In the Old Quarter of Hanoi

So much information spins past us every day that it’s hard to take a break and process it, much less record it for later. So here are a few travel articles I wrote or I’m in that have appeared recently. Lots more to come as the year goes on, but I’ll continue to try to keep the broadcasting to a minimum.

Some of my recent travel writing

The Viator Blog published a piece I wrote on the Buda side of Budapest.

Global Traveler magazine published an article on my time in Hanoi this past summer with my family – Hanoi: Up to Speed

I also had one in there on Mexico City at Night and did a short web piece on the new Microsoft Windows tablets.

Over at Practical Travel Gear, where I’m editor, we all rounded up our picks for the best travel gear of the year in 2012.

Some shout-outs from others on The World’s Cheapest Destinations

Kara from The Vacation Gals was the first to put up a review of the new edition.

EuroCheapo asked me 4 Cheapo Travel Questions

This time last month I did an interview with Gadling on cheap travel destinations.

I had fun participating in this Round-the-world chat with Adam and Sean from BootnAll via Google+ and Twitter.

You can always keep up with me via the RSS feed here or by following me on Twitter – @TimLeffel.

I don’t do as much freelance writing as I used to since I’m busy enough running my online media company’s own blogs and websites, so I’ve gotten kind of slack about putting up links to travel stories I’ve written for other publications. Catch-up time now for ones from Peru and Mexico.

A few years back I won a voucher from tour company Viator that I eventually used for an excursion in Puerto Vallarta. That initial correspondence led to me doing a bunch of stories for their blog over the years though and here are two that came out recently.

Out-of-the-ordinary Peru: Ballestas Islands and the Nazca Lines

Watery Mexico City on the Canals of Xochimilco

The one print magazine I still write for on a regular basis is Global Traveler. Here’s the destination feature of mine they published recently on Mexico City:

Mexican Gusto

The print version is much prettier of course, but you need to be a subscriber or pick it up on a newsstand or in an airport lounge for that.

Next up? I’m doing the book reviews in the next issue of Perceptive Travel, coming out this Sunday.

From Matt Easton in Tana Toraja, Indonesia

Here’s a round-up of posts from people traveling in The World’s Cheapest Destinations, with current price examples. Compare these to what you’re spending on fun at home…

This Travelfish.org story on hiking around villages in Tana Toraja, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, brought back memories. Prices for a guide, including village stays and meals, start at around $35 a day.

Andy of Hobotraveler.com is back in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and notes that the whole concept of “assistant living” gets turned on its head when local wages are $150 to $300 per month.

Southern India is still a great value and more laid back than the tourist-hustling north. Here’s a round-up from a family kicking back in a hill station town. They’re renting bikes for 50 cents an hour, riding horses for $2 to $9, and hiring a guy to row them around the lake for $1.85—for an hour. Family fun in Kodaikanal

Recession be damned, flashpackers with “pockets full of pounds” are taking over most of the old cheapo backpacker haunts in Thailand and driving up prices. Exhibit A: Ko Tao, a report from Vagabonding Life.

Travelojos quoted a comment of mine in this post and as he points out, whether you think Mexico City is cheap or not depends entirely on how you travel. But with 25 cent metro rides, awesome lunches for $3 or $4, and taxis for a few bucks, I’ll take it over similarly exciting capitals around the world any day.

Finally some good news on the currency front: you can get more for your dollars than a year ago if you head to Vietnam or Turkey.

And, this is not destination related, but is important for travelers. The much-hated U.S. banks are trying to join congress and legacy airlines with an approval rating close to zero. If you use one of the big banks who has made a lot of screw-ups the past few years, be prepared to get gouged even more on fees. My own bank, soon to be former bank, is about to become one of the worst. That’s Regions and they suck wind badly. I’m moving to one literally next door that is healthier and gives far better service—without all the gotcha fees.

I’d be a pretty lame writer if I didn’t read a lot, so I try to read real books regularly. Here are a few I’ve checked out lately that are worth a look.  One travel book, one travel e-book, and one that’s a kick in the pants in any media.

First up, one I should have read before I ever went to Mexico City, or moved to Mexico for a year, but finally got to this past month after meeting David Lida twice. First Stop in the New World is the kind of book that only a bilingual, long-time resident of the city could write. It’s insightful, probing, and full of telling details the author went after like a real journalist. (For a while he was editor of a major magazine in the city.) It’ll teach you more about the world’s second-largest city than you knew you wanted to know and it does it in an amusing and enjoyable fashion. I’m certainly not the first to rave about this book; just check out the media reviews on Amazon. It’s a keeper.

He’s got a great blog on D.F. too. See DavidLida.com

This next one will be hard to read in bed unless you find a way to get it onto an iPad. It’s a landscape-layout e-book with lots of photos, so even if you’re geeky enough to convert it to ePub it won’t work on the Kindle. So curl up with your laptop and check out Surviving the Indian Railway.

It was written by Drew Gilbert, otherwise known as husband of the Almost Fearless blog‘s Christine Gilbert. This isn’t an exhaustive how-to book on traveling throughout India by train really, rather a travelogue about his 16-day whirlwind circumnavigating Inda by rail.

There is some good planning information though, including how to deal with the inherent frustrations of trying to be a flashpacker in a developing country. (Hint, you are a slave to scarce electrical outlets.) Plus there are plenty of essentials, like buying an Indrail pass, figuring out meals (you won’t go hungry), and dealing with the dreaded squat toilets on a moving train.

Reading this fun romp brought back lots of memories, some pleasant, some intentionally buried, but it shows you that traveling by rail in India is still one of the world’s most interesting adventures—and a screaming bargain. This is one of the best-looking e-books I can remember reading, with interesting photos on almost every page. That means of course, that there’s not really all that much text in the end. You can read the whole thing in an hour or two. But the price is right: $10. Click here to view more details

This last one doesn’t have much to do with travel unless you’ve had trouble actually making those travel plans a reality. The simple title is Do the Work and that’s what it’s imploring you to do. If the author was just some motivational guru this pithy little book wouldn’t have much merit, but he’s a successful fiction author, screenwriter, and author of The War of Art.

As you can probably guess from all the plates I have spinning in the air and the books I’ve published, getting things done and out the door has never been one of my biggest problems, but still I struggle now and then. I’ve also been involved in some group projects lately where some of my teammates definitely should have read this book, then read it again for good measure. Ideas are great, but if you’re not overpowering the resistance—from friends, from relatives, from partners, and from the little voice inside your head—then you’ll never meet the milestones and turn those ideas into something that matters. You won’t ship the product, you won’t make the investment, you won’t launch the promotion that’s going to make a big splash.

Or you won’t actually take that big trip around the world you’re planning. There are a million reasons not to go traveling and no shortage of people who will readily supply those reasons whether you want to hear them or not. Learning to power past the resistance and bring great things to life is the real key to success—and maybe to happiness too. Do the Work is good medicine on how to get there.

(In an odd pricing quirk, the hardcover of this book is actually cheaper than the Kindle version—and easier to read because of all the typeface changes. Get that one if you’re not on the move.)

Cruising the canals of Xochimilco, Mexico City

When you’re traveling for an extended period or are on a budget vacation, you often choose the cheapest option available for getting to where you need to go. You have more time than money, so a little extra hassle of a crowded local bus or walking long distances isn’t such a big deal.

Sometimes though, especially in big, spread-out cities, it can make a lot of sense to book a local organized tour instead for sightseeing.

I just experienced this first-hand again, in Mexico City, and more on that in a minute. There are plenty of other places though where this is the case:

- wine districts (like around Mendoza or Santiago)

- places where attractions are not well-served by public transport (most of the non-urban U.S.)

- places where the sites are quite spread out (desert castles of Jordan)

- where you are not allowed in if not on a tour (the DMZ in Korea)

- where it would just plain cost you more to do it on your own (parts of tour-focused countries like Egypt & Vietnam).

Mexico City falls into several of those categories. Sure, you can get to the canals of Xocimilco or the pyramids of Teotihuacán on your own using public transportation, but it’s a hassle and it takes a lot of time. For the former you then have to hire a boat when you get there and probably pay more than you would have coming with a company that does this every day. For the latter, you can’t just hop in the van and head back in air conditioned comfort when it’s time to leave and you’re 90% on your way to sunstroke.

The other reason to book one of these trips locally in Mexico City is that they throw in lots of other stops that would have taken you another few hours to get to on top. We booked a Xochimilco trip through Viator ($44 adults, $22 kids) that actually went through a good local company called Olympic Tours. On the way we stopped at the World Trade Center, where they have the cool murals pictured here. Then we went to Frida Kahlo’s blue house and strolled the square in Coyoacan. Then we took our fun boat ride at the advertised spot.

We didn’t book the Teotihuacán trip until a day before, at the Mundo Joven youth hostel right behind the cathedral in the main square. They use Wayak Tours and I’d gone with them before and had a good trip. It was $30 each for that one, which included water, a snack, a good bilingual guide, and again, extra stops. This one first hit the ruins of Tlatelolco and the Plaza of Three Cultures where a church was built with stones from the ruins and a government massacre of student protestors happened. After that it was the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with its venerated shroud on display in a building that holds 10,000 of the faithful. Neither of these are probably worth making a trip to on your own, but are quite interesting if someone is going to bring you there, explain it all, and whisk you away again after.

I’ll admit I get bored or downright exasperated with guides who drone on and on about details you wouldn’t care about even if there were a test about it for your college class. But the guides on these trips are used to people like me and will only drone on if people start asking lots of questions. As locals though, they provide a lot of cultural background and manage to hit both the big picture and the small details that matter without overwhelming you. In both cases, I felt like I got insight that I couldn’t have found by just opening up a guidebook (or worse, a smartphone app).

Have you taken a local tour that was a great value—or one that was a big waste?