaper prices because it's so far in advance. If you're seasoned and know some of the other tips and tricks, six months should be plenty in order to get visas as necessary or to save money or slowly pay off those types of activities.
K: Okay, can you describe for us any other money saving tips that you've learned along the way?
Less is more, in every sense. One, living with less in day to day life gives you more to save and spend on trips. So, if you don't need that five dollar coffee every morning, then don't drink it, switch to a cheaper coffee, and save two or three bucks a day, and that will give you enough money to pay for your visa after a couple months. Instead of spending money filling your house with things you don't necessarily need, spend your money on things for the trip. So divert your budgetary flow toward the trip versus all these other items. Something else that's helpful is, when you're traveling, less is more. Don't take a lot of luggage. If you really find something that's really neat, you can mail things back, and it's usually not so expensive to mail things to the U.S. And so you're able to save on luggage fees. You're able to bring back souvenirs pretty easy. And you're not having to worry about losing a whole lot of items via theft or just forgetting that you had certain things when you take it on a trip, because you only take so much stuff. You take only the absolute essentials. And so you're more aware of what you have and making sure you have it in your possession. So that saves you money as well. And people are less likely to want to target you if you don't have very much to begin with, because they know that you only have one bag to worry about instead of three luggages to have to hoist around. As far as money saving tips specifically: research, research, research, research. You can find so many cool things. There's websites for visas that's actually quite handy. It's called VisaHunter.com. And it actually goes through seven top or highly recommended visa firms that will help get you the visas or passports that you need through the embassies that need to be gone through in the U.S. I noticed some of the visa centers are really cheap for one or two countries, but then are more expensive for the cheaper country that I would expect to not have been that expensive. If you do you're research, write out a little graph of all the money you're spending, whether it's flights, hotels, transportation, meals, activities; just do the research. Go to Trip Advisor and find who has pretty good recommendations or ratings for a certain tour you want to do. And then compare those prices to other companies you maybe found that also offers those same trips. So yeah, I like to do a lot of graphs, and I will do, okay, on this day I want to do this tour. Here are the six companies I found. Let's see what this company offers, how much it is, and the times that they will do it for. Some will charge you the same, but give you half the time for the tour. So if you have a graph, you have a quick guide to say, oh, this one clearly is the winner, and it's not so confusing, because again, you have it all organized.
K: Thank you very much. This is really helpful, and I'm really excited to share this with our bloggers. Do you have anything else you want to add?
T: Um, not necessarily. I mean, a lot of it comes with experience and the type of personality you have or type of organizational skills you have. And me, I just kind of happen to be a little bit Type A about organizing things. Again, because I know we have such a short time and I want to make sure we have options and that things go smooth and we can enjoy our trip. So as long as you do the research and you do it with plenty of time in advance, things just to start fall in place. It doesn't guarantee things are going to go 100% smooth, but it's just going to guarantee that you are prepared and you're knowledgable about the area and about things you can experience and make the most of your trip with.
K: Alright thank you very much.
Footnote:
*Once the school schedules are released, airlines increase their prices by sometimes 200%. If you are not bound by a school schedule like we are, try to fly outside of those break times as much as possible.
