Trip Planning and Preparation (Part 1)

It’s always pretty unbelievable all the details that go into a month-long trip half-way around the world. It makes me wonder how the RTWers do it! This post will touch upon various pieces of trip planning and preparation but will not go into detail into any of them. Each of these topics are very important and would require their own post to do them justice.

Looking for the Best Airfare

As with all parts of this trip, sticking to a tight budget is very important to me. I spent quite a bit of time in Kayak playing around with the dates, destinations and comparing results against independent airlines such as AirAsia. I have never found travel hacking quite as easy as some of the travel blogs make them it out to be, but it’s certainly worth the effort! I found that my best option was to fly via a traditional airline (in my case it was via ANA) from Boston to Bangkok and once in Bangkok to move about via AirAsia, which has prices that are very hard to beat.

My experience has taught me that two of the most important parts of finding cheap airfare is to be patient and be flexible. When it comes to patience, even when you think you have found the cheapest airfare around, keep looking! Don’t settle. All of the travel hackers out there agree with flexibility. The more options you leave yourself for airports, dates, connections and so on, the more leverage you have to get the best deal around.

Trip Planning

Booking the flights is just one of the steps in planning a trip of this magnitude. Now, there are folks who say that planning takes all of the fun out of travel. One of the great things of travel is the unplanned encounters that you could never imagine or plan for ahead of time. When I plan my trips, I try to get enough of it figured out so that I have a rough idea of some of the major points of the trip such as how to get there, where I am staying and other tidbits that might be helpful. This is where Tripit comes in.

TripIt is a great web application where you can forward you confirmation emails from airlines, hostel or hotel reservations, even car rental confirmations and TripIt will parse the confirmation emails and start creating your itinerary without you doing much work at all. The most practical part of TripIt is that you can print your itinerary and it will include all of the reservation and confirmation numbers from your reservations, so you only need to carry one piece of paper instead of printouts from your airlines, hostels, car rentals and so on.

See Part 2 of this post in Trip Planning and Preparation (Part 2)

This entry is part of a series of posts on my trip to Southeast Asia in August of 2008. You can see all of the posts in this series the post: A look back to my trip to Southeast Asia.

The core of mans’ spirit…

The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.

Alex Supertramp, Into The Wild

Lunch at the BLC

Saturday morning I spent with an experience group of volunteers at the Boston Living Center. I am making a bad habit of arriving ten minutes late to places where I volunteer. I am still trying to get the hang of things and how to get into Boston and park and whatnot…In my defense, I am usually the volunteer that travels the most, but that is certainly no excuse! I’ll have to leave earlier next time, and I’ll be taking the T into Boston.

I spent most of my time in the kitchen making sure the larger pots and serving trays and other food containers were washed. It was a different atmosphere since most of the volunteers at the BLC were "veteran" volunteers who have been volunteering there for years. Everyone knew what they were doing and what they had to do to run a flawless show. I did my best to make myself useful and be as much help as I could.

Having kitchen duty, while not bad at all, somewhat limited my interaction with the folks that came in for lunch. Instead, I had an opportunity to chat and learn from the other, more experienced volunteers.The really busy time in the kitchen is just after folks finish eating, which sounds so obvious, but being so used to serving at other places, I was somehow expecting it to be busy as folks arrived.

Another great experience volunteering in the Boston area. If the opportunity arises, I’ll definitely sign up to help out at the BLC again.  

Sweet Tea

That’s what I tried for the first time last weekend, Sweet Tea. I had flown down to the Raleigh area to visit my great friends who all have recently (1-2 years) moved to North Carolina. I had tons of fun and a very relaxing Memorial Day weekend. The vibe down there is a bit different. While it felt a lot like the north east, things were definitely slowed down a bit, and I could certainly see why folks move down there. Oh yeah, and the weather is gorgeous!

The hospitality was superb and the company was even better! You guys are awesome!