I am writing this week’s blog after being on hold an amazing 52 minutes with the apparently overworked people working the Delta Skymiles call center. Thankfully I had a headset on, so I could get some other things done in the meantime. About 20 minutes into this marathon, I made a reservation, with exact dates and seat assignments, for a trip to Peru. (One of The World’s Cheapest Destinations.) But in a twist that would make Kafka proud, I then had to hang up and call a different number to actually have the miles taken out of my account to pay for it. And doing it on the web is not an option for international flights.

So I had no choice but to again wait on the phone until someone finally picked up. (I guess they hope you’ll forget about it and not be able to use the miles.) On this call I got patched through to someone after 21 minutes, but even though I had punched the number to choose “international,” I got someone who could only book the ticket if it were domestic. Never mind that I already had a reservation and all my information is in their system. She couldn’t help. So she transferred me to someone else who couldn’t help either because my frequent flyer number was not on her screen—it didn’t transfer with the phone call and she wasn’t able to just type it herself. She transferred me to another line so I could enter in my number again. So I was back where I started, listening to a taped loop about how great it is to fly on Delta. Two people and many minutes later, I finally got my trip booked, with a shade less than an hour gone from my life.

Last week my wife booked two frequent flyer reward tickets with Southwest. It took all of three minutes. She gave them the numbers, picked the flights, and it was done. No restrictions, no separate phone number, no time on hold. If the “discount” airlines can make it so easy, why is that so hard for the old guys?

Is it any wonder the old guys are losing money? Is it any wonder that none of the “legacy” airlines are doing well? They can blame it on bad labor deals, high fuel prices, and a travel recession, but it’s simpler than that. I have two words that explain it all: bad service. When you get treated better on a cut-rate airline than you do on the ones that used to be full service (and still act like they’re better), of course we’re all going to gravitate to the lowest ticket price. We don’t get any more for our money by doing otherwise.

A couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about a feud between Delta and their catering company over unpaid bills and the risk of future defaults. So the catering company refused to deliver food to Delta at JFK Airport in New York one day. As a result, the planes flew across the Atlantic with no food on board except what the flight attendants could go scrounge up from a local supermarket! (Yes, including first class.) They profiled a guy who flew a total of 28 hours to India with nothing to eat but a muffin!!

Delta is so hurting for pilots that they’re bringing guys out of retirement. USAir is trying to fashion itself into a budget carrier in order to crawl out of bankruptcy someday and United is not sure what to do to turn things around except chop salaries.

So what can you do about it? Probably nothing, except making sure you use up your frequent flyer miles instead of hanging onto them too long and watching them vanish. Be careful booking a round-the-world ticket with the Star Alliance (US carriers are United and USAir). And cross your fingers for me that Delta will still be around next year so I can actually use that flight to Peru I worked so hard to book!

Is one of the most beautiful places on earth getting too dicey for travelers?

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by an Italian travel magazine on where to find the best international travel bargains. In an interesting juxtoposition of questions, they asked me what my favorite country was that I had been to and then asked if any country featured in my book was now maybe too dangerous for travelers. The answer to both questions was “Nepal.”

For years, I’ve been telling people it was one of my favorite places in the world. Despite the troubles they’ve had, I would still go there tomorrow and I would still do the wonderful three week trek on the Annapurna circuit. After all, problems in a country always sound worse on the news than they are on the ground, especially compared to the situation outside your own front door. Lately though, the situation has crossed the line from “be careful” to “maybe think about going somewhere else.”

In the past, the Maoist rebels created a lot of trouble for the government and killed plenty of people in the name of communism. (What decade are these people stuck in?) Never mind that Mao’s policies have been denounced even by the Chinese and communism in its Maoist form only still exists in North Korea and Cuba–two countries that have seen their output and wealth collapse after Russia stopped propping them up.

While the attacks in the past were often bloody and dramatic (whole police stations wiped out, assassinations in the royal palace), tourists and foreign workers were generally left alone–apart from the occasional forced “donation” on a hiking trail. While as many as 10,000 people have reportedly died over the past eight years, foreigners have generally been sideline observers.

In recent months, however, things have gotten uglier.

- The restaurant at Pokhara’s Fishtail Lodge was bombed this past May. Nobody was hurt, but this is a popular hotel for tourists (I spent a night there and ate at that restaurant…)

- Last week, a bomb exploded on the grounds of the Soaltee Crowne Plaza hotel in Kathmandu (Hmmm, I’ve been there too…)

- Security on flights between India and Nepal has been stepped up after intelligence indicated that the Maoist terrorists were planning to hijack a plane. (Umm, and I’ve been on those flights…)

- Nepal has requested anti-mine trucks from India after reports that the rebels were planning to mine major roadways. (And I’ve ridden buses on those roads…)

- The Maoists have announced a general strike during the start of the important five-day Kumari religious festival at the end of September. The strike is designed to force business to grind to a halt during one of the most important tourist events of the year. Like most of the group’s actions, it would make the poorest people in a poor country even poorer.

There is hope, however. The residents of Nepal, especially in the capital, are fed up with the violence. Thousands turned out for a recent peace rally. A few days later, 10,000 or more marched to protest the country’s monarchy and demand a peaceful restoration of an elected parliament.

So far, the Maoists seem to be targeting tourist businesses to get into the news, not to actually kill foreigners. It’s a fine line, however, and since the group knows it is scaring away tourists, and therefore most of the country’s income, they are obviously not too concerned about the health and well-being of anyone.

I’m not saying don’t go, but as we enter into the prime trekking season of the year, keep your eyes on the news and watch the Thorn Tree message board on Lonely Planet’s site for updates from people on the ground there.

(Note, the following appears in my regular budget travel column in Transitions Abroad magazine.)

College graduates who have traveled for extended times will tell you they learned far more on the road than they ever did at the university. Politics, history, geography, religion, architecture, and even marine biology present themselves in everyday case studies. Plus with all those long bus and train rides, you finally have some time to read some literature, not just the Cliff Notes.

You can also take advantage of local learning opportunities you never could at home. There are plenty of formal options for studying abroad, of course, but also many short-term options meant for just the sheer joy of learning.

During our first around the world trip we stumbled upon a batik workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that offered classes several times per week. On one overcast, drizzly day, we learned the basics of how to create a batik painting and walked away with our own crude works of art. After hours of going through the multiple steps required to create them, we gained a great appreciation for the paintings and hand-made craft items we found in markets and museums from then on.

On the same trip, my wife Donna took a 1-day Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai, Thailand. For about $20, students learn about all the key ingredients in Thai cooking, how basic dishes are prepared, and a hands-on introduction to exotic fruits that show up regularly in local markets. At lunch everyone ate what the class had prepared. Donna still uses the photocopied recipe booklet to make an occasional Pad Thai or coconut curry for dinner.

While these introductory day courses are fun, many travelers opt for more immersion, or even formal certification. We met plenty of people studying massage, getting a scuba certification, learning Chinese calligraphy, or working toward a higher skill level in yoga or Buddhist meditation.

If you have the good fortune of being in one place for a while, take advantage of the learning opportunities. When I taught English as a second language in Korea, quite a few teachers attended tae kwon do classes. Some English teachers in Japan learn intricate origami or how to conduct a tea ceremony.

Taking language classes in a foreign country is a popular and useful learning experience (see Transitions Abroad May/June 2004). In most of Latin America, it is easy to find a Spanish immersion course for $200 to $500 per week, room and board included. But why not combine it with something that gets you out of your seat? Learn the tango in Argentina, the merengue in the Dominican Republic, or the samba in Brazil. In most cases the additional cost will be minimal and it will add a another dimension to your language learning.

Think of all the short, inexpensive adult classes offered in the city where you live now. There is probably a similar long list where you’re going—just take a look around and start asking questions.

Beyond all the fun and games, international learning experiences can be one of the best ways to give a possible career choice a trial run. Through a short-term volunteer program, you can be “in the trenches” and see if what sounded interesting and fulfilling in theory actually is in real life. The book Volunteer Vacations, for example, has a categorized index in the back for different types of opportunities. Some of these include archeology, conservation, preservation and restoration, marine research, medical work, and even train maintenance. Some programs are obviously meant more for wealthy people trying to do a little good on a break, but many others cost a minimal amount to register and will cover your room and board.

Recommended books for learning abroad:

*Volunteer Vacations (Chicago Review Press)

*The Back-Door Guide to Short-term Job Adventures (Ten Speed Press)

*International Directory of Volunteer Work (Vacation Work)

*How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas (Penguin USA)

*Alternative Travel Directory (Transitions Abroad)

I just finished reading The Penny Pincher’s Guide to Luxury Travel, by Joel Widzer, which has some good pointers on traveling in style by funneling your business to a few select companies. The essence of the book is that if you form a mutually beneficial relationship with one airline and a couple of hotel chains, you’ll be rewarded with easy upgrades and preferential treatment.

Like the next guy, I enjoying traveling in style if I don’t have to pay a fortune for it, so I’m all for getting a better seat and better digs for the same price. However, getting to the point where you can get those rewards can be grueling. Nobody gets the special treatment until they’ve reached a certain level and you don’t get the real VIP treatment until you attain “elite status” (literally and officially).

Here’s a case in point for why loyalty doesn’t always pay. The last time I flew down to Mexico, I got a great refundable charter ticket direct from my home town for $250, including the substantial taxes. The cheapest flight on any “normal” airline (non-refundable) was $390 even though it was the off season and it would have taken at least two hours longer because of the connection through another city. I’ve flown down there before on both Continental and USAir and was lucky to get a bag of pretzels along the way. On this charter flight, I got a choice of hot meals and a mimosa going down, a nice sandwich meal coming back, a leather seat that wasn’t any more cramped than the usual ones, a movie, and friendly service. So I paid less and got more–no contest!

Same goes for the likes of Southwest and AirTran vs. any of the once “full-service” airlines. These days the only thing you get on the latter in coach is an assigned seat, which doesn’t seem to be worth much more money or extra flight time.

The author’s key point with hotels is that if you have a history of staying with their chain, which they can pull up on their computer and see, you will often receive an upgrade just for asking. Nice, but this forgets the fact that in many foreign countries, especially in The World’s Cheapest Destinations, these international chain hotels are already the most expensive in town by far. Why not–they’re priced for business travelers. They’re often in a lousy location as well–far from the center or the tourist attractions. In Merida, Mexico, a city I’m in a lot, the big chain hotels are miles from Centro, the area where you can stroll around historic squares, sight-see, and hang at cafes and bars. These properties are also the blandest in town, while the locally owned places in the center are overflowing with color and character. So yes, maybe you could get a free upgrade at the Hyatt, or you could just stay somewhere more central and get the best suite in the building and have enough left over for a great dinner and drinks. This isn’t true everywhere of course–some Hiltons and Inter-Continentals are in especially good spots because they’ve been there for decades. But it’s probably true at least half the time, based on my experience reviewing upscale hotels in ten different countries.

So my advice is to hedge your bets. Pick an airline you’re most likely to fly on the most and use it when all else is relatively equal. Especially if you’re going overseas, since that’s where you really rack up the frequent flyer miles. Otherwise, remember that those miles are worth less than two cents each, so paying a big premium to earn miles on a flight usually isn’t worth it unless you’re going to rack up over 25,000 miles in one calendar year.

For hotels, favor one or two hotel chains if you travel a lot on business and your expenses are covered. Otherwise, use Hotwire or Priceline in the US and let your fingers do the walking through a good guidebook or web site in other countries. You’ll easily save 50% per night. If you’re quite well-off, however, or only travel first class, pick up Mr. Widzner’s book. You’ll save a bundle and still be stylin’.

I just spent five hours on a Saturday finishing up a ghostwriting project, after working a good 50 hours already this week. But I didn’t do this so I could squeak out the car payment on a new BMW or add a home theater to my sprawling McMansion. I did it so I could get some extra money while the getting is good, enabling me to take off for a few weeks with my family whenever I feel like it. In that sense, I’m an odd man out in my country.

As most anyone has probably heard, Americans work a lot. A whole lot. According to an article in the excellent (and incredibly balanced) magazine The Week, Americans on average take just 10 days vacation per year. This compares to an average of five weeks in Britain or six weeks in Italy or Germany. Then there’s France, where work is something you try to fit in between vacation days and weekends.

I always take these stats with a huge grain of salt, because for the US they usually don’t count all the public holidays, the long breaks teachers get, or the extra long breaks all those laid off workers get—whether they like it or not. Plus some other countries like Korea and Japan have it just as bad. Nevertheless, it is indeed rare to meet an American who has gone on vacation for more than two weeks straight and you certainly don’t see them traipsing around Southeast Asia or South America on their six week holiday like the Dutch. The average American’s stay in Cancun is a mere 5.1 days.

You’re going for how long?
When my now-wife and I set off on our first round-the-world trip, most people we knew couldn’t fathom such a thought. They certainly didn’t believe you could travel around the world without being filthy rich, so the first question was how we could afford it. (Of course if I asked any of them to add up what they spent each month on just their car and apartment, it was always far more than we were spending on our trip.) The often unspoken question was, how we could just take off from work like that? How could we quit our jobs and just bum around for a year?

Then this “once in a lifetime opportunity” (in our friends’ and employers’ eyes) led to a second year-long trip, then a third. After a while, people just gave up on us and considered us freaks on the fringe of society. But along the way, we taught English for a year in Korea and saved quite a bit of cash. We returned home after trip number three with more money in the bank than most of our friends had. And they had been working their tail off non-stop that whole time.

I got a job, found myself back in a cubicle, and it was like I had never left. Good luck explaining that value proposition to people though. The career treadmill must be kept turning and stepping off will lead to calamity!

What’s the payoff?
So the big question is, what do we get out of all this work? A couple of things. First, high productivity. That’s better for employers (and shareholders) than workers it seems: each eBay employee contributes $9.4 million to their company’s worth. At Amgen and Microsoft it is over $5 million per employee. Something tells me only a few people at the top are seeing that kind of money come back to them. But high productivity is one reason the majority of great global companies and brands are in the US, so there’s probably some good that comes out of that for us in terms of opportunities. If you get a good education and are good at managing your career, you can do almost anything you want in America.

Apparently, we also get pretty rich from all this work. A study called, “The EU vs. USA,” conducted by a pair of Swedish economists, found that even in the poorest US states, residents enjoyed a GDP per capita that rivaled most of Europe. Only tiny Luxembourg enjoyed a wealth on par with that in the richest US states. Falling below the US average were Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy—the latter two about even with Arkansas and Montana. The report noted that if US growth had stopped in the year 2000 and the European continent had kept going, it would still take years more to catch up—as in another 10 or 15 years in most countries.

Apparently that’s why we are able to buy so much crap. A Wall Street Journal article about the European study said, “Higher GDP per capita allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more on consumption each year than the average European. Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near.” It noted that if Sweden used the same poverty line figure as the US, 40 percent of its citizens would not make the cut.

Living to work, or working to live?
But are we better off because we have bigger houses, newer cars, and more shoes? Ahhh, there’s the rub. I suspect that most of my fellow countrymen and women buy more stuff because they can, not because they need it. One of the most interesting things I noticed on my first trip around the globe was that I really didn’t think about money very much and I wasn’t all that bothered that all my possessions were on my back. (Well, the ones not in storage at home anyway.) Of course we did a little souvenir shopping now and then and replenished our wardrobe when we felt like it, but I certainly didn’t miss the mall or the used car lot. I was blissfully unaware of what fashionable people were wearing that year, or what hot new kitchen gadget was the must-have of the season.

I also distinctly remember a conversation I had with a local guy who was hanging around our guest house doing nothing on the island of Lombok, Indonesia. Eventually we started talking about jobs and he said he only worked about six months a year as a farm laborer, when it was some particular picking season. “Could you do something else for work those other six months if you wanted to?” I asked. “Yes, I think so” he said with a sly smile, “but then I wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy life.”

Most of the people I know here would think that young Indonesian man was a certified candidate for the insane asylum. But something tells me he won’t ever need a spa treatment to relieve his stress, or drugs to lower his blood pressure, or appointments with a therapist to work out his anxieties.

There are a lot of historical reasons Americans work so much: our puritanical background, “the land of opportunity” mindset, and just plain peer pressure. Now the ability to make a phone call and check e-mail from anywhere has made it even worse.

But it just might be killing us. A study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine found that men who went on annual vacations were 32 percent less likely to die of heart disease. Maybe if we took that average $9,700 we spend on extra crap and bought some time with it instead, we could all finally get a decent vacation.

Want to see how far your travel funds will really take you? Buy The World’s Cheapest Destinations.