The Rabbit Hole

Question: How does a girl who falls - no, actually, she jumps, eyes open, down a rabbit hole, plummeting into chaos, come out the other end unchanged?
The answer? She doesn't.

This quote comes from Little Black Book, a chick flick I watched once in high school and again this week on Netflix. It's a movie that has represented my life in so many ways as of late, but regarding travel, this quote says SO much! 

No matter how seasoned anyone is as a traveler, visiting a new place and becoming immersed in a new culture for hours, days, or even months tosses a person into a sort of chaos, a realm of the unknown. There are different levels of preparedness for tackling this sort of chaos, and in a way I thrive off of making sense of the chaos of visiting new places. But this element of uncertainty that is present with any form of travel is a large part of what I believe makes travel so alluring. There is always risk associated with traveling, but with risks come rewards. Not all travel experiences are full of fun and excitement, but all are great adventures in the end. 

There is no way that anyone can come away from those experiences unchanged. Sometimes a trip will only change you a little, but more often than not travel has the power to affect people in profound ways. A lot of people like to say travel helped them learn a lot about themselves. I think that is a great way to learn from your experiences, but seeing the effect of the travel industry on a variety of places I love having grown up in Hawaii and visited family in Thailand over the years, I try not to look at travel in a way that seems so selfish, for lack of a better word. From my perspective, travel and tourism is about the interaction between the locals and the tourists, and both groups come away changed in different ways. So sure, I always learn little things about myself from the trips I have taken, but mostly I love learning more about my place in this world.

Jumping off a (short) cliff on Maunawili Falls at home on Oahu, Summer 2009

Turning 26: The Next Travel Frontier

I'll be turning 26 in a couple weeks, and 26 is a big age in the realm of budget travel. Once I turn 26, I will no longer be eligible for the more common Young Adult/Youth discounts on tickets for museums, train tickets, and other attractions throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world. This saddens me since I was really hoping to do a huge backpacking trip through Europe some time before 26 to take advantage of these deals. But it is what it is, and as I get older, I will turn my travel goals toward the next big age in budget travel: 30. Once I turn 30, I will no longer be eligible for a handful of amazing Working Holiday Visas that exist in magical countries like New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. Many countries offer U.S. citizens (and others) a one or two year visa for work and play if you apply before you are 30 years old. That gives me four years to plan and execute a working holiday year in at least one fun country.

The biggest road block toward accomplishing this in my life is that is difficult to leave a job like mine. I have a very liberal paid-time-off setup, and I really enjoy my job. It's the next best thing to traveling the world. I get to work with maps and plans, and on nights and weekends I get to travel for fun. And within a year and a half, I will qualify to take the American Institute of Certified Planners exam to become a certified city planner. Having that AICP certification is like passing the bar exam for urban planning, and being so close to that goal, I'm not sure that I want to leave just yet. 


So although I don't yet know how it will work out, I have four years to find some way to take advantage of one of those working holiday visas before I turn the big 3-0. I can't wait to make it happen!

Picture from my 25th birthday last year when I was in Savannah, GA for the
National Preservation Conference. I love it when work and travel go together!

Travel Update!

I've been off the blogosphere for a few months since I've been traveling a ton lately! Between catching up at work and catching up on my sleep, I haven't had much time for anything else. But such is the travel life. In order to make travel a priority in my life lately, I have sacrificed the time to do a lot of other things, including working on this blog and sleeping. And when you travel as much as I do, it really gets difficult to balance a full time office job and this fun travel life. It's worth every second of it though! :)

Just to catch y'all up on where I've been since around the time of my last post, here is a map of my travels since July:

If you want to hear about any particular destinations, let me know and I'll cover it in a post! It would help to have a trip to start with :) I can't decide which to show off first!

How I Plan a Trip: Materials from my July Travel Salon

Thank you to everyone who made my July Travel Salon/Workshop a success yesterday! For those of you who could not make it, you should be able to watch a video of the livestream by clicking here. Fair warning: this is not edited so the recording is the full workshop. Also, this is not the most flattering angle for me, so please don't judge :P (I did this immediately following a long 12 hour work day).

As I mentioned at the end of the workshop, I am posting the content of the handout (2 pages) that I went over at this workshop here. I discussed my process for planning a trip and made this outline of things you might be interested in knowing about how I do things.

If you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to contact me! You can leave a comment here, on my Facebook Page, or feel free to email me at tippestravels@gmail.com.

My Favorite Free Travel Experiences

Free things are always the best! And over the years, being the frugal gal that I am, I have found quite a myriad of ways to have free and cheap things to do when traveling. Here is a list of some of my favorite FREE experiences I've had throughout my travels (aside from having fun wandering a city, of course). There are conditions to getting free things a lot of time though, so just be aware of that.

• The Louvre - The Louvre Museum is such an icon of both Paris and Europe! Representing the history of French government and royalty in it's location and the progression of art throughout the world, you can't go to Paris and not visit the Louvre. I almost didn't make it until, while on an amazing bike tour of the city, my awesome tour guide told us that on Friday nights after 6pm, the Louvre is absolutely free for anyone under 26 years old. In fact, this is exactly what their website says:
  
  
  On Friday evenings from 6 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., admission to the permanent collections
  is free for under-26s regardless of nationality (upon presentation of ID).
  There is also free entry on the first Sunday of each month, but the Free Friday Nights is a better deal if you qualify just because it is WAY less crowded this way.

• The Prado - The Prado Museum is one of my favorite museums of all time! They had a very cool exhibit featuring Picasso when I was there. Who knew I would love his early work? Anyway, there is a list of people who get in free at any time, which includes students 18-25 years old, anyone under 18, and journalists! It always pays to check if you qualify for something like this. 

• Chase Visa Lounge & A Chef Morimoto Dinner - When I was a spectator at the 2012 London Olympics, anyone with a Chase Visa card could enter a special VIP Lounge on Pall Mall. This lounge had a TON of free perks like free food, free drinks (European Fanta for me, but they also had alcoholic drinks for free), free calls to the US, free WiFi, free Olympic pins and gear, and best of all, if you signed up ahead of time there were free meet and greets with various American Olympians and free dinners cooked by Chef Morimoto. THE Iron Chef, Chef Morimoto! Free! BEST sushi and steak and everything else I have ever had! I even had a fun chat with him about Hawaii, where I am from, and how he has a restaurant there. This is probably my all-time favorite free experience so far :)
  
• Sundance Chase Sapphire Preferred Lounge - Chase is just an amazing bank, and if you ever find yourself at the Sundance Film Festival every January in Park City, Utah, you will be rewarded. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is the official card of the festival, so if you happen to own one, you can gain access to their special dinner events and film parties, which usually have some sort of celebrity in attendance. Last year I went to a party for a James Franco film called I Am Michael. It was really neat.

• Sundance Cut-the-Line Pass - The best perk about having a Chase Sapphire Preferred card at Sundance is that when they sell a limited amount of tickets set aside for people who wait in line for day-of shows each morning, you get to cut the line. People like up for hours before the ticket office opens each morning, but with the card, you can show up a half hour or so before and still have decent access to whatever is available. I got to see my favorite actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his HitRecord On TV premiere show this way! <3 I was literally 3 feet from him!

• Addis Ababa Layover Entry Visa and Hotel - One great tip that takes a little research is to see if an airline you are flying offers any layover perks. Usually you can find free perks when you are flying on an international airline where you have a layover in their home base. For instance, I was flying on Ethiopian Airlines between Rome and Bangkok transiting Addis Ababa for 23 hours on a United Airlines award ticket a couple of years ago. Because I was arrive and departing from Ethiopia on their national airline, they offered a program where if you have a layover over 8 hours long, the airline will pay for your Visa (about a $20 value), a hotel, and transportation to and from the hotel. I got a great nap and was able to do a small tour of Addis this way. All for free! Turkish Airways and some other airlines offer a similar program. It just takes a little research before you go, but it's totally worth it since most passengers don't take advantage of these programs due to a lack of information about them.

• Calgary Stampede Value Days - There are one or two days each year during the famed Calgary Stampede where they offer free admission under a variety of conditions. This year, I just so happened to decide to go to a FIFA World Cup game in Alberta at the same time, so I looked at their website under the discount section and saw that on the same weekend I was there, they offered free admission to anyone who entered before 9am. That's a $17 value! Because of this, I got to try a lobster corndog (yum!), ride a ride on the midway, and explored the grounds for a while. Definitely a bucket list item checked off for free! But now I want to go back :)

• Family Connections: Thailand Temples - One good way to get free stuff when you travel is to know if you can get discounts based on where you or your family is from. When I go to Thailand, because my mom is originally from there, I get free (or very cheap) entry to the major tourist sites throughout the country. A big one is the Grand Palace in Bangkok. It's usually around $20USD worth of Baht to enter, but as a Luk Krung (half child), I get in for free! Similarly, my roommate was born in Buenos Aires and in South America, she is considered to be South American even though she was raised in Utah. So when we visited Iguazu Falls, she got a VERY discounted entry fee. Again, with a little research, you could save a lot of money this way.

• National Parks - If you are a more outdoorsy person, you should also take advantage of the Free Entrance Days at the National Parks (which I wrote about in January here). There are 9 days a year on which the NPS offers free admission to everyone. Even though I bought a National Parks Pass this year, I ended up being at a major National Park on three of those days so far (Arches, Yellowstone, and Mount Rushmore). In the colder months, this is even better because there are hardly any crowds to deal with.

• Bargain! - Don't be afraid to bargain in certain situations. This can be a good way to get free things as well. When I visited Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands with a couple of friends, there was only one ferry each way per day to and from St. Thomas, and our ferry got there over 2 hours late because they turned around to pick up some late cruise ship passengers. This was very frustrating because we already had only a limited time on the island due to the fixed ferry schedule, so I talked to the ferry operator and they paid for our taxi ride to and from The Baths, one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited! This saved us roughly $40 in roundtrip transportation. But we definitely deserved it!

There are a handful of other free activities that I haven't done yet such as some of these listed in this Huffington Post article. There are also some free activities that can be pricey when you add in other factors such as parking (i.e. visiting State Parks like Niagara Falls or the Beach in California). It just takes a little research and you can find a lot of neat, hidden opportunities to save money.

Rio 2016 Olympics Ticket Update

So I finally heard from CoSport, the only authorized ticket reseller for any Olympic tickets for residents of the United States, several days ago notifying the public that since they had cancelled their open ticket sales last month, they will be conducting a lottery round for individual tickets to make things more fair. Here is the explanation as detailed in the public email:

This means there is still time for you to request tickets! How the lottery works is each person may request up to 48 individual tickets (not events) based on what CoSport currently has available. Unfortunately, this does not include any Football matches, but there are many other exciting events available! In fact, most other events are available. You add the tickets you potentially want to your cart up until June 10th, then on June 15th, you can log in to CoSport and see if any of your requests were approved via the lottery. You can then choose whether you actually want to purchase the tickets or not. This is great because you may want to go to two or more events that occur at the same time or you may have only been approved for events with a large amount of dates in between where you didn't get tickets, so you are not locked in to any specific match if you don't want to go for the entire two weeks, which would be quite expensive!

I am not exactly sure what anyone's chances are since I was able to purchase tickets during the first-come-first-served phases of both the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but it's worth a shot! Here is the current official schedule for this lottery process:

CoSport was also kind enough to provide a short list of tips for entering the ticket lottery in their email as well:

So if you are at all interested in going to the Rio games next summer, go ahead and make your ticket request on CoSport asap! You have until 4pm EST (so 2pm MST in Utah) to do this. I am crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get a few events approved so I can take my lovely parents on this adventure with me for the first time. Good luck to all you who choose to enter! :)

The 2016 Rio Olympics

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to be a spectator at the 2012 London Olympics. It was an amazing experience, and I definitely plan on going to the summer olympics in Rio next year. Here's how I managed to put a trip together last time in light of Individual Tickets going on sale (to Americans) on May 19th at 10am EST.

Tickets

My Sochi Tickets

The biggest obstacle everyone has to attending the Olympics is getting tickets. In 2011, somehow I stumbled across this website, Cosport, which happens to be the only authorized ticket reseller for the Olympics in the United States. This means that the only legal way for any person with a U.S. address to get tickets to the Rio Olympics is through them. If I remember correctly, I actually found out about them through an LA Times article. Either way, I discovered CoSport a few days before they opened a round of Individual Ticket sales. They had a ton of availability for most sports at relatively affordable prices. I found a friend to come with me and I ended up getting tickets to see events in Basketball, Field Hockey, Beach Volleyball, Gymnastics, and Soccer/Football. There were some Tennis and Swimming tickets available, but I couldn't afford to buy absolutely everything I wanted to see. I also got tickets to the 2014 Sochi Olympics last year through CoSport, but I ended up being unable to get to Russia at that time.

When you purchase tickets, you don't know what countries are playing yet, so there is a little bit of chance that goes into that. I actually got lucky enough to watch "Team GB" play in every single event except Beach Volleyball, which I ended up watching Team USA play in. It's always great to root for the home team. The best surprise was being able to see Team GB's very first soccer match of the games in Wembley Stadium. I ended up with amazing seats on the ground level, maybe 20 rows or so from the field at one of the corner sections. I only paid $60 for that seat, and it was an amazing experience to be surrounded by loyal, drunken people from the UK singing fight songs as their team played the UAE. There was even a SWAT style team that came out onto the field when the UAE scored a point. And even Prince William was there. It was great!

The view from my seats at Wembley :)

To top it all off, each ticket included a free day pass for the London Tube. Free transit! So I never had to pay for a single transit ride minus the initial leg to go pick up my tickets. I can't say if Rio will offer a similar free transit program, but they do have a pretty neat bus system so it would be amazing if that was made available again.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in getting tickets to the Rio Olympics, I would urge you to create a CoSport account as soon as you can and set a reminder in your phone to be online and logged in before 10am Eastern Standard Time with an idea of what you actually want tickets to. There is a Competition Schedule on their homepage so you can pick specific dates and events you want to aim for. It even includes pricing schedules. And this is also a friendly reminder that RUGBY will debut in Rio as an Olympic sport for the first time! I will definitely be trying to score some Rugby tickets this time. Rugby and Swimming.

Free Stuff
One important thing to know that makes the Olympics affordable is that there are a TON of sponsors at the Olympics and there are even more companies that want to advertise there as well. This equates to there being a ton of free stuff available for spectators if you know where to look. My favorite perk in this category was being able to enter the Chase VIP Lounge on Pall Mall. All you needed for entry was any Chase Visa card in your name and you could enter with up to 6 guests. In the lounge, Chase offered free Chase Olympic pins, free baseball caps and bags, free food and drink (including European Fanta if you don't drink alcohol!), free calls to the US, free internet, and free unique experiences that you could sign up for. One of those experiences was to have dinner cooked by Chef Morimoto. Yes, THE Iron Chef. I got to have dinner cooked by him and his crew on two separate occasions that week I was there. Best sushi of my life! They also had some meet and greets with various American Olympians on a sign up basis, but the food was more important to me :)

Hanging out with none other than Chef Morimoto! He was excited that I was from Hawaii :)

Flights
Another big obstacle to seeing the Olympics was getting an affordable flight there. London is already a pretty pricey destination in July, so of course demand would push up prices even higher during the Olympic period. My friend purchased her ticket there for around $1500; however, I had some miles saved up on Delta Airlines (which I would not recommend now that they have completely changed their mileage program) and was able to fly to London for 90,000 miles and tax which added up to around $130 roundtrip. A typical off-peak mileage award ticket to Europe is 60,000 miles, but 90,000 miles was pretty standard to go from anywhere in the US to anywhere in Europe in the middle of July. And since I was graduating from my master's program that fall, my parents donated their miles to my cause. That was the best graduation present my parents could have ever given me!

Anyway, my point is that if you know what dates you want to be there and if you can get tickets next week during the first round of open ticket sales, start looking for plane tickets to avoid a high surcharge when demand starts to increase as the games get closer. Airlines typically begin selling tickets 11 months ahead of time, so in August, start looking for tickets whether you are paying with cash or miles. I would highly recommend using miles, and as an added bonus, flights out of Brazil do not collect certain taxes, so if you wanted to add on a flight to Europe from Brazil this might be a good time to do so! Rio also isn't very far from South Africa, one of my favorite places! And there are a number of low cost carriers that fly within South America if you are interested in making a bigger trip out of it. I loved my time in Rio, and I would love to visit Buenos Aires the next time I head down that way. Iguacu Falls is also worth a stop in my opinion. There are a million options! You could even fly into a city not too far from Rio which may be cheaper, then find a bus or low cost airline to get in to Rio. I imagine Sao Paulo might even be a much cheaper option and it's not too far away.

Our campsite

Accommodations
The last major consideration if you want to try to attend the Olympics is accommodations. Hotels and even hostels will jack up their prices due to demand at the time of the Olympics. If you can, finding a friend to stay with would save you a fortune. I ended up spending a part of my time in London with my cousin who lives in Oxfordshire. Oxford isn't super close to London though, so for three nights, my travel buddy and I stayed at a place called "Camp in London" which was literally a campsite one Tube stop over from the Olympic Park where mostly volunteers stayed. It was only 10 pounds per person per night to stay there since we had our own tent. That made it super affordable to stay in the city near the events. It really was amazing. And when else can you safely camp in a big city like London? I am not sure if Rio will be doing something similar, or if it will be as safe even if they do, but this kind of Olympic sponsored affordable accommodation is something to keep an eye out for.

I hope this info helps anyone who might consider going to the Olympics next year! And remember, the first round of Individual Ticket Sales begin next week Tuesday, May 19th, at 10am EST.

Thoughts on the UAE

Ever since I was a lowly undergrad student at USC studying PPD (Policy, Planning, and Development), I have dreamt of visiting Dubai. I studied this wonderous city in most of my planning classes, and I'll blame the wonderful professors I had including Dr. Lisa Schweitzer and Dr. Miguel Kanai on instilling a desire to see this city within me. It's such a unique case of development in a place that was essentially uninhabitable in the past due to the harsh weather conditions and location. But somehow, all the money the United Arab Emirates has earned through the oil industry has turned this country into a mecca for American and European expatriates. It really is such a unique, cosmopolitan place!

After one day in this country, here are some of my thoughts and impressions of the place:

• Abu Dhabi has streets and Boulevards that remind me of West LA and sometimes even Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard around the Century City/Beverly Hills area.
• Public Transit in Abu Dhabi is wonderful! The buses are cheap and go to all the main non-residential destinations. The bus from the airport was just over $1 (4 Dirham) and the bus driver stopped a few blocks in front of the Grand Mosque along his route to let us out even though it wasn't an official stop.
• That being said, people here are SO friendly! Everyone wants to help you and welcome you here. The mosque didn't open until half an hour after we arrived, so someone on a double decker tourist bus parked alongside the road told us to sit on his bus and gave us cold water bottles until we could go inside. His name was Getachew, an immigrant from Ethiopia, and would not stop trying to give me dating advice. His Filipino coworker also said I look Filipina :) #igotitfrommymomma
• I haven't taken public transit in Dubai yet, so I cannot comment on that issue yet. However, from my taxi ride through the city and from the view out of my hotel window, it seems that there are almost NO sidewalks here! This is very different from my experience in Abu Dhabi, although it could be that this is just true of this part of town. However, where I am is where all the hotels are and where the big Dubai Mall is, so you would think they would have a way for us to cross the huge 12 lane road to get to the mall that is only one block away. I will report on how long it takes me to get there (and if I can even walk there) later. This is a VERY auto-oriented place. I wish it was more walkable.
• I have interacted with a lot of people here so far; other passengers who reside here, taxi drivers, bus drivers, retail and restaurant workers, airport employees, etc. And I have yet to meet someone who is actually originally from the UAE. This truly is a country full of immigrants and expatriates! Most of the people I have met are from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, and so on) or the Philippines. It's really actually neat.
• Malls are everywhere!
• Filipinos are everywhere! Which is neat because it reminds me of being home, in Hawaii.

I got to visit a few places in Abu Dhabi yesterday, including the Sheikh Zayad Mosque which is an amazing example of beautiful, detailed modern architecture (something I didn't know could exist!) having been constructed in the 2000s with the world's largest chandelier, carpet, and mosque dome. And today, I'll be exploring Dubai. I'm planning on going to the observatories on top of the world's tallest building and visiting Dubai Mall. And if all goes well, I should be going on a desert safari tonight! I can't wait! :)

My British friend/travel buddy, Graham

The largest chandelier in the world

Loving the World

For some reason, travel seems to be something that we, as humans, are each individually compelled to do. And with globalization and social media, the more we see and learn about the world, the more we want to go and experience things for ourselves.

I think this is one of the most beautiful natural impulses we have. Everyone has a different motivation to travel, yet isn't it amazing how so many different things can lead so many people to take the same action, or to at least daydream about it?

A friend of mine posted this beautiful BBC Travel article on Facebook this week, and it really just made me smile. They asked a variety of people who travel for their profession to share a brief experience from the last year that has truly inspired them and reminded them about why they love the world.

"We asked a range of people, from writers and chefs to musicians and photographers, to share one experience from the last year that truly inspired them – something that, in no uncertain terms, reminded them why they love the world. Madly."

Each and every one of the "50 Reasons to #LoveTheWorld" listed in this article, along with the images accompanying them, resonates strongly with me. I might not have had exactly the same experiences as each person on this list, but I have daydreamed about them all! I might not be a travel writer, photographer, or famous person, but the thing about travel is that it transcends those things which set me [and you] apart from them. You don't have to travel for a career to experience these sorts of connections to people, cultures, history, and nature. So thinking about how the desire to travel can rise above all differences and connects each and every person in this world makes me so happy!


P.S. Happy Earth Day!!!

I Choose Travel

At the 2012 Olympics in London with my friend, Jess Kern

Over the past two years, I have traveled an inordinate amount for someone my age, especially as an American. This is a result of a decision I made in my life to make travel a priority. After all, travel is a choice. There are a million and one reasons any individual can find to not travel. It is something that has to be done deliberately and consciously.

In 2012, I decided that I would travel more. I was tired of waiting for other people to make decisions that affected my life, whether that was a decision to get married or for a job offer. I was finishing my master’s degree and recognized that this time in my life was one of the last times that I would have the ability to travel. Traveling can only be done through a careful balance of time and money. Doesn’t it always seem that if you have one, you don’t really have the other? Luckily, I am good at saving my money and I had a little to spare at the end of grad school in addition to having a flexible schedule. And finding the informational resources I have to learn of flight deals, I became great at finding cheap airfare. It was a perfect storm. In fact, I traveled a good portion of the time during the few months I had between graduation and starting my first career job. I had the (phone) interview for that job while I was on the waterfront in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas USVI, and I started that job the day I got back from the last of a string of trips, which included one week in the Virgin Islands, two weeks in Peru and a week in North Carolina. Little did I know that my chosen profession allows for a flexible schedule affording me the opportunity to continue to travel today, albeit in much smaller doses.

Hiking down from Montaña Wayna Picchu with Machu Picchu in the background

Choosing to travel also means making sacrifices. Every trip will not be your dream trip. For me, I never have enough time off of work to spend the time that I want to in each location. However, because I work and I have a decent schedule with regular 3 day weekends, I am able to take trips over my long weekends here and there to take advantage of cheap airfare. One additional positive side to these shorter trips is that I end up spending less money on accommodations and activities, at the very least. It forces me to spend my time more efficiently in each place that I visit, although I am also often content to spend a day roaming and wandering a place with no set schedule.

Having short trips is the sacrifice I make to travel. A lot of people tell me they wouldn’t spend money on a 3 or even 6 day trip to this or that country, or that they wouldn’t want to go unless they could spend three weeks or even a month in a place. I agree that those longer trips are ideal, and I would rather do that, too. Unfortunately, having that kind of time to spend in a place is not realistic if a person actually wants to travel. As an entry-level career employee, I don’t get that much vacation time, so I will tack on a day or two to a long weekend whenever I can. That gives me a little bit of time that is so necessary for the travel I can do with the little bit of money I have after leftover after I pay my bills and set a little aside for savings. But that is my choice. I choose to take shorter trips with the little money I have because in my mind, going somewhere for 3 or 4 days is much better than not going at all.

Kayaking in Pataogonia on a 4 day trip to Chile

No matter where I go, everyone has always told me that if I ever wanted to travel, now is the time to do it, now while I’m still young and single. I have also had so many people tell me that they wish they had done more traveling before getting married and settling down. Since I have not had that opportunity yet, I am not going to sit around and wait for life to happen to me. So starting in 2012, when I was finishing grad school unsatisfied with my decision to attend a school that did not afford me the opportunity to study abroad, I made a conscious decision to prioritize travel (within a reasonable budget) in my life. And you know what? It doesn't have to be as expensive as it seems! It all depends on the destination, but if you can find a good airfare to a cheap location then there is no reason not to go. 

My choice to travel is also a choice I made to fulfill my lifelong dreams and goals. I have always had the travel bug ever since I can remember. I think a huge part of that comes from having island fever growing up on an island in one of the most remote archipelagos on this planet (Hawaii). On top of that, I have always been obsessed with traveling to Europe. As a kid, I loved to read the Encyclopedia (I'm a nerd, I know) specifically searching for entries on European countries and their rulers. But even then, I still dreamed of traveling everywhere else as well. I would always try to get my close friends to commit to a cross-country road trip one day when we would move to the mainland for college, and I was always taking notes of interesting places to see in the future like Jellyfish Lake in Palau, where you can swim with jellyfish that don't sting. I have been fortunate to have had a passport since I was 4 years old when I first visited my relatives in Thailand. Until I was 16, I had only ever traveled to visit family, and I have always wanted to see more of the world. The desire to travel has always been a major part of my life, and my choice to travel is also my choice to act on my lifelong dreams.

Swimming with Jellyfish in Palau

Jellyfish Selfie!

On Easter Abroad

Gleðilega Páska - Happy Easter! 

Isn't it funny how Easter always seems to fall on a different Sunday each year? Wikipedia tells me that Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (when Spring officially begins). At this time last year, I was just getting back from an epic solo trip to Chile while last Easter I was actually in Iceland. The fact that this Easter reminds me of two amazing trips I have had within the last year really makes me smile (in addition to all the other normal Easter things, of course!).

Easter Sunday last year...

...versus this time last year

 Last year, Easter fell on a Sunday toward the end of April when I had the good fortune to visit Reykjavik with my dear friend, Melissa. We didn't think much about being there on a holiday, but it ended up meaning that a lot of the stores closed early (or entirely) not just on Easter day but also throughout that weekend.

Note to Self (and everyone else): Be sure to do a Google search about the local observations of any sort of holidays or events before taking a trip anywhere. This can really throw a wrench in any travel plans you may have!

We got extremely lucky/blessed that day because we were planning on attending church, which was supposed to start around noon, so we were going to drive around to find a certain cool volcano before coming back to the city for church. However, for some reason we decided to drive to the church first to be sure we knew where it was. This ended up being a brilliant idea because we actually got lost and went to the right address in the wrong part of the city at first. We did have a GPS with the rental car, but the street names and neighborhoods were funky being in Icelandic and all. We eventually found the chapel and it turned out that because of Easter, church was moved up to 10am, so we ended up being perfectly on time!

Melissa and I in the Reykjavik
chapel on Easter Sunday, April 2014

Words cannot express how much I enjoyed being with the people of the Reykjavik Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints last Easter. The lessons and discussions had through all three hours of church were wonderful, and I met some of the most amazing people there! But the most memorable part of that Easter Sunday for me was being invited to have dinner with Elder and Sister Severe at their home near the Hallgrimskirka Church. Since basically every single restaurant would be closed that day - something that Melissa and I didn't think much about - the Severes were extremely gracious and generous in extending that dinner invitation to us. We ended up spending hours at their house with Ásta, one of the branch members, after having dinner with some of the missionaries. We talked about travel and shared our life stories, but most importantly, we had a lot of discussions about Christ. I could not have imagined a more perfect way to spend an Easter Sunday. We had the best company we could have asked for, and it was easy to remember Christ that day. I will never forget the love and compassion shown to us by the Severes and the members of the Reykjavik Branch that Easter. There is no better way to remember Christ than to share His love with those around you, even if they are strangers and clueless tourists from America. I hope that one day I have the opportunity to return the favor to the Severes and to also pay it forward and share that same kindness to my fellow travelers in my home. It's the sharing economy at its best!

With some of the missionaries outside the chapel

Oskar with a Paska Egg, an Icelandic Easter tradition

Melissa and I hanging out with some of the church
members, Freddy and Oskar, after that Easter Sunday

Jet Lag

Travel is exhausting! While it is extremely fulfilling, it takes a lot of energy to be on the road (or plane) for long periods of time. In the past month, I have backpacked through 5 different countries (some multiple times) and 1 US territory, all while working at my desk job here in Utah in between. I took a total of 7 days off work and spent 19 days abroad. I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to take so much advantage of my vacation time, but it has meant that I often rush to the airport at the end of a busy work day and rush back to the office the second I step off the plane.

Places I have been in the past month (map generated on gcmap.com)

All in all, this means that since I have been back, I have been sleeping in nearly all of my spare time. It's hard to be productive at home when all I want to do is sleep and plan my next trip! And it doesn't help that we have had a broken internet router for nearly 3 weeks at my apartment. I have not had an excuse to stay awake without being able to surf the web!

When I got back from South Africa, the time difference wasn't so bad because I would be wide awake at work, then as soon as I got home at 6:15pm I would fall right asleep. I would wake up around 2 or 3am and I actually got a lot done before going to work at 6:30am. This went on for about two weeks before I left on my next trip hopping around the Asia Pacific region for another ten days. But I don't think that playing around in three different time zones was very good for my body. When I got back I had the hardest time staying awake by the end of the work day for the first couple of days. I didn't get back onto a relatively normal schedule until I forced myself to stay awake until 11pm on my second night back, but even then my body just wanted more sleep! So that weekend, I slept for 11 hours a night. Even now, I still feel like I haven't caught up on the sleep I missed from skipping through time zones on top of getting the sleep I need now. So while travel is absolutely amazing and completely worth it, it is not without consequences. And sleep is one area you can expect to suffer in if you want to travel a lot. Thank goodness I have another month before my next trip into another time zone!

Something Better

There is always someone out there who is doing something more and something seemingly better than you. That is simply a fact of life. If you look for ways in which you think you don't measure up to the rest of the world, you will most definitely find them. It's difficult to remember this sometimes when I see others who are more ahead in their careers than I am or when I find out about people who travel more than I do. It's easy to get down about this, even though I am blessed with the opportunity to travel and have a job - even an office job! - which affords me a bit of time and a smidgen of spare income to visit many of the places that I have always wanted to see. It's easy to think about how I don't get to spend the time I want to abroad or how I wish I could travel instead. But the fact of the matter is I am doing the best that I can with the resources that I have been given. The way that I travel is exactly all that I can do given where I am in life right now. And that is okay!

Sometimes we need to sit back and remind ourselves that we are doing okay. Knowing that we are doing is the best that we can in our lives should be enough for us to keep moving forward. The only person we should be comparing ourselves to is the person that we want to be in the future. If I can keep my feet on the ground, I know I'll be able to get the travel life I actually want in the future. So in my life, I resolve to continue finding a work-[travel]life balance that suits my place in life and to try my hardest not to get ahead of myself :)

South Africa Days 4-8: Thoughts On Cape Town

As amazing as my safari was, nothing can top my experience in Cape Town! I completely fell in love with the city as a tourist, urban planner, history enthusiast, pedestrian, and explorer. Cape Town has something for everyone!

I think one of the best ways to describe Cape Town is as a hipster city. It really reminds me of a mix between San Francisco and Rio de Janiero. I say Rio mostly because of the Camps Bay area combined with the lush, mountainous scenery. It really is an artsy city that fosters creativity, social entrepreneurship, good music, and amazing food. I have quite a lot to say about this place I love from my short time there, and I'll start with my view of the city as an urban aficionado.

Now please excuse me while I geek out for a moment :)

My Nerdy Urban Analysis of Cape Town's Social Fabric
I believe Cape Town does a good job of integrating social interaction with the urban fabric and architecture of the place. Not only does Cape Town have wonderful pedestrian malls and small business incubators which encourage the physical and social movement of people throughout the city, but it also has less functional and more artistic methods of getting both locals and tourists to interact with public space. For instance, at a handful of strategic locations around town, the City encourages photos to be taken and uploaded to social media with picture frames that you can interact with which frame Table Mountain, the defining geographic feature of the city. And each "frame" has the hashtag #LoveCapeTown noted on it for you to use if you do choose to upload your pictures to social media. What a cute and fun marketing campaign for the city!

Cape Town also has wonderful signage and clearly marked trails and walkways. My favorite was this 5 km boardwalk around the Victoria and Albert Waterfront. It showcases the natural and manmade beauties of the area, both historical and modern. It even leads right up to the World Cup stadium. What a great way to get both locals and visitors to interact with the cultural capital located at the waterfront!

On top of the wonderful interactive infrastructure I experienced in Cape Town, my absolute favorite place at the V&A Waterfront was the Market on the Wharf, a beautiful example of adaptive reuse. It is a food market comprised of a few dozen small food vendors within an old warehouse building. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, but with a lot more of a hipster feel to it. Really, it is what the Grand Central Market is slowly becoming with the gentrification of DTLA. There was also a cute crafts market in another old warehouse building just south of the Market on the Wharf which was a treasure trove full of small locally sourced goods. I love supporting local artists and businesses! Their products were all high quality, unique, and quite affordable. Being in this part of Cape Town just warmed my soul!

Not too far from the V&A Waterfront is the historic center of Cape Town. There the city was built around the existing historic buildings such as the Castle of Good Hope which is the oldest existing colonial building in the country. It stands as the oldest example of a Dutch East India Company fort and was originally built on the coastline before land reclamation projects added land to the city. While this and other historical buildings in the city center represent a complicated, heavy past, they have been so wonderfully integrated into the current state of the city. There is a lot of historic architecture juxtaposed with the modern buildings along with everything in between. And one of my favorite features is how the city has made a bold effort to become pedestrian friendly and promote multi-modal transportation. This is not something I was expecting to find when I arrived. I was so pleasantly surprised by the abundance of pedestrian malls, dedicated bike and bus lanes, and quaint roads often lined with stretches of old stone curb and gutters, and sometimes even cute brick pavers. It really added to the character of the town and definitely contributed to how I fell in love with it so quickly.

You can see the old stone curb and gutters on the left side of this cycle track. I thought this was the coolest thing!

Of course, Cape Town is more than just the downtown area. In the entire metropolitan area, there are nearly 4 million residents. I think one of the most beautiful things about Cape Town is that it encompasses both the historic downtown area I was able to experience along with a large variety of different communities. There really is something for everyone in Cape Town. It has a little bit of everything. There are places to go on safaris not too far away, and only a couple hours away is the famous Dyer Island and Shark Alley commonly featured on Shark Week where I went cage diving with the great whites. I was not able to visit the Winelands, but I hear that region is supposed to be extremely fantastic to experience. The Camps Bay area was also a really fun place to be. It kind of reminded me of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio. And of course, any trip to Cape Town is not complete without a visit to the cape itself! Visiting the Cape was just a dream. It really blasts you with all of nature's power and beauty from the scenery to the wildlife present. All of that is integrated with the history of Cape Point, complete with the historic lighthouse that has guided many a ships around the horn of Africa. Isn't it crazy to think Mageallan, among other great historic figures, had sailed past that point? And the Cape of Good Hope itself is one of the most beautiful places I have ever experienced in nature. You can truly feel the power of the ocean, of nature itself, and maybe even the presence of God in that place if you listen.

In the few short days I was in the city, it's crazy to think that I experienced so much, yet there is so much I was not able to try. I think the only way to resolve that is to return one day. Stay tuned to hear about my adventures in Cape Town next!