Traveling Asia can present little things that will throw you off if you aren’t prepared. With the right information and a little planning, that won’t happen. Prior to our life here, we have had the fortune to travel pretty extensively in Latin America. Accordingly, we have had our share of adventures and misadventures there. Experience doesn’t always ward off disaster, but a little research and some foreknowledge can really make things easier. Already, we have narrowly avoided some disasters while traveling Asia. And, we have stumbled across some things that made coming here a thousand times easier. So, we want to share them with you, perhaps to help smooth your travel as well.
The little differences between cultures do really stand out. If you are open to enjoy them for what they are, travel can be the most fantastic of experiences. Sometimes though, the little differences can trip you up and really ruin your day. For example, plugging your 110 volt electronics into the wall in a country that is on a 220 volt electric grid. Needles to say, fried. (That happened to our camera battery in Hong Kong once, even though the charger said it was a converter.) Or, not knowing to look to your right while crossing a busy street in Thailand. (They, like a few other countries in Asia, drive on the left)
Fortunately, we live in a time when information and relatively inexpe
nsive gadgets are just a click away. Neither Pauline nor I have deep financial resources, so finding good ways to travel on a budget is vital. We also want to get the best value for our money, so that we can keep on enjoying all the fantastic things that you can find around the world. Plus, we both hold a belief that helping others find good ways to experience the world first hand will help all of us in the long run. I think that for a lot of Americans, travelling Asia feels unobtainable because of the distance, language barrier, and the cost of trying to overcome both.
Travelling asia cheaply
To get here, we used what they call “travel hacking.” This is the practice of taking advantage of membership mile programs to reduce the cost of travel. Pauline and I aren’t what you would call professional travel hackers. We did take advantage of some large planned expenses to make our trip to Asia possible. There are online resources that offer complete guides to making a lifestyle out of travel hacking. You can also find offers for eBooks or subscription services to help you manage and optimize a travel hacking lifestyle. I have never spent a dime on travel hacking help, but if you are interested in learning more, you can check out some travel hacking resources.
I sort of stumbled across travel hacking. While I was at the George Bush international airport in Houston, I noticed a United Airlines offer for bonus miles for opening a credit card . It was right before Pauline and I got married, and since I used United frequently, we both signed up. We put all of our planned wedding expenses on the new cards, paid our balances immediately, and received over 100,000 bonus miles. We used flight awards to buy two one-way tickets for $120 to Taiwan two years later. When the time came for us to actually move to Taiwan, I found another card deal that I put all of our moving expenses on, which allowed for a free round flight ticket from Taiwan to Thailand.