I have been pondering over this for a long time now. It has come up in my conversations with fellow travelers and with randoms on Twitter. I also talked about it with my mom and then with some of my friends. I looked it up on Google….. nope, still no consensus on the topic.
WTF do you count as a ‘visited country’ when telling people where you’ve been to?
This seems to be the equivalent of asking the NFL what a catch is. (shade, SHAAADE) No, but seriously, the variety in answers to my proposed question was pretty wild. Due to colonization and just the general makeup of overseer countries and their holdings abroad – deciding what to count in your numbers of places visited seems to be really complicated.
I wrote a blog post before titled ‘The First Twenty Five Countries‘ reminiscing on the places I had been to. It was stupid listing that I had been to France and Britain. Why? Because I had NEVER stepped a foot into either country. However, I had been to St. Barts (French) and Anguilla (British). I am ashamed to say that I initially got my ‘what is a country?‘ info from the U.S. State Department page. On their page, neither Anguilla nor St. Barts are listed as an actual country, they are listed under the ‘Dependencies and Areas of Special Sovereignty‘ page. Okay, so I was politically correct saying that I had been to France and Britain because I had entered one of their foreign dependencies. I still don’t feel correct saying it.
Then I stumbled upon the ‘Travelers Century Club‘ which is a social organization representing world travelers who have visited 100 or more of the world’s countries and territories’. You catch that last word? TERRITORIES. For their members, they counted territories as places visited. I was thrilled. Therefore, Anguilla, St. Maarten and St. Barts were now to be a part of my total and I would remove France and Britain. This was all fine and dandy until I actually looked at this clubs’ OFFICIAL alphabetical list of countries and territories. A total of 325. What? There are only like 195 countries in the world, how did they get 325 even WITH territories? So I read their official list.
Gems I found:
– Bosnia is separated from Herzegovina
– Trinidad is separated from Tobago
– St. Maarten is separated from St. Martin
– Puerto Rico is separated from the United States
– Bali is separated from Indonesia
How the f….??? Come on now. I don’t need to pad my stats so bad to separate actual countries into pieces. If this is how people get to their century marks, I want NO part of it. I don’t travel to boost any number, I just travel because I enjoy doing it.
I asked my boyfriend about what he thinks constitutes a country visited and he said to me, ‘I don’t travel that much but it seems these numbers are just used to boost peoples egos.’ Thanks honey.
The only conclusion I have come to is that it really will differ from person to person. For me, I think it is ridiculous to go to somewhere like Bermuda (NOT on the State Dept. list of countries) and be like ‘yeah so I visited England basically.’ Nah. That doesn’t work for me at all. These places have their own culture and way of life, so British, how?
Therefore I changed my # of countries from 28 to 29. I removed England and France from the list and instead listed St. Maarten, Anguilla and St. Barts. I guess this may not be politically correct, but anyone who knows me personally would say I’ve never been one to be politically correct anyways.
After this last trip to Barbados, I realized I got really annoyed when the people sitting around me on the airplane were missing a crucial carry-on item.
Have you people NOT flown before?
How could you NOT have that on you?
Urgh, rookies.
Then I calmed my judgy self down and thought about that yes, indeed this might have been some folks first flight. They just don’t know any better. Fine.
This post is for the people who don’t know any better. Those who aren’t seasoned travelers. I want to make your next (or first?) flight easier to get through so you have no surprises and look like you know what you’re doing. I’m going to put you on the five things you need to have in your carry-on.
Food: So you’re gearing up for your 5 hour or 15 hour flight and you see in the booking that there will be food served on the airplane. If you are like myself, you have read reviews about what kind of meal this airline will be serving and the quality of it. Unless you are flying in business or first class, likely, it is some less than desirable meal. I have had some delicious meals in economy however, it is like a 2/10 occurrence. Make sure to bring snacks onto whatever flight you are taking. I know different airports have varieties of sanctions about which food you can actually bring through customs, doesn’t matter. BRING. FOOD. ON. THE. PLANE. When I flew to Shanghai in December I was in the air for a little over 14 hours straight. There was three meals to be served and drinks in between. I had taken the time to research the food that China Eastern typically serves in economy, and I knew right away to make sure to purchase food at the departures terminal to have with me. It saved me on my flight. It really did. The food was mostly inedible for my tastes and imagine not eating much for 14 hours? No way. I stocked up at the departures gate on sandwiches, chips, nuts and brought on two 1.5 liter bottles of water. Even if you have a shorter flight that may be only 4-5 hours, bring something to munch on. I know airport prices for food are exorbitant but I rather you spend some extra money and have a happy belly on a flight than end up landing miserable and starving.
Pen: This item was the sole reason behind me writing this blog post. This is the crucial carry-on item aforementioned. HOW THE HELL DO YOU TRAVEL WITH NO PEN TO FILL OUT THE CUSTOMS FORMS???? I get so annoyed at this, that it triggered a blog post and the usage of caps lock. Look what you made me do. For the love of god people, please carry a pen or two on you when you fly. I will tell you why this is important. Not only will it save you from being the head-ass who has to ask strangers to borrow their pens because you’re unprepared, it will also save you time getting through customs. I don’t want any of you being those poor people who didn’t have a pen, didn’t have anyone to borrow it from and now you’re standing at that little table scurrying to fill the forms with that pen on a rope while everyone else is already in line to go through customs. This will save you time! I promise. Bring a pen.
Headphones: I thought all of us traveled with these anyways, until I flew from St. Lucia to Atlanta. The flight crew announced over the speakers that they had run out of their own headphones to distribute to the passengers and I heard a big sigh in the plane. You people don’t travel with headphones? Not even the little shitty dollar store ones? Really? Do not expect these airlines to have headphones to give you every time you fly OR be prepared for some airlines to charge you to purchase them. Always have a pair of headphones on yourself for flights because listening to people breathe or children crying will drive you absolutely mad. Also, you might miss out on watching movies that came out in 1999 on the TV in front of you – I want better for you.
Portable Charger: Most of the flights I have taken recently have the charging ports for your cellphones for each seat, however, some still do not. If you have been paying attention to recent news, a flight earlier this month in Ottawa stayed on the tarmac for six hours. For those six hours, the passengers were not allowed to leave the plane. They just sat there waiting to disembark the entire time. Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I had a phone that was dead and I couldn’t cuss the airline on Twitter throughout those six hours – I probably would have been escorted off the plane forcibly by border guards. Furthermore, imagine you have family or friends waiting for you but you can’t let them know the situation because your phone is dead. Or (heaven forbid) in case of an emergency, you want to have that phone charged. I bet Gilligan would have turned his roaming on and risked the data charges to be found on that island after being shipwrecked.
Warm Top: If you have ever stepped a foot onto an airplane, this tip is pretty straightforward. If you have not, you need to do this. It doesn’t matter if you are flying to a place that has weather of -40 or +40, the airplane is going to be an icebox. I do not get cold easily, I am usually a warmer body, but on airplanes? Forever cold. Anytime you get ready to fly somewhere, bring a light sweater to have on for the duration of the flight. I know some of my friends even bring small blankets and yes, some airlines will provide you with blankets as well. I’m paranoid and the blankets that others have used before creep me out, so I recommend just bringing your own sweater to keep you from freezing.
Special Mention to: a) Hand Sanitizer + b) Entire Outfits.
a) I recommend keeping a small hand sanitizer on you at all times when you fly because airplanes and airports are cesspools of sickness just waiting to attack your frail body during/after all that travel.
b) If you have luggage to check-in, make sure you keep one or two whole outfits in your carry-on when you are traveling to your destination. Many of us have had the unfortunate circumstance of an airline losing our luggage and suddenly you have nothing to wear for 24-48 hours until the airline gets your entire wardrobe back to you. You could also opt to JUST fly with a carry-on so you don’t worry about things being lost, click HERE to read about how I managed to do that for a week in Barbados.
I hope this post helps some of you embarking on your first flights one day. The rest of us had to experience some of this bullshit so that you may never have to.
Why is it that every single time a woman travels a lot, the FIRST assumption is that she has a ‘sponsor’?? Is it completely beyond you to think we make enough on our own? That some of us work doubles and overnights to travel as much as we do?
This falls in the same line as people who say ‘omg you’re so lucky!‘ when you travel to somewhere you fully paid for yourself and didn’t win in a sweepstakes.
In my many years on social media, I have never seen a man get accused of having a woman sponsoring his travels. Ever. It is presumed that he just happened to make enough or work enough to be able to travel. However, the second any woman (including myself) happens to fly somewhere people consider luxurious or just go away multiple times in a year – we must have a man financing this.
Do I take issue with women who do have sponsors to pay for their trips? Absolutely not. Free travel? LOL. I hope you get every air mile you can and see as much of the world as you can on someone else’s dollar my dear. But it is highly offensive to assume the rest of us don’t have the means to travel without the help of a man.
Miss me with the power dynamics of the genders as well, how men have the money while women have the sex. I’m not new here, I know how this works. Doesn’t mean it works for everyone.
I have been to 26 countries as of last week, and by the end of this year I will be at 28. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many extra shifts, overnights, doubles etc. I had to do so I could afford that kind of exploring. When people fix up to say that I have a sponsor or I am ‘lucky’ for all of these countries I have visited – no, it’s not one of those.
A lot of us don’t come from rich homes where we can just take off whenever we feel like. I wish that was the situation, but it just is not. All the women I know who travel a lot bust their ass at one or two jobs so they can afford to do what they love. You saying that they must be escorting to travel negates all their hard work.
So please stop.
Stop telling women that they must be financed by a man to travel just because your favorite IG personality happens to be or because you don’t work enough to afford it yourself. Stop telling people they are ‘lucky’ to travel because luck had nothing to do with working 90 hours within two weeks and making sacrifices in your social calendar.
Thanks.
Note: If you do have a sponsor for travel, ATTA GIRL! Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do for what you want either. They’re just jealous no one offers them a stick of gum, nonetheless a whole trip.
So you’ve booked your trip, you feel good about it and then suddenly – you have a conversation with the person next to you on the plane about how they paid less (much less) for their flight. SHITTY. Or, as it has happened recently, you paid for your flight and went onto my Twitter page as I scolded folks for paying too much without adequate research. Yep, you feel shitty again.
‘You should have just asked me to help.’
I must say this line at least 10 times a week at this point on my Twitter feed. I do this for free, I’m always trying to help out and offering to do so – if you are so sure of the awesomeness of your flight price, does it really hurt to double check?
There isn’t too many ‘travel tips’ I can really offer up that most of you don’t already know via the other thousands of travel blogs. However, I would still like to offer up a few just in case you missed some. Also, I would like to offer a special travel tip that keeps happening personally to me as I went to book my flights for my 2017 travel.
My first tip is – DO NOT WAIT TO BOOK. The days of that ‘last minute’ stuff are long gone guys. Let it go. The earlier you book the better the price will be. In a lot of cases I don’t mean necessarily book a whole year ahead, but definitely in that 6-9 month range is always great for flights. Yes, there is sometimes gems for last minute flight deals, but if you actually have a place in mind and aren’t flying by the seat of your pants? Book it as soon as you have the funds. Recently one of my followers (who shall remain nameless) asked me to help him find a flight for a carnival in the Caribbean. At the time I found him an incredible $427.00 direct round trip flight from Toronto for the exact dates he needed. It was actually an immaculate find given that carnival flights tend to be very expensive.
Did he book it though? No. He did not. He came back to me about six weeks later and asked me to look again. $800+ with layovers now for the same damn flight. Shame. He will no longer be going to that carnival this year.
My second tip is to use Booking.com! This website has saved me money and headaches on so many occasions I cannot even begin to name them all. Not only does the site have really good prices for hotels everywhere you want to go, many of them have a ‘no prepayment and free cancellation‘ option. Therefore at the time of booking, you owe no money to secure your stay at the hotel and if you choose to cancel before the date they outline for you, this will also cost you nothing. To use a perfect example, when I was planning my trip to Chicago back in April for my boyfriends 30th birthday, I must have picked four different hotels. I would find one I like, book it and then a week later see a nicer one that may have had 40% off so I would cancel the first one and book this new one. No money lost. No penalties. No fuss. This is such a wonderful option for people who have ‘maybe’ trips coming up as well. Those who aren’t sure if the trip will go through but you see a great price for a hotel during the time you’d like to be there. BOOK IT! If it has those two options, what do you have to lose? Not all of the hotels on the site have that option, but it is nice that many have it available!
As someone who must have about 9 travel-related apps on their phone, the one I use the most is Skyscanner. I do prefer the online interface for it, but the app also does this job just fine when looking for cheap flights. The reason I think this is a gem to constantly check for flight options is solely because of that ‘whole month‘ option they have. If you are thinking of going to Rio next year but aren’t settled on a date – go to the Skyscanner page, put in your departure airport, put in Rio airport as your destination and then under the dates put in ‘whole month + cheapest month’ and let it do its magic. It will give you a breakdown of the cheapest departure and arrival dates for the year and you can also move it around to see how it compares to other dates during the year. I have saved large amounts of money flying just because I used this feature to find out flying two days before I wanted to would cost me $400 less. Also, if you are just a wanderluster like myself, sometimes you just want to see your options and let your imaginations soar for that long weekend you have coming up. You can do that on there too! Put in your departure airport and put your destination as ‘everywhere’ and click the dates you have time off. The site will give you a list of all the places flying from your location and what price they are. The possibilities are endless.
I would say packing light is another one of my travel tips because it will make it cheaper and a less fussy trip for you – but I already wrote a whole blog post about that.
My final travel tip is the one I said I have been looking at since December. I recently also helped four different people use this information to find cheaper flights for their respective travel destinations. This one will save some of you a lot of money.
It isn’t a secret that flying in and out of Toronto is abhorrently expensive. Many of us have looked at the option of flying from Buffalo to get to many American-based destinations because 9/10 times this is a much cheaper alternative. But what do you do when it isn’t an American-based destination and flying out of Pearson to said location will cost you two months rent? AH HA! This is what I’m here to put you on. (I even have examples!)
Do not ever accept the prices given to you only going from Toronto for flights. If you aren’t particular and like to save money flying, you should always look at the alternatives to Toronto. Furthermore, this does not only apply to Toronto. This can be used for other trips as well. I learned this personally twice this year, and just yesterday I proved this point with one of my followers. Here are the examples.
**(all examples will be from Skyscanner since I am a member of Skyscanner Elite and it is the site I know best for use)**
Example 1) This year I am going to Barbados for Cropover. I made the mistake of taking too long to book my flight (clearly didn’t follow my own instructions) and was only able to book my flight TO Barbados. The flights returning from Barbados were looking in the range of $1000-$1300 just to fly direct from Barbados to Toronto on August 9th. ONE WAY = Cost of my roundtrip to Bali last year? Absolutely not.
So I began looking at alternatives one day and I found something awesome.
Here is the cost of the ONE WAY direct flight home from Barbados on Aug 9th. Cheapest amount is $1,318
Here is the cost of the ONE WAY (with layover) flight from Barbados back to Toronto on Aug 9th. Cheapest amount is $681
Look at the difference in price. That is quite the sizable difference in price.
I realize this requires a layover, but this means I also get to spend the whole day in St. Lucia while saving $637.00! All of this is just because I checked out how much it would be to fly Barbados to another small island and from there back to Toronto. Well worth it for me. Basically saved the cost of my costume for carnival.
Example 2) I am going to the Maldives this December with one of my best friends and the second I saw the flight prices going from Toronto to there I wanted to cry. From December 19th to December 31st the price of the flight has been hovering around the $2,400 mark per person. I knew Maldives were expensive, but I was/am still refusing to pay this much for a flight there.
So naturally, again, I began looking at alternatives.
Here is the cost of the roundtrip from Toronto to Maldives, which includes a long layover in Frankfurt (somewhere I’ve been) and would require two stops on the way home taking 62hrs to get back to Toronto. Cheapest amount is $2,376
Now if you were to add those two up, that would give you a total of $1,788 roundtrip. Making it not only shorter travel time to get back to Toronto but also $588.00 cheaper than flying from Toronto.
If these were small amounts like $100-$200 I would save myself the fuss and just fly from Toronto. But as you can see here, these are not small amounts being saved. These are entire/or at least half costs of hotel stays being saved in flight cost.
Example 3) One of my Twitter followers messaged me that she wanted to go to Dubai for a month. She told me the cheapest she was finding was $1600+ from Toronto to Dubai.
Again, I went to look for alternatives to these prices just yesterday.
I realize the difference in these prices isn’t as large as the ones aforementioned, but this is still a difference of $295.00 just for flying out of Detroit.
These three examples are tiny compared to all the combinations that I am sure exist. So wherever you live, make sure to check alternative departure places to potentially make your trip much cheaper.
Also, just as an extra tip – never just check one generic site for your flights. There is Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak etc. Just the other day that SAME $681.00 one way flight I showed you above from Barbados was $2,639.41 on the Expedia page.
I’ve been travel blogging for about a month now. (yay me!)
I love blogging, I love sharing my travel experiences and posting itineraries so that others may find cheap travel options as well. People deserve to know that it can be affordable and accessible at whichever income you earn. However, is MANY people’s reality that even with the cheapest travel options they still may not be able to afford even a weekend trip somewhere close? Definitely.
I realize my privilege at being able to travel as much as I do, have a Canadian passport to do it with and a steady job. I don’t believe in being ‘lucky’ to travel because when I was working 50-70 hours every week to travel that was not luck, it was a lot of work. ‘Luck’ is when you win a trip for free, not work your ass off for it.
With this privilege that I acknowledge, I am VERY sick of how irresponsible some travel bloggers are with their suggestions. How dare you tell people to ‘quit your job and just travel’?? Where do you even come off with the audacity to tell those who are fortunate enough to have found work in these shitty economies to ‘just quit’?
Although I am happy that some people were able to quit their jobs to go travel and are able to survive doing it – I don’t think it should be pushed so feverishly on readers.
A day doesn’t go by without me seeing a fellow travel blogger telling people how they quit their job, sold their items, traveled, found odd jobs bla bla bla. Whole thing screams privilege.
You good looking? You’re middle-upper class? Live at home with your mom? Live in a city that ISN’T expensive as Toronto/NY/LA? Are white? Oh — funny how it seems people who fit into these categories can’t wait to tell people to QUIT a job. Get the hell out of here.
I find this irresponsible and just reeking of social privilege.
How can you tell a millenial living in a place like Toronto who may have a job to afford living in this expensive place to quit their job for travel? I love travel just as much as the next person, but seriously? I see the breadth that travel can bring to your life and contribute to your personal growth, but can I really put ‘was in 10 countries in 10 months’ on a resume? Will all those passport stamps mean a damn thing when I come home to Toronto at ANOTHER rent increase I can’t afford to pay?
Those of you who were able to quit your job and do odd jobs while traveling, I do salute you. This is a great accomplishment and you should be proud of yourselves. You can definitely talk about how YOU got there, but you have to recognize you may also be an anomaly.
The gall to be a white person traveling to a foreign country and begging on the street so people can fund your travel? TRAVEL IS A PRIVILEGE. The people who are begging on the road alongside you need it for their families, for food, for medicine. It made me sick reading this.
That story ties in with this whole ‘quit your job and travel’ B.S. because if these people were employed and accordingly planned their travel and budgets, this would NOT be a thing. (I realize medical and family emergencies happen while traveling – literally not one of these stories was about someone needing to beg to get home in case of those, just for furthering their travels.)
Share your experience if you were fortunate enough to quit your job and enjoy the pleasure of traveling. That is the whole point of blogging. Sharing. Giving people extended imaginations. Do not encourage actions that may be detrimental to peoples incomes and livelihood.
