ABC, Go Slow, and Always Get Pistachio: Our Lessons Learned from 400+ Days Abroad
Hi friends,
Well, it’s official. Our Big Trip era has come to a close. We’re writing to you now from Salt Lake City, where spring has turned into summer, and we’re slowly adjusting to a more place-based and significantly less coastal life.
All throughout Big Trip, we talked to each other about our MVPs and lessons learned — what do we want to tell all of you, our friends and family, now that this 13-ish month adventure is over? That’s what this email is: our biggest revelations, our favorite things, and our best travel tips. We hope it’s helpful to you or to someone else you love!
Here’s our biggest Big Trip lesson: Travel is easy.
It’s easier now than ever before! Sometimes people tell us we’re brave, or that they wish they could do what we did, but the actual doing of it really isn’t hard. First of all, technology helps tremendously: the internet, translation apps, ATMs, the ubiquity of cell phone service... all of it makes travel a billion times easier than it was when we relied on Lonely Planet and printed out maps. But the people you meet along the way help make travel easy, too.
During Big Trip, we regularly felt safer than we do at home. The only objects we lost are the ones we left behind in hotel rooms. People all over the world were generally kind, helpful, and interested in others. We’re confident that with a little curiosity and common sense, there are an unlimited number of safe and exciting places in the world to explore. If you’re thinking about a Big Trip of your own (or even a little one!) don’t be intimidated. You can do this! And when you find yourself stuck, or you get confused, inevitably someone will be there to help.
A few other thoughts on travel:
The faster you travel, the harder it will be, because the time you spend in transit is often the most challenging part! If you can, go slow. Resist the urge to “do” as many countries as possible. The longer our Trip went on, the slower we moved; we could return to any of the countries we visited for another year, and still only experience a tiny slice of life there.
To avoid crowds, don’t go to the thing that’s at the top of every must-see list as a perfect 10 — go to the thing that’s an 8 out of 10. It’ll still be stunning, it’ll have a fraction of the people, and you’ll have an even more amazing time as a result.
If it’s good enough for the locals, it’s good enough for you — and conversely, if it’s filled with tourists, it’s probably not as good! This goes for transportation, for restaurants, whatever. Challenge yourself to resist the urge to go where the people who look like you are standing; the food will be worse, and the bus tickets more expensive.
America is in a dark place right now, but as citizens we travel on a very strong passport, and this is a privilege not to be underestimated. As Americans, we consistently received: cheaper visas (or no visa at all) with same-day approval, shorter immigration lines, access to automatic immigration gate systems so we could skip the line entirely, plus the knowledge that if we needed an emergency replacement passport, we could probably get one almost anywhere in the world. Having a USA passport is a powerful thing, and if we’re lucky it’ll stay that way.
And now, onto the extremely non-sponsored gear and product reviews!
Big Trip MVPs
Bedrock Sandals: we invested a lot of time and energy in planning the clothes we brought on Big Trip, but of everything we brought, the only items that were truly irreplaceable were our Bedrock Sandals. Incredibly comfortable and exceptionally functional, we both wore these almost every day for an entire year, and they’ve held up admirably. Wear them loose and they’re as comfy as flip-flops, tighten them down and they’re extremely capable hiking shoes. Bedrock Sandals, we love you!
“The pineapples”: This is how we refer to the extra-large lightweight cotton sarong Dory packed on the trip — you get one guess as to what it’s printed with. This is the ultimate multi-use object — it’s a beach towel, a bath towel, a sunshade, a cover-up for scootering home from the beach, a changing cape for taking off a wetsuit, modesty pants for Justin or Dory at Buddhist temples, an extra layer when it’s cold, and in general one of the most useful things we had on Big Trip. We also had quick-dry towels, but we used the pineapples with far more frequency. The pineapples are somewhat ridiculously from Patagonia (it’s a Pataloha pareo, if you care) but the brand name is overkill — you want something big enough that if you wear it as a skirt, it’ll reach your ankles, and you want it to be made of thin cotton so it packs down and dries fast. That’s it!
Packing cubes: Ours are from Eagle Creek. They’re great, they still work as well as they did on day one of the trip, and they help maintain a semblance of organization. We generally didn’t use the compression function; by leaving them a little floppier, it’s easier to compress the full contents of a backpack (we each used the Osprey Farpoint/Fairview 40 and an REI Flash 18 for extra space; no complaints!)
Google Translate: In countries where we didn’t stand a chance of language acquisition (looking at you, Laos and Vietnam) Translate was an irreplaceable tool. You can download an entire language’s dictionary onto the Google Translate app (for free!) and use it offline! Translate also has a visual translation tool called Lens that’s excellent for translating menus; it worked extremely well except in Laos (see the screenshot below.)
Brian’s Surfline Premium membership: our friend Brian pays for a premium subscription to the surf forecasting app everyone loves to hate, and we used his login for the entire trip. Thanks Brian!!!
SteriPen (in Asia): During our faster-moving travel era, especially in Laos and Thailand, we used our SteriPen (combined with a clear, one liter bottle) to purify all of our drinking water. It only takes a minute, and saved us from using about a billion single-use plastic bottles. Our SteriPen was USB rechargeable and served us well for months, but we did eventually break the bulb when Dory dropped it by accident in Indonesia. Be forewarned — SteriPens should be handled with care!
A phone that accepts physical SIM cards: If you have a newer iPhone, you may have noticed that it no longer has a physical SIM card slot. This is bad! While eSIMs are super easy to buy, and we did use them for convenience intermittently, physical SIMs cost a fraction of the price and are still widely available! For example: in Indonesia, a physical SIM with 30 days and 100GB of data cost around US$7; similar coverage on an eSIM would be $100. If you’ll be traveling for a long time, it’s worth getting a cheap Android phone so you’re able to buy real SIM cards.
Earplugs and a white noise machine: silence is a privilege you’re not often afforded while traveling, and earplugs are a necessary asset for long term travel. Dory’s parents also gifted us a little tiny white noise machine which we used often — you can play white noise on your phone, too, but we found the machine did a better job of truly blocking out background noise.
Justin using the pineapples as a sunshade off the coast of Sumbawa, Indonesia
And now, some general travel tips, broken out by topic area!
MONEY
Having a few hundred bucks in USD is a useful backstop, but in general cash is unnecessary — you just need a debit card! But when you rely on ATMs for all your cash, the fees can add up, so we recommend getting an account that reimburses ATM fees; some months, we were reimbursed over $40! We used our Charles Schwab Investor Checking account for the entire trip, and never encountered an issue.
At international ATMs, you’ll often be asked to accept a conversion rate. Always decline! The ATM is asking your polite permission to give you a terrible conversion rate; if you decline, it’d default to the more favorable market conversion rate.
If you aren’t using credit cards for the points, you’re missing out on free money. Over the course of the trip, we spent 225,000 credit card points, and probably earned another 150,000 by being strategic about which cards we used for which expenses. A few of our points purchases on Big Trip: business class tickets on Singapore Air from SFO to Bangkok, and 13 nights in lovely hotels in Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar, England, and Mexico.
One of our credit cards gives us Priority Pass access (here’s a referral link to the card if you’re interested!) which means free admission to airport lounges all over the world, regardless of the class or airline we’re flying. This was an essential Big Trip benefit — we never paid for airport food, always had good internet, and occasionally experienced flashes of true luxury (hot croissants and soft scrambled eggs and cappuccinos in Rome! Some of the best food in Indonesia in Medan! Massage chairs in Barcelona!) This is a common benefit on premium credit cards, and for us it was worth its weight in gold.
We had a clear division of labor on research and booking for Big Trip: Justin did flights and land travel, Dory did housing and food. Here are some tips from all those categories!
HOUSING
For housing, always cross-check your reviews. Does the place look good on booking.com? Find it on Google Maps and make sure.
Speaking of booking.com, we used the hell out of this platform. Unlike Agoda, it shows you the fees upfront, and it’s an easy to use tool with good filters (in Asia, try: Reviews of 8+, Free Wifi, Breakfast Included. Everywhere else, drop the breakfast!) When possible, use Booking as a search tool and then try to find the same hotel on Google, so you can contact them to book directly. Booking charges 15% to the businesses it lists, so booking direct can save them a ton of money (and is often cheaper for you than booking through the intermediary!)
Airbnb sucks. We used it occasionally in Greece, but otherwise we avoided it categorically. Hotels and guesthouses are motivated to provide good customer service; at an Airbnb, there’s no one to ask for help when things go wrong. Short term rentals are also terrible for neighborhoods, tying up housing that could serve locals instead of tourists — and if all that isn’t enough, Airbnb was routinely much more expensive than any other option.
If you’d like to use credit card points for housing, do not book through your credit card’s travel portal! Always transfer points to the hotel in question — we love Hyatt because they have a very favorable award calendar. Check MaxMyPoint to see how you can get maximum value (put in your destination, then sort by “10k Point Value”)
FLIGHTS
For air travel, don’t be afraid to build your own itinerary using one-way flights. This comes with some risk, but if you book long layovers, it tends to work out — in all of Big Trip, we never missed a connection.
You can usually get a guitar on an international budget airline if you move with confidence, check in online to skip the first set of agents, and pretend to be very confused.
Don’t check bags. That’s it. Don’t do it. They get lost, cost extra, it takes forever, and it just isn’t worth the trouble. We avoided it almost always, even though Asian budget airlines are super aggressive about carry-on bag size, and some of them also impose impossibly tiny weight limits for carry-ons. Pack light! And just in case you are forced to check a bag, put AirTags in your luggage. We never had to rely on our AirTags to track lost bags, but have friends for whom they’ve been absolute lifesavers.
If you’re trying to decide whether to book a flight on credit card points or to pay cash, use this formula: (cash price) - (taxes and fees) / (points cost) = value per point. In general, if the point value is less than a cent, you’re better off paying cash.
In Indonesia, not all airlines are listed on Google Flights, especially when flying to smaller islands off the coast. When you’re considering a less popular route to a small airport, ask around to ensure you’re not missing a key airline that might get you to where you’re going!
ABC: Always be charging! This one is borrowed directly from our friend Brett, and it’s a lesson that bears repeating. You never know when you’ll find another plug, so don’t travel with a low battery!
FOOD
Not sure where to eat? Turn to Google Maps! Some of our best meals (and best experiences) came from using Google Maps to find the closest, highest rated spots to where we were currently standing. A few pro tips on top of that:
Sort reviews by “newest,” and see who’s leaving them. Google will automatically translate reviews into your default language; if the original review was posted in the country’s native language, it’s one to pay extra attention to! If the review is originally in English, take it with a grain of salt.
Look at the pictures! The longer you’re in a country, the better you’ll get at recognizing delicious food.
You can search for specific food on Google Maps. For example, if you want to eat tacos de suadero in Mexico, just line up the map over your location and plug that into the search bar. It’ll show you every restaurant that mentions that food in their listing.
The number of reviews matters as much as the star rating. A restaurant with 4.1 stars and 3,000 reviews may be way better than one with 5.0 stars and two reviews!
In bigger cities, it’s worth Googling “eater + city name,” or “thrillist + city name” (this is a tip cribbed directly from food writer Adam Roberts) for some more curated recommendations.
And lastly, in Asia specifically, don’t pass up the chance to eat some outrageously cheap Michelin selected food. The Michelin Guide led us to some of our most memorable meals in Malaysia: Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery and Entier!)
We’ve dropped the link before, but just in case you still need it, here’s our Big Trip List — mostly restaurant recommendations, from quite literally every place we traveled this year.
Always get the pistachio. It’s the best flavor of whatever it is (shoutout to Jackson, he was right.)
These two are obvious, but bear mentioning anyways:
Get local recommendations and follow them.
Eat what looks delicious.
Just because a place is famous doesn’t mean it’s good.
Finally, if you’re planning a Big Trip of your own, or even considering it, you should send us an email! Especially if any of our country destinations are on your travel list, we’d be delighted to chat. While all of the things we loved and experienced first-hand are on the Big Trip List, we have a whole other mental list of the things we didn’t have a chance to do, and that we’ve heard amazing things about. Maybe you can go have those adventures, and send us an email newsletter to tell us how it went.
We love you all to the moon and back.
Thanks for joining us for the Big Trip Diaries.
Officially signing off,
Dory & Justin