Travel Resources
Table of Contents
We have put together a concise list of all the resources we currently use for our travels and to run our business to help to inspire you to travel more.
Destination Guides
Lonely Planet
Our go-to guidebook we always refer to while we head to a new country. We purchase and download the book to our Kindle App to read on our iPhone and Kindle.
Wikitravel
A free travel guide that is crowdsourced, filled with unbiased information that is up to date. You can also download Wiki Triip on your iPhone to access this entire website offline to read to find out a general overview of what to expect, how to get to/from your destination, general attractions, places to eat, sleep and drink.
TripAdvisor
Worldwide crowdsourced review site for restaurants, lodging, attractions, guides, and more. I used Yelp religiously, but it has not caught on overseas and TripAdvisor is the next best thing. Come here for unbiased hotel reviews and to look for local attractions.
International Information
- Fest 300: Website that lists all the festivals around the world
- Atlas Obscura: Unique, hidden places, and unusual attractions around the world
- Nomadic Matt: His website offers information on his past travels and tips. He is the author of “Travel The World on $50 a Day” and many regional budget guides as well.
- Thousand Wonders: Explore the world through photos
- UNESCO World Heritage List: List of culturally and historically preserved sites
- BootsnAll: For complex and long-term round the world travel, the best website to go for all information
United States & Regional Information
- Roadtrippers: Travel planner that lets you create a custom route which you can share and plan with friends and family and also discover attractions, lodging, gas, and other waypoints en route.
- Roadside America: Offbeat road-side attractions
- Factory Tours USA: Visit factories to see how things are made in USA.
- Weekend Sherpa: Things to do outdoors in Northern California
Accommodations
You’ll always need somewhere to stay when traveling so we comb through every item on this list to compare prices each time we head to a new destination. We are budget- to mid-range travelers and select accommodations based on cost (lower), reviews (3 or more out of 5), location (close to train or bus station, convenience stores and/or food), with no-frills basic necessities (bed, western toilet), and non-smoking rooms. Extras like free breakfast, luxurious design, gym, pool, wifi are low on the list. While hostels are cheap for solo travelers, it typically costs the same if not cheaper to just get a private room for couples. We typically stay in Airbnb’s or use other hotel booking services listed below.
For long-term stays, we search online for local apartment listings or look for a real estate agent. We stayed in Chiang Mai for $400/month for 2 months ($13/night) via real estate agent and Kyoto for $625/month ($21/night) via an online search. We have also heard great things about house-sits, which offer free lodging with an exchange of your caretaking services for pets, plants, house, etc., but we haven’t managed to find one that fits our travel dates and duration, location, and service demands.
Hotels & Hostels
HotelsCombined
Our first stop on researching prices for lodging which is highly recommend. HotelsCombined is a hotel price aggregator that pulls from multiple sources like hotels.com, expedia.com, booking.com, agoda.com, and various other hotel chains and shows you on one page. Sometimes, they offer special rates not found when you go to the individual booking sites.
Hotels.com
We book through Hotels.com the most because the prices of rooms usually come up cheaper than the other ones. The bonus is if you stay 10 nights, you get 1 night free. The value of the free night is an average of the 10 nights.
Agoda
Agoda offers one of the largest hotel inventories all throughout Asia. We use Agoda extensively in the Asian countries because of their really competitive rates and wider selection compared to other booking sites.
Booking.com
We use Booking.com to find cheap hotel prices. Most hotels are listed on the other online reservation sites and it doesn’t hurt to use this to compare. Booking.com does not charge a booking fee and offer the ability to pay at the hotel.
Airbnb
Homeowners can rent out a shared or pviate room in their home or an entire apartment to visitors. Depending on your booking, you are able to interact with your host to gain a chance to immerse yourself in their culture, learn a new language, get some tips on local sights, and share good times. We have used Airbnb to stay in some unique places like a yacht, or in a trendy neighborhood that would have otherwise costed us double in a hotel. There are unique finds on Airbnb and you can stay in a yurt, treehouse, RV and so much more.
Homestay.com
Similar to Airbnb, owners on Homestay offer a room in their apartments, condos, houses while you get to immerse with them in the locale.
VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner)
Rent homes or condos for the weekend, long trips, or even for special events.
Hostelworld.com
Great site to book hostels and private rooms when we need to travel on a budget and don’t mind sacrificing comforts. Sometimes hostels are located more centrally in the tourist circuit.
Vacation Packages
TripAdvisor
Worldwide crowdsourced review site for restaurants, lodging, attractions, guides, and more. I used Yelp religiously, but it has not caught on overseas and TripAdvisor is the next best thing. Come here for unbiased hotel reviews and to look for local attractions.
ExpediaExpedia is great to book vacation packages for more popular travel destinations. Their reward program is very good as well. | |
PricelinePriceline offers competitive prices for hotels, flights, and vacation packages if you aren’t too particular with details. | |
OrbitzBook cheap airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, vacations and travel deals on Orbitz. |
Alternative Lodging
TripAdvisor
Worldwide crowdsourced review site for restaurants, lodging, attractions, guides, and more. I used Yelp religiously, but it has not caught on overseas and TripAdvisor is the next best thing. Come here for unbiased hotel reviews and to look for local attractions.
Trusted House SittersBrowse house-sitting opportunities to take care of pets, water plants, take in mail and keep the house clean while homeowners are away. Listings are more predominant in Australia, Europe, USA, and New Zealand and require advanced planning and flexibility in scheduling. Trusted House Sitters has the largest community online and focuses on UK, Europe, Australia and North America. Annual subscription $60. | |
Mind My HouseAnother house sitting site predominately in UK, Europe and US. Annual fee $20. | |
House CarersGood house sits predominately in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Annual Fee $55. | |
Couch SurfingA community of travelers who open their couches or extra beds to fellow travelers around the world to share about their culture and practice speaking other languages. There are also local events so travelers and locals can meet. We have tried unsuccessfully to couchsurf. | |
WWOOFThe World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is an exchange program where volunteers are linked up with organic farms and growers. In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles. |
Transportation
Lonely Planet
Our go-to guidebook we always refer to while we head to a new country. We purchase and download the book to our Kindle App to read on our iPhone and Kindle.
Wikitravel
A free travel guide that is crowdsourced, filled with unbiased information that is up to date. You can also download Wiki Triip on your iPhone to access this entire website offline to read to find out a general overview of what to expect, how to get to/from your destination, general attractions, places to eat, sleep and drink.
TripAdvisor
Worldwide crowdsourced review site for restaurants, lodging, attractions, guides, and more. I used Yelp religiously, but it has not caught on overseas and TripAdvisor is the next best thing. Come here for unbiased hotel reviews and to look for local attractions.
The Points Guy: Great articles on how to get the most reward points or miles from credit cards to travel farther and cheaper.
Google Flight SearchThis is where we first go to do flight searches. It’s a fantastic aggregator that pulls from multiple airlines, though some budget airlines are excluded. | |
SkyscannerWe use Skyscanner to help locate good deals for flights to anywhere in the world for months at a time. | |
AirfarewatchdogAirfarewatchdog keeps an eye on flight deals all over the internet, including ones that aren’t even advertised, and sends you emails whenever they find a good price. Make sure you sign up for their newsletter and price alerts, as this is one of the best resources for finding cheap flights! | |
MomondoRobust search feature that searches budget airlines and allows you to select flights based on your budget and departure location. | |
Rome2RioYou can discover to go about anywhere by plane, train, bus, ferry, car, and more. | |
WhichBudgetGreat resource to find out which budget airlines fly between destinations. | |
The Man in Seat 61Information about riding trains from how to obtain your ticket, seat reviews, routes and so much more. The most concise guide for your journey on a train anywhere in the world. |
Tour Companies
With group tour packages, all accommodations, overland transportation, and activities are planned and led by an English-speaking guide. Various travel-style options are available for the slow- or fast-paced traveler, accommodations for budget or luxury travelers, and more. Many group tours allow free time for you to check out sites on your own or with the friends you make along the way. They tend to cost more than your do it yourself option because the vendors do all the research and take care of all the logistics for you and you also have a guide who can help sort out questions when they arise. It is recommended for first-time travelers who want to travel and not spend too much time planning.
ContikiGreat packaged group tour for ages of 18-35. Discounts for early payment, last-minute deals, or for travelers with more than 4 people. | |
G AdventuresSmall group tours for those looking for the great adventures. | |
IntrepidAnother group travel agency with three varying travel budget options: basix, original and comfort. |
Packing List
We are both traveling with a 65L backpacking backpack and a day pack and list all our travel and business gear on the link below.
Insurance
World Nomads
Even if you have medical insurance in your home country, it is usually not covered when traveling overseas (but do double-check with your carrier). World Nomads will cover important things like emergency medical evacuation, trip cancellation, baggage delay, and more. We use and trust World Nomads for our travel insurance policies. You can purchase for a year for multiple traveling multiple countries. It does not cover any incidents resulting from pre-existing conditions which you need supplemental insurance. Property insurance limits to X, so look for . Read the coverage here.
SquareMouth
This is an excellent site for reading reviews and to compare insurance policies. I used this to purchase a supplemental medical insurance for pre-existing conditions.
healthcare.gov
If you are from the US, the Affordability Care Act or Obamacare mandates that each individual must have health insurance or else a penalty is incurred (penalty is payable when you file your annual income tax return). If you are in the country for more than 30 days, you must purchase insurance from healthcare.gov through your state, unless you are already otherwise covered under the following circumstances: (a) you are under 26 years old and covered under your parent’s group insurance, (b) you are disabled or are 65+ and have Medicare coverage, (c) you are a US Veteran and have coverage with the Veteran’s Affairs (VA), or (d) your current employer offers you group insurance, or (e) you are paying for COBRA coverage.
Covered CA
For California residents, if you have been out of the country for a while and/or have a substantial decline in income and need to enroll, you do not need to wait until open enrollment period and can enroll using a special circumstance. If you plan on staying in the US for more than 30 days, and do not want to incur penalties, you must enroll 60 days before your return date as it takes more than 30 days to process your Covered CA application. For those who have a substantial decline in income, you may be able to enroll with special subsidized rates based on your income level.
Travel Health
Immunizations
Typical immunizations include the following and some are administered in doses so plan ahead. Specific immunizations depend on the region you are heading into, visit the CDC website. Make sure to ask your physician for an International Certificate of Vaccination (Yellow Card) because there are countries that require proof of Yellow Fever Immunization before you can enter/exit.
- Yellow Fever: Live vaccine
- Japanese Encephalitis: 2 Shots, Day 1 and Day 28
- MMR – Measles, Mumps, Rubella: Live vaccine
- Typhoid: Oral or injection if you have an immune deficient condition
- Hepatitis A: 3 doses
- Hepatitis B: 3 doses
- Polio Booster
- Pneumonia Vaccine
- Flu Vaccine
- Meningitis
- TB test
Oral Prescription Medicine
- High Altitude Sickness: Acetazolamide to combat symptoms
- Malaria: Depending on what region you go to, the type of pills prescribed will be different because certain strains resisted
- Traveller’s Diarrhea/Food Poisoning: Cipro, a strong antibiotic
Money
Find out which travel debit cards and credit cards we recommend during your travels to avoid spending more on ATM fees, foreign transaction fees, maintenance fees and more. Also, find tips on how to travel hack to earn rewards on your credit card spending to redeem free flights, accommodations, and more.
Communication
While traveling, we use a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM card since May is part of the family plan and T-Mobile offers free international data (check for country coverage here) and free text messaging with calls costing 20 cents per minute. Another plan similar to T-Mobile is Google’s Project Fi.
While T-Mobile offers 3G internationally, it is limited to 128kbps (slow) so we usually pick up a local SIM card with a generous data plan in the country we visit if we are staying long-term or if costs are cheap enough to warrant a purchase. In Indonesia (Telkomsel), Thailand (AIS), and Japan (Japan Travel SIM via IIJmio).
If we need to make a phone call to an international number we use Skype, or Google Voice for US phone numbers.
When we contact family and friends we typically use Facebook Messenger (video chat and chat features). A lot of online sites require a SMS verification especially when they realize you are connecting from a foreign location, so it’s essential to have a mobile number either via T-Mobile or Google Voice.
T-MobileAn excellent pay-as-you-go cell carrier in U.S. that offers free international data (internet) and texting, voice calls are 20 cents per minute in over 140+ countries. In lesser developed countries where there is no coverage, using a carrier in that region comes with a surcharge for both voice and data. Check the website for coverage and rates. The internet while available overseas, is not true 3G or 4G as it is capped at 126 kbps speed with the option of purchasing faster speeds. Sometimes we just purchase local SIM cards instead of paying for faster speeds because they are much cheaper. | |
Google Voice NumberWe created a free local number to use as a business phone number that forwards all calls to May’s cell using T-Mobile and also through Google Hangouts. Google Voice allows us to dial US phone numbers through the internet without paying additional fees. In addition, there is a text feature, voicemail transcription service all built in. You can give this number out to family and friends who may not be adept at using other apps like Skype, Google Chat, and Facebook Messenger. | |
SkypeSkype offers video conferencing and free calls to toll-free numbers in the U.S. We top off our account with $10 to make international phone calls when we do not have minutes on our phone plan AND when we have decent internet connection. | |
Facebook MessengerFacebook Messenger is different from the Facebook app. This has been our primary form of contact with family and friends back home. Video calls, phone calls, voice messages and chatting using text messages help keep us connected easily. | |
Google HangoutsA lot of businesses prefer using Skype or Google Hangouts for video conferencing. This is also one method to keep in touch with friends who predominately use Google/Gmail. We don’t use this as much, but it is available if we do plan on using it in the future. |
Productivity Tools
We edit photos, manage our blog, and plan our trips while on the road and it’s essential for both of us to share our files effortlessly. We use Dropbox to store the files we share with each other and Google Drive (Docs, Sheets) to work on everything else.
Google DriveWe use this for planning our trips since we can both edit the same file at the same time without worrying about which version is the most up to date. We can also access items offline as well with the desktop App. The Google Apps we use include Google Drive, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, and Maps and we have all of these on our iPhone as well. Chrome is our default web browser as we can log into one account and sync our bookmarks bar. | |
DropboxShare your files on the cloud. May also uses this instead of iCloud to backup her camera photos. This is where we keep our documents we don’t modify frequently like PDFs, images, and client files. We pay $9.99/mo for 1 TB of storage. | |
SmugMugOur online photo and video gallery and with unlimited storage. Visitors can also purchase digital files, prints, and merchandise from SmugMug. Private and password-protected galleries are available for clients. Save 20% off by signing through this link. | |
Adobe Creative CloudWe subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud service and use Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier Pro, Illustrator, Acrobat, Bridge, and other Adobe CC apps to do graphic design, edit photos and videos. | |
CrashPlanBacking up our work is important in case something were to go missing. Crashplan allows you to select specific folders to backup and works effortlessly in the background. | |
PaypalTraveling as a couple with so many different savings, checkings, and credit card accounts can be challenging to manage. We maintain several individual and joint accounts and Quicken allows us to get a good overview of our expenditures. Mint.com is good when there aren’t so many accounts to manage. | |
LogMeInWe use this to remotely login to our computers to access files at home while we are on the road. You can log in using mobile and laptop on the road. | |
Lynda.comLynda.com offers on-demand video training to improve your skills. | |
AmazonOur favorite online store to buy anything and everything. If you join Amazon Prime, you get free 2-day shipping, unlimited video streaming, and even cloud storage. | |
TrelloCloud-based project management tool to organize multiple projects. It’s free to use and you can collaborate with other people as well. | |
WitopiaFantastic VPN to use to connect to certain web services available to your home country. In China, we needed a VPN to access Google, Facebook, and Dropbox. You can connect up to two devices with one account. $39.99 for 6 months, 1-, 2-, and 3-year plans are available. Claim 15% off your subscription applied at checkout using our referral link here. |
Apps
These are the top Apps we have installed on both our iPhones and use constantly. Almost all the resources listed above also have Apps, which are also installed on our iPhones since we do spend quite a bit of time doing research on our smartphone if not on our laptop.
TripItThe best travel itinerary manager for your flight tickets, hotel bookings, and activities. You can share your itinerary with others who are also on the trip with you. For the pro version, you get alerts and advanced features to track your miles. | |
SayHi TranslateFantastic translator app where you can speak in one language and it will translate in audio and text to another language. It is great to have conversations with. | |
Units Plus ConverterWe use the free version since the ads don’t disrupt our usage at all. It is a converter for everything imaginable including currency, time, length, temperature, weight and more. | |
KindleFor reading amazing books on the trip. | |
OverDrive – Library eBooks and AudiobooksThis app allows us to connect with our local public library to download eBooks and Audio Books to read and listen. We have been able to peruse travel guides without purchasing them by using this method. | |
Wiki TriipThe entire wikitravel.org website, a crowdsourced travel guide is available in offline mode. I read this to get a quick overview about the next location we are traveling to. This is a condensed version of the travel guides I read before perusing Lonely Planet, Triposo, and other websites. | |
TriposoTriposo offers many free country-specific guides for download. It includes common phrases, currency, weather, travel warnings, info and attraction guides. The attraction lists are somewhat lacking and should improve. | |
TripAdvisorWorldwide crowdsourced review site for restaurants, lodging, attractions, guides, and more. I used Yelp religiously, but it has not caught on overseas and TripAdvisor is the next best thing. Come here for unbiased hotel reviews and to look for local attractions. | |
DropboxDropbox is essential to access vital documents (passport, ID). May has set it up so her iPhone photos automatically backup to Dropbox. We purchased an annual subscription for work and this is another solution that doesn’t require you to also pay for an iCloud subscription. Josh backs up his photos using the Flickr app. | |
FlickrWe not only post our best photos here, we also use it to research photos others have taken. In addition, Josh uses Flickr on his iPhone to automatically upload photos he takes on his camera to a private Flickr page. | |
Google MapsActs as your GPS unit to figure out where you need to go and to also to use to show your taxi driver. It would be great if “My Maps” was fully integrated in the app. | |
Betternet VPNFree app to use to connect to apps/pages restricted in certain countries, namely China because iTunes, Dropbox, Google, and Facebook are banned there. VPN’s usually slow down your browsing speed as you are connecting to a server in another part of the world. |
Inspirational Books & Films
View a list of our recommended inspirational books and films on travel, personal development, and business entrepreneurship.
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