Traveling More & Traveling Better: A GnomeTrotting Guide

By A.M. Bristow

For the dreamers for whom travel seems just out of reach.

A thirty-something travel blogger on an educator’s salary shares her tips and tricks to help you seamlessly incorporate travel into your life. Traveling More & Traveling Better will show you that traveling comfortably isn’t the expensive and disruptive burden you think it is. The perfect guide for anyone who needs a little motivation to finally take that trip, complete with practical advice about how to budget for vacations and how to stay safe abroad.

After visiting over fifty countries, the amount of travel advice you amass doesn’t fit neatly into a GnomeTrotting blog post. Containing a wealth of travel knowledge, this in-depth guide is designed for seasoned travelers and newbies alike. This isn’t your college backpacker’s travel book – because who wants to spend their vacation in a hostel? A vacation should be stress-free, enjoyable, and affordable. The tips and recommendations in this guide will help you accomplish all three.

Want to take more trips and don’t know how? Looking for ways to save money on travel? Need help packing lighter? Unsure of how to deal with eight other family members on vacation? Traveling More & Traveling Better is a no-bullshit guide to all of travel’s annoying little intricacies. Once you know how to tackle those, all that’s left is fun-filled, rejuvenating, and gratifying travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A.M. Bristow
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463887790

A.M. Bristow

A.M. Bristow is a Cuban-born writer raised in the United States who writes contemporary fiction when she’s not traveling and writing about that. In fiction, she explores the overreaching philosophical theme that hell is other people. She currently lives in the Czech Republic, where she gives life to her cynical thoughts.Bristow was formally trained and shaped by the world of academia, before abandoning her scholarly pursuits in psychology and education in order to dedicate herself to writing on a nearly full-time basis. You can find her insights and tips about travel on her blog, www.GnomeTrotting.com.Available books by the author include: Savage, Elskerinde: Confessions of the Other Woman, Crimson Sheets, and A Trilogy of Disappointment (and a dash of hope). You can connect directly with A.M. Bristow on Twitter.

Book preview

Traveling More &

Traveling Better

A GnomeTrotting Guide

A.M. Bristow

Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Bristow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Contents

How travel improves your life

Travel interrupts the fleeting perception of time

Travel makes you appreciate your life more

Travel as a form of self-care

Make travel a priority

Managing the financial aspects of travel

Traveling a lot without spending a lot

Getting the best travel deal

Saving on airfare

Saving on other transportation

Saving on accommodations

Saving on sightseeing

Saving on food and drink

The tragedy of unmet expectations

Weighing the risks of travel

Illness and injury

The importance of travel insurance

The risk of culture clash

Avoid getting scammed on vacation

Common travel scams

Choosing your travel companions

Traveling with a partner

Overcoming the fear of traveling alone

Traveling with strangers

Traveling with a big group

Don’t do it for the ‘gram: Social media and traveling

To plan or not to plan?

Making the best use of technology

Travel less obnoxiously

Respect the environment and local community

Shut up about your travels

Packing efficiently

A packing list of essentials

Souvenirs: packing for the way back

Simplify your life so travel isn’t disruptive

Returning to work

Coping with jet lag

Take advantage of any reason to travel

Cultivate a fear of not going

About the Author

How travel improves your life

Life is a tremendous bore, isn’t it?

Most of us spend upwards of forty to fifty hours a week at a job that isn’t particularly fulfilling. In many cases, it’s soul-sucking, unpleasant, tedious, stressful, and underpaying. We all love the idea of doing something we’re passionate about for a living. But in reality, it’s hard to find a job that simply pays the bills at all, never mind one that makes us feel a sense of gratification or higher purpose. Work typically provides only as much quality to our lives as it earns us for a living. In some cases, that isn’t much.

With the little free time we have, we need to run the household – make sure we have food, cook, clean, take care of the kids, do the laundry, go to the bank, go to the post office, make an appointment with the dentist, go to baby showers. Our lives are filled with endless tedium – tasks that are done out of necessity rather than enjoyment. If you think throwing away the majority of your free time on work is sad, think about the fact that at least you’re getting paid to sit in that meeting that should have been an email. No one is paying you to stand in line at the DMV to renew your license. You’re doing that in the little spare time you have because you have no choice.

Even the things we find enjoyable end up becoming routine. Every Tuesday night, we have our favorite shows to catch on TV. On the weekends, we go to our usual Happy Hour place. You’d think going there once a week would provide ample opportunities to explore the rest of the menu, but in all likelihood, you’re ordering the same thing you always do. A weekend in March looks no different from a weekend in September because you filled it with all the same activities. Netflix and complacency.

Travel interrupts the fleeting perception of time

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this cycle is how much it shortens your lifespan. Not literally. Well, maybe literally. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. But it does shorten your perception of time. That’s why you wake up on the first day of December and think, Wow, where did the year go? Time appears to move quickly when you fill it with the same routine activities day in and day out. The days blur together, becoming indistinguishable from one another simply because there’s nothing interesting or important happening to set any of them apart.

Travel, on the other hand, allows your perception of time to expand. It’s not difficult to recall any one vacation and feel surprised at how long you felt you were there – how many activities you were able to cram into such a short time. Consider the last vacation you took or even the first vacation you took, and you’ll see what I mean.

Maybe you went to Paris, and on the first day, you discovered a little patisserie where you ended up having breakfast every morning. You got a chocolate croissant with a café au lait just before heading to the Eiffel Tower – everyone’s first stop in Paris. You were awed by its grandeur, and you waited in line for the opportunity to climb the steps to the second platform. It was exhausting, but the view was worth it. After the Eiffel Tower, you went to the Notre-Dame. You still remember how beautiful it was before the fire; you got to tour the inside, and you were there long enough to catch a service. Feeling starved, you went nearby for a plate of steak frites along the Seine. You may not remember what the food tasted like all these years later, but you remember the gorgeous scenery from your table. After your late lunch, maybe you went to the Pompidou or the Musée Rodin. Perhaps you can’t quite recall which one you visited that day, but you know you went to both museums on that trip. Then you stumbled upon a lively street full of cafes and bars in Le Marais, which is where you ended the night.

All of that was one day. Even more miraculously, you still remember all those little details years after your trip. Why does that stuff stand out so much when your day-to-day life gets so easily forgotten? There is a psychological basis for why this happens, and understanding it can help you see more clearly why and how travel can improve your life.

Our perception of how long something lasts is closely linked to how much effort it takes the brain to process the memory. When something is brand new, we spend more time analyzing and processing that information, making us feel like the experience lasted a very long time. That’s why when you’re in Japan for the first time in your life, three days can feel like a month. It’s like hitting pause on the passage of time to let your brain process the sights, sounds, and tastes of a new place.

By contrast, when you’re doing the same thing in your regular life for weeks at a time – that’s when you get to Thanksgiving and think, Where did the year go? That’s because, for most of us, regular life involves being around the familiar – activities that don’t require a lot of brainpower. You know your way home from work so well that you probably don’t even remember how you get there some days. Unless you’re at a new job, you’ve probably been doing the same thing every day at work for months or years. Since there’s nothing new for your brain to process, in the grand scheme of things, all those repetitive days fly by in the blink of an eye.

You know what doesn’t? Trying to figure out how to use the metro in Bangkok or seeing a geyser erupt for the first time in your life in Iceland. Because those aren’t the kinds of things we experience every day, they’re more memorable. Our minds naturally create more detailed perceptions of anything that is new, so we have long-lasting impressions of that which is novel and unique.

When I got my first job after college and I had five measly vacation days a year, I would take weekend trips all the time. Sometimes I would fly out Friday after work and fly in Monday morning to go straight to the office from the airport. People would always tell me, Aren’t you exhausted? And yes, I was definitely exhausted. But while their weekend came and went in two seconds, I lived the hell out of my weekends.

More importantly, I made those weekends memorable enough to last me a lifetime. I can’t say I remember much of what I did at my job during my first year of work. But I do remember that I went to Niagara Falls that year. And Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Atlanta and San Francisco and Seattle and Texas and Montreal. And God, I still think about how good the food was in Montreal. Because it was new and different. If I didn’t have photographic evidence, even I wouldn’t believe that was all in one year.

In big or small ways, you can capitalize on your brain’s natural mechanisms to extend the life you have – your perception of it anyway. Travel interrupts the monotony of everyday activities that are completely forgettable in the long run. It creates short bursts of slowed time, vivid memories, and unique experiences.

You don’t have to take an intercontinental trip to Thailand to get the benefits of your brain’s preference for the unfamiliar. You can employ this in more subtle ways. Thinking of going to the same amusement park again for the fourth time this year? Skip the annual passes and go somewhere new; it’ll last longer. Instead of giving your favorite movie another re-watch, spend the afternoon at a local park you’ve never visited. The memory of that day in the park will go a lot further than your sixteenth viewing of Pulp Fiction.

If you do have the opportunity, fly thirty hours to the farthest possible place you can think of. It’ll make your life feel a little longer and a lot fuller.

Travel makes you appreciate your life more

Is there anything better than arriving at a five-star resort in Greece and throwing yourself on a perfectly made all-white linen bed? Yes. Yes, there is. Coming home to your own bed after an exhausting ten days abroad and fifteen hours of flying on no sleep is better.

No matter how fancy and comfortable and luxurious your vacation was, inevitably, you yearn for home. Home is always better. Home is where your pillow is just the right amount of soft, where your shower is the perfect temperature, and the water pressure is just right. Home is where you can have a bowl of your favorite cereal after days of eating a foreign version of the perfect breakfast. Home is where you have full-sized versions of all carry-on liquids, and a TV larger than a seatback screen.

Despite how tragically forgettable the familiar is, the familiar is inordinately comforting. We need that just as much as we need to be awed by a Buddhist temple or a medieval castle every once in a while. By pulling us away from everything we know and love, travel makes us appreciate it more. Unless you just came from Japan; then you’ll only be able to think about how woefully inadequate your toilet is at home.

A lot of aspects of travel can be challenging. Take communicating, for instance. Even the simple act of trying to find a stamp to mail a postcard can be an awkward and frustrating experience when you don’t know the local language and the locals don’t know yours. That can make a mundane activity confusing and even stressful. Through this experience, you come to appreciate your small and inefficient post office back home, where all the signs are understandable to you and where people can always easily help you, even if they do it begrudgingly.

Getting around when you travel is another aspect that is new and unfamiliar, which sometimes makes travel overwhelming and unpleasant. When I think of all the worst transportation mishaps I’ve had in my life, they all happened in a foreign city when I didn’t know where the hell I was going. Getting fined for not knowing I had to validate a ticket. Taking a train in the opposite direction because I didn’t read the map properly. Driving the wrong way on a one-way street because we didn’t know how to read the street signs. None of that can happen to you at home where you know your way around the streets and public transportation, and you can get anywhere in the city without having to fumble with the GPS on your phone. Spending days on end putting a lot of effort into getting around can make you appreciate your uncomplicated routes around town when you return home.

These are just a few examples, and there are countless more. Travel creates barriers to satisfying even your most basic needs like eating dinner or using the bathroom. If you’ve ever found yourself scrambling to get change so you can use a public restroom in Europe, you’ll know exactly what I mean. After a few days of that, you’ll be ready to get back to a place where the WC is always available at no cost. Simply put, when you spend extended periods outside of your comfort zone, your comfort zone back home becomes extra comforting.

Travel can even help you improve your perception of work, believe it or not. Regardless of your travel style, it’s likely that you’ll engage in a lot more physical activity on vacation than you do at home. Between museums and monuments and walking tours, you’ll clock several marathons’ worth of distance by the time you return home. As much as it can suck for a vacation to end, there’s something kind of appealing about going back to work. For one, returning to work holds the promise of recuperating some of the money you just spent. But most of all, returning to work can mean sitting for eight hours a day, resting your weary legs with a coffee in hand.

In many ways, travel makes you realize just how much better life can be somewhere completely different. But in some ways, travel makes you realize how great your life already is.

Travel as a form of self-care

If there’s one good thing that has come out of our terrifying world full of digital oversharing and no privacy, it’s the fact that more people are openly talking about how miserable they are. Sure, our parents had a house at 21 and job security until retirement, but most of us realize by now that none of that bought them happiness. It’s refreshing to hear that other people feel underappreciated at work, frustrated by their governments, and unhappy in their relationships. It makes us feel less alone.

More importantly, the rise of open discussion about mental health has led to an emphasis on treatment. Seeing a therapist was something people used to be ashamed of. Now it’s something we sprinkle into conversations nonchalantly because everyone realizes that it’s not that big of a deal. Even if you can’t afford therapy, you can still seek out other small joys or the ever-popular idea of self-care. The concept of self-care was a little-known therapeutic practice that evolved from healthy habits like eating well and exercising to its modern-day equivalent of enjoying a glass of wine and a bath bomb before binge-watching an entire season of The Bachelor because it makes you happy.

As many people have already discovered, travel can be an effective form of self-care. In fact, a lot of people take trips to get over break-ups or after losing their jobs. Travel helps put life in perspective, making what seems like an insurmountable disaster look more appropriately temporary and manageable. It’s like the post-break-up haircut for the new age when a haircut can be just as expensive as a low-cost flight.

When everything seems hopeless, travel can be a shining beacon of light. This is largely due to the fact that it opens you up to a world of endless possibilities. Just when you think you’ll never find another job again, you realize there are people who make a living selling coconuts on a beach or playing the accordion on the streets of Rome to loved-up passersby. You may be shocked to find that these people are happy. There are millions of people out there who are not employed at the company that just laid you off, and by God, they’re all happy! So you realize that, sooner or later, you’ll be happy, too.

If you’re going through a break-up, getting out of the toxic dating pool of wherever you live is the best way to see that there is a whole world of charming, attractive, and compatible people out there. That saying about more fish in the sea is a lot more believable when you give yourself the opportunity to explore more of the sea. At least until you return to the same toxic dating pool and agree to let your coworker fix you up with another garbage person who made out with your friend once in college – small world!

Perhaps even more important than what you’ll learn about the world on your travels is what you’ll learn about yourself. When times are bleak, travel can teach you resilience, self-reliance, and confidence. This makes it the perfect activity for people who are feeling particularly hopeless or unaccomplished. Those challenges that make it so satisfying to come home where everything is easy also make you a better and stronger person. When you’ve hiked up a 17,000-foot mountain in Peru and lived to tell about it, you feel like you can do anything.

Traveling to another country is itself a commendable feat. In fact, many people will tell you you’re brave just for visiting countries in Africa or South America (to which you’d probably roll your eyes). Still, an accomplishment doesn’t have to be a huge expedition or a visit to a dangerous part of the world. Even the smallest travel accomplishments add to your confidence and self-worth. Travel is especially beneficial because it allows you to enjoy many small achievements in a short period of time. Like successfully ordering a meal in broken bits of another language. Or finding your hotel on the first try from the airport. Or taking the subway in a new city without getting lost. Or paying with exact change without having to scrutinize the coins. Or learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. Even though you might never make use of these skills outside of this particular vacation, all of these small feats make you feel capable and self-assured. So who cares if you just got laid off? If you can meander through a souk in Morocco without getting lost or robbed, you can probably find another job.

Of course, your life doesn’t have to be in pieces for you to need or appreciate a little self-care. Travel can help take your mind off minor stresses that may otherwise avalanche into something far more intolerable and damaging. Sometimes that coworker who never shuts up becomes such a nuisance that you start dreading going into the office. Taking a couple of days off can help you hit reset on your patience. By the time you come back,