2016 Travel Goals

I know this is a bit late, although 2016 got off to a busy start for me with both work and travel. I have been working hard on getting my new website, www.justonemoretrip.com, up and running from scratch, and I have been making big decisions regarding my career in these first couple of weeks of the new year. So now that I am finally getting my life together a bit more, here are some of my travel goals for 2016:

• Australia. It is finally time for me to hit my 6th continent after traveling to the other populated 5 contents several times over the past three years. Don't worry, Antarctica is also on my list, but probably not for this year. I really want to visit Melbourne more than anything, although a trip to the Sydney Opera House is definitely going to happen. I still have to find the right plane tickets and dates for this trip, but this is my number one travel priority this year.
• Petra. I am not sure if I can make this happen, but I really want to finally visit Petra in Jordan this year. It is one of the last new wonders of the world that I have yet to see.
• Cuba. This trip would be a stretch, but it would be a dream to visit Havana and even the rest of Cuba before American tourists are allowed to go (currently American visitors are allowed, but only under 10 specific categories, and tourists are not one of them). I want to see Cuba and get a feel for the culture as it is now, before all the old vintage cars and things are replaced with newer imports from the U.S. The only thing stopping me from getting a visa now is that my Spanish isn't fluent, and I would have to go with someone who can speak it well enough to understand the Cuban accent. This is one place I would not go solo.
• Eastern Europe. With all the deals to Central and South America last year, I didn't end up having enough time to do a mini backpacking trip through Budapest, Vienna, Croatia, and Prague like I had wanted to, although I did get to spend one day in Prague. I still want to take at least 10 days and go some time this fall.
• Chicago. I still have not been to Chicago!!! Luckily, I have plans to drive to Wisconsin with Elvera next month under the condition that she take me to Chicago once we get there. February is not the ideal time of year to go, but I just can't wait! :)
• Montreal. And probably Quebec City. A little piece of Europe in North America. This is pretty high up on my list. I have never been disappointed by Canada.
• Victoria. I have been wanting to take the ferry over to Victoria from Seattle for a while now. I hope I can make this happen some time this year. I think I could make a fun weekend trip out of it. Victoria is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, and I'd love to see the gardens and do some hiking out that way. Maybe I could even see some whales!
• Celine Dion in Las Vegas. I love Las Vegas, and as many times as I have been there, I have never seen Celine Dion in concert!!! My very first album was The Reason on cassette tape that I bought in Thailand, and I listened to it every night in order to fall asleep when I was a kid afraid of the Night Marchers (Hawaiian ghost stories are no joke people!). I can't wait to finally see her live!
• Havasupai. I had reservations last year, but Tianqi had to go and get married on the same weekend that I had reservations for. I will try again this year, and so far it looks like I will be able to bring quite a large group of lovely ladies from my favorite Facebook group, Girls LOVE Travel! It will be a blast! Now let's just pray I get enough reservations when I call and call and call in on February 1st.
• Travel Blog. My final and most important travel goal is to blog more regularly, even if it's a small post here and there, and to set up and maintain my new website properly. This will be a big feat for me as I just barely started my web tech/development education in 2015. Actually, that is something I am extremely proud of, even though my skills are at a bare minimum so far. I randomly found this awesome group called Girl Develop It and started going to their meetings and learning how to code and about computers and stuff. I was even in a video (watch it here) about it! Now that I've finally found the perfect blog name, I hope I can transfer those skills I have learned into real life.

2015 was an EPIC travel year for me, and I know I won't be able to travel nearly as much this year. But I hope I can make these things happen! I'm so excited!! :)

2015 in Review

2015 has been a very exciting year in travel for me. I have no idea how 2016 can possibly live up to the past year, but I'll try to make it a good one. It took me some time to calculate this out, but I want to share this infographic with you summarizing my travels in 2015:

I think I did a good job with my travel goals from last year (read about them here). I met most of my travel goals for the year. I got to visit Dubai, swim in Jellyfish Lake in Palau, see the Taj Mahal, go on a couple of safaris (in South Africa and in Dubai!), and I went home to Hawaii four times. I even ran the Honolulu Marathon. One of my goals was to backpack through Europe, and while I did not have enough time to do a proper backpacking trip, I did make it to Prague! And I visited Germany for about a week, so I'll check that one off as well. I used most of my vacation time I was saving for that trip on several amazing travel deals to Central America, so I got to visit a handful of countries there instead. Here is a map of my travels this year:

Some of the things I didn't get to do last year are see the Northern Lights, visit Chicago, hike to Havasupai, and hike to the Wave. While I didn't get to go to Chicago this year, I actually have a trip planned for February, finally! And Havauspai didn't work out last year because the weekend I made reservations for ended up being the weekend that my best friend from USC got married in Alabama, so I will try again this year. I also did have a chance to hike to the Wave this fall, but the weather prohibited us from actually going on the hike, so I will have to try for that again this year as well. And I have no idea when or where I will ever see the Northern Lights. I think that is something that may be on my revolving travel wish list.

I'm pretty proud of my 2015 travel accomplishments! I can't believe I was able to do so much! Stay tuned for my 2016 Travel Goals and see what I will try to accomplish this year.

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.