Travel Tips

Brad’s Travel Tips: Paper is still King

While I do not intend to make this a travel blog, I do have a lot of travel tips that I would like to share.

Paper, especially printouts of your reservations, is something I never travel without.

Whenever I am going on a trip, especially a long or international trip, I always carry paper copies of my flight and hotel reservations. These are separated into ‘transportation’ (airplanes, rental cars, trains, etc) and ‘lodging’ (hotels, campgrounds, etc). They are then placed, in order, into a holder with 2 clear pouches on each side.

As the trip progresses, I move the paper – by placing them into another bag or discarding them. For anything with personal information (airplane reservations often have your frequent flyer number, address, e-mail), these I save and shred when I get home.

If the trip is very long, with many transfers, I may print out 2 copies of my flight and place one on the top and one on the bottom of my ‘transportation’ pile.

This is something I have done for years and have even shown to others. While most people think it is a bit silly or over the top at first, once they try the method, they keep using it. I’ve even been told that it is unusually organized for my personality. Thanks, I think.

All of this has saved me a few times. The most recent was a few years ago when I was traveling to New Zealand from Australia. As I was flying in one airline and out on another, immigration didn’t have a record of me leaving the country. Since I had the printout of my departing flight, the situation was resolved very quickly.

Paper print outs can be handy. Mobile devices can have batteries die, or have limited service. You don’t want to be in a situation where you need evidence that you have a connecting flight, and you have a dead battery in your phone.

Hope it helps!
-Brad

Brad’s Travel Tips: Quick Tip – Hotel Business Cards

For a Thursday, here is a quick travel tip: When in a new city, always carry the business card of your hotel.

This is a travel trip that I have never seen elsewhere. Everyone who uses this tip always thanks me.

If you have the business card, it has the address where you are staying, and just as importantly, it has the phone number of the front desk. If you are in a place that is new, and doubly so if you are in a place where you cannot speak the language, this is all you need to get to your bed. If there are any questions, the driver can call the front desk. This is also helpful if you do not have a roaming plan.

That’s it. A simple, small piece of paper. Enjoy.

-B

Brad’s Quick Travel Tip #2 – Avoiding Long Flights

The inspiration for this post comes from my father.  In a recent conversation, my father said that he would never visit Australia, simply because he never wanted another 15 hour flight.  I showed him how you can get to Australia without any flight over 8 hours.

The secret for USA to Australia and New Zealand?  Hawaii.  From anywhere in the USA, you can get a ~6 hour flight to the West Coast (LA, San Fran, Seattle, etc), where it is a ~6 hour flight to Honolulu (HNL) Hawaii.  Auckland, New Zealand (AKL) or Sydney, Australia (SYD) are a relatively inexpensive 7-8 hr flight from HNL.  Or if you’d prefer, Denver (DEN) to Honolulu (HNL) is about 8 hours.

Alternatively, HNL to Japan’s Tokyo Narita (NRT) is about 8 hours as well.  Although this is probably not worth the effort, as NYC (JFK) to NRT is about 12 hours and Seattle (SEA) to NRT is about 10 hours.

On the other side of things, a person living in Sydney Australia can get to Europe without any flight over 8 hours.  This person would go SYD to HNL (many airlines, including QANTAS, Jet Star, Hawaiian), HNL to SEA (Hawaiian or Alaskan), SEA to KEF (Keflavik, Iceland on Icelandair), then finally KEF to anywhere in Europe.

This tip likely works best for Americans.  Due to flight schedules, there may be a 24-48 hour layover in Hawaii, which is such a terrible thing.  I am aware that most non-Americans do not like doing international transfers through the USA.  But no matter who you are, it is an option.  And if you do not like the long haul flights, this is an option to avoid them for a large portion of the world.

Until next time-
-Brad