Travel Blog | TheDromomaniac.com | The science & philosophy of one-way travel

My vanilla travel plans, Vanilla Fudge, and a homemade vanilla ice cream recipe

Posted on September 16, 2012 by The DromomaniacSeptember 18, 2012

Here’s my plan: I am going to buy this Sony Action Cam when it comes out later this week, then go to Seattle next weekend to see an old friend, and then go somewhere else undecided as yet, probably Vancouver, Canada. Kind of a plain vanilla plan, I know, but it isn’t a big deal. I do it all the time. It would be news if I knew what I was doing. All you aspiring travelers out there, my message to you is this: don’t plan. My other message is to please pick me up when you see me hitchhiking at midnight in the rain in northern Washington because I didn’t have a plan.
Apropos of nothing, I’m excited about this music video I want to share with you. Do you know the old Motown song, “You Keep Me Hanging On” by The Supremes? It’s like a French pastry: beautiful, exquisite, quickly devoured, easily digested and forgotten. Phil Collins made a cover and I don’t want to distract you by providing a link because it is a very tepid remake: White Supremes Lite. Vanilla Fudge, on the other hand, will blow you away with this interpretation. You need to watch this 14 times in a row like I did, but if you can only manage two or three, concentrate on the organist’s expressive left arm, the spastic blond bassist, and the Keith Moon-prototype drumming. Thank me later.

Speaking of vanilla, I made some homemade vanilla pecan ice cream. The problem with homemade ice cream that has no stabilizers or preservatives is that it’s only good right when it’s finished. If you freeze it, the next day it crystalizes and becomes rock-hard with an icy/slushy texture.

Homemade vanilla pecan ice cream (a variation on a recipe from Dick Murray)
     — 3 eggs well-beaten
     — 2 small cartons of whipping cream
     — 1 1/2 – 2 1/2 cups of sugar (depending on the crowd)
     — 3/4 cup of white syrup (honey may be substituted; use 1/3 less sugar—yes, the Murrays are descendents of mathematicians)
     — 1 cup crushed pecans
     — 1 tablespoon vanilla
     — Fill remaining space with whole or 2% milk (2/3 – 3/4 full)

I got a quick mention, a nod, a tip of the cap in the New York Times in this piece, This City Confused Me. It drifted away as fast as it appeared but I will always be pleased to be mentioned in any form of the Times.
I’m kind of a big deal in East Africa, too. I was profiled in this Ethiopian newspaper story about CouchSurfing. I might start calling myself, “Mr. Hundred Beds”. My favorite (mis)quote is, “it is as if they are interested in hearing my stories”, but maybe the shoe fits.

From my local paper. so it must be true

     Short rant: it’s been over three months and I am STILL waiting to get my Turkish Airlines flight miles credited to my United Airlines/Star Alliance account. United’s customer service is head-pounding-against-concrete-wall maddening and my love/hate relationship with frequent flyer miles is often tested, let’s say.
     Long rave: Do you know reddit.com? A reader named Flavio recommended it to me. I thought it was just a place for blowhards to scream opinions on hot-button topics, but it’s a big pile of everything. One thing that sets it apart from Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree is the non-hateful tone in the questions and answers of the travel community. In fact, I am the one who often has to bite my tongue when people submit asinine questions (“Where should I go this weekend?” and “What is there to see in Germany?”)
     There is also a Reddit IAmA, where people state something interesting about themselves and invite questions, such as these:
     “IAmA 23 year old girl who just got back from a 105 day trip around the world. Also, I use a wheelchair and have had strokes and stuff. AMA (AMA=ask me anything)”
     “IAmA person who has never lived in the same place for more than ten months since I was 18. In the last ten years I’ve had twenty-three jobs and lived on four continents AMA.” (I wish I had that stability)
     “IAmA man who owns a bidet. I don’t use and have never bought toilet paper”
     This openness makes the conversations candid. It’s fascinating. I’m not sure how to present myself if I do the same. Flavio suggested, “I’ve traveled to over 100 countries for very little money. AMA!” but I’m not sure it’s compelling enough for that crowd. I could also go with:
     “I worked in a dog hotel in the Japanese Alps. AMA!”
     “I drove around the country seeing 23 baseball games in 29 days. AMA!”
     “I’ve worn the same pair of underwear the last 4 months. AMA!”

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Why I’m not traveling to West Africa

Posted on August 31, 2012 by The DromomaniacSeptember 2, 2012

Visa costs for US citizens in US dollars:

A couple of notes: there is a discrepancy between the cost of the visa at the embassy in USA or from a nearby country (or at the border) for a few countries. Also, this is for single entry. Ghana, for example, is $100 for multiple entry.

     There is a flipside to this. One reason visa costs are high is a reaction to what USA charges foreigners for a visa, $140 last I checked. The reason we charge $140 is because of a rule that states the visa cost should reflect the actual processing cost. I don’t know how they compute that but, like public transportation, some things have an intangible, incalculable benefit that should override the number crunching.
     I go back and forth about this. On the one hand, I think this tit-for-tat of countries to use “reciprocity”, as it’s called, is shortsighted and they are shooting themselves in the foot to make a point. Intuitively, there should be a big economic benefit of a lower visa cost. On the other hand, if visas were free throughout West Africa, would American tourists flood in? No. Would it be a good start?
     I would love to visit. It’d be rough going, but I also know it would be completely unforgettable. I simply don’t want to shell out $1000 for visas. Is it hypocritical of me to complain about this?

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The Travel Newbie Round the World Mailbag

Posted on August 20, 2012 by The DromomaniacAugust 21, 2012

Only a few questions this time as I give a long-winded answer and I am hearing faint grumbling that my posts are too long. (Look, you want quantity or quality?! Oh, wait, wrong argument.) As always, feel free to write me about anything you like. I have some questions for you, too, at the end.
One question stems from my getting serious about making videos. The tentative title of my first tour de force will be, “How to Fly Around the World for Under $2000,” with a globe as my co-star. I can do it on my little Canon PowerShot now, but the quality is poor. It would look like a hostage video. Can you recommend a camera? I might also need a recommendation for a real, live, breathing web designer as I need a new WordPress theme; mine is outdated and no longer supported.

It’s great to be back home in good ol’ California!

From Steffie in France:
     Hello dear Dromomaniac! I know you’ve already done a lot on your blog for travellers and a big up to you for that! I’d like to know about your wise advice about a first round world tour for a woman of 43 yrs old! My plan is to take a gap year from March 2013 to March 2014 before I’m getting too old and travel the world and visit some Couchsurfing good friends! It’s been too many years now thinking hard about it without really starting but now I feel confident enough to do it.
     I’ve already travelled a bit but I’m still not familiar with the preparation list such as vaccinations (are they all so necessary and if yes which ones are to be given for sure?), asking for visas (from where and when?), getting a proper health insurance (I know few agencies but which one is the best!?) How do you manage your money (eurochecks, dollars, personal account, international mailbox?)
     On which side of the planet shall I go first to ease my brain and body: east or west from France? I’ve read a little part of your recommendations like about not necessarily buying a Round Travel Tour ticket but prefer low cost flights from countries on the road. My first idea was to go to USA, then Cuba, French Polynesia, Australia (Perth), China (Wu-Han), India (Pondicherry), Asia, Reunion Island, Madagascar, Zanzibar and Kenya (Lake Victoria) then slowly back to Europe, but I’m open to change destinations on the way. Maybe I should have two years to do this all tour 🙂
     PS: Do you think some Krav Maga courses would be efficient for a woman travelling alone?
     I had to look up Krav Maga, which sounded like it could be a sort of Slavic origami that would help Steffie while away the hours on long buses, but is actually an Israeli self-defense system and martial art. I don’t feel right recommending what women should do about self-defense. There are tons of female travelers out there with websites that discuss this. The most famous might be Jodi Ettenberg who swears by her safety whistle and then on the extreme is this incredible Dutch woman who has hitchhiked from Mexico to Argentina (including the boat for the Darien Gap!) and I doubt she has anything at all. What do you girls who are reading this suggest to Steffie?
     As for your travel plans, it reminds me of the over-enthusiastic itineraries on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Round the World branch, which is understandable if it is your first time and you look at the map and see so many countries close together geographically, but resist that urge! Those countries should be broken into separate trips, and if this is your first big trip, I wouldn’t assume you could or would want to go for a year or two, which is a very long time and mentally grueling. (I wince when I see my colleagues say that they have been traveling for years and years, which implies that they haven’t been home in that time and is an affront to those who literally can do it—usually Aussies and Kiwis.) The longest trip I did was a little over a year, and my brain was fried. I was like a zombie the last two months.

I am a big Southeast Asia fan, and I always tell everyone to fly to Bangkok or wherever is the cheapest destination and then one can roam around that part of the world for half a year easily. Further afield to Australia, China, and India, you can find cheap flights on AirAsia and then you can see how you feel about Africa or the Americas. North Americans can also take that advice, but it is too expensive to fly to Asia these days; I more strongly recommend Colombia or Central America. For both Southeast Asia and Latin America you don’t have to worry much about visas nor vaccinations nor money if you have an ATM card. With health insurance (I presume you mean travel insurance) I am a ticking time bomb as I never get it.
You’re never too old to travel, especially if your back is strong enough to carry your baggage and are excited to see the world. Pick a place, go, and you will love it. Easy!

From Orlando, location unknown
Hi i was just wondering how could i find a inexpensive ticket to puerto rico this saturday I made up my mind f— it.
I reply to just about everyone, except for when I am made to feel like someone’s last minute travel agent. Even then I sometimes reply, but throw me a bone. How about at least saying how you found me?

From: Rocio Perez
Subject: your blog 🙂
Hi Kent, my name is Rocio, I work for suxeedo, a marketing agency in Berlin. I was reading your blog and I would like to say that it is really interesting. You have a lot of experience, you have been in 100 countries, that’s amazing, you are absolutely brave, I dont know how could I react if I would be in jail in Thailand…
I write you because we are looking for blogs like yours, we are promoting two German sites fromatob.com is trying to find a place in the American market. They are just starting. We would like to introduce the link of the page into one of your texts, through a keyword. And the other site is Erento.co.uk Of course, we offer a remuneration for that. Let me know if you are interested.

From: John Morrison @casinotop10.net
Subject: contribution to your TheDromomaniac site
     Hi Kent, I’ve been looking through some travel sites however TheDromomaniac stood out among the rest with the unique content and info you’ve published in it. I have an idea which I think can contribute more value to this. Is this something we can further talk about? Thanks and looking forward to your email!
     I get a few of these every week. It’s rare they mention my name, which seems lazy since they are trying to sell me something. I still don’t have any advertising or paid links or other people’s content on my site partly because I think it’s tacky and partly because I think it looks bad to the reader, though in this day and age that seems like a quaint anachronism. Do you care if websites like mine have advertising for Top 10 casinos or apartments in Barcelona? Do people in 2012 really click on Google Ads?
     This leads to all kinds of questions I have about what brought you to my website and blog, what you like and don’t like, what can be improved, (I can hear you already: “Dude, I just clicked “Like” on Facebook; it’s not as if we’re going to couple’s therapy now.”) how many times a week I should blog, what I should blog about, blah blah blah. If you have any feelings about it, you can write me privately through the contact page or comment below. I am keen to have your opinions. Thank you. (Bowing deeply, Japanese style)

Inside the Rabat train station, Morocco

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The Best, Funniest and Worst of the 2012 London Olympics

Posted on August 13, 2012 by The DromomaniacAugust 15, 2012

Weren’t the Olympics a testament to the greatness of Britain in many ways? I loved it. I’m already a huge Olympics fan, but count me as still on a buzz after these two weeks. I’ve been to London three or four times, the rest of Great Britain once, and the Olympics has made me feel it is insufficient. I’m keen to return to Blighty, something I hadn’t given much thought to previously. Even the opening ceremony, usually a cringe-inducing, overblown spectacle that is hard to pull off, was done very well. What a rich history of music to use for the occasion! Accordingly, the official British background music of this post is “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” by Squeeze.

All images in this post have been maliciously stolen from the internet.

The Best: Track and Field, Men’s 5000 meters
Mo Farah! It was hard to top his finish at the men’s 10,000 meters, but the 5000 meters was even better, a classic. His final time wasn’t anything special since the first laps were so slow, but the last 1500 meters (one mile) were run in four minutes. It felt like the runners were in a last-sprint-down-the-stretch for all of those last four laps. In the beginning, the TV announcers had me in a lather when they deftly pumped up the race by mentioning the Ethiopians’ sneaky tactics on the track, but Mo Farah gave an incredible effort to always keep a step ahead when another runner tried to pass to try and take the inside lane. Nice, genuine celebration afterward, too.
A wet-blanket tangent: while watching the Olympics I was struck by how many foreign athletes went to universities in the United States on scholarships. I suppose it is a great advertisement for the high standard of education and the world-class coaches that bring the elite here, but I kept thinking that there must be a lot of American-born athletes that wish they had those scholarships. College tuition costs have risen dramatically lately and I don’t know if giving scholarships to foreign athletes in such numbers is the way to go. End of wet-blanket tangent.

Whose idea was it that the track and field announcers should wear track suits? Should diving announcers wear speedos? Fencing announcers in full fencing gear? I would kill to see two fencing announcers in their big masks. (By the way, I like the chutzpah of Yvette Nicole Brown who took this TV screen image and tried to copyright it.)

The Funniest: the Tom Hammond and Ato Boldon Announcing Team
Tom Hammond is one of these American commentators who has been announcing his entire life, straight out of the womb (“…and the doctor has cut my umbilical cord…YES! I’m good to go! Let’s watch the replay…”) that everyone knows by voice if not name. Ato Boldon is a former top sprinter brought in to be the expert analyst. NBC has thankfully provided captions to avoid confusion.
What’s funny is that when Ato Boldon speaks, he has Tom Hammond right in his face because he is like one of those guys at parties who stands too close to you, nodding over-attentively. You try not to be rude so you stand on your heels and talk while leaning backwards, except the difference here is that poor Ato Boldon is at the biggest broadcasting event of his young career and is striving to be professional. It was a hoot to see Boldon recoil and try to keep it together while Hammond leans in close, his face inches away, nodding vigorously with a madman’s smile. I felt for him.

The Worst: NBC
     No, I can’t let it go. As I wrote in my guide to the second half of the Olympics, how can I enjoy the Olympics with NBC impeding me at every step? All day long I have to stay off a big chunk of the internet lest I hear results, then I have to endure NBC’s jumbled, schedule-less coverage, though if Usain Bolt is running, you can be sure you are staying up late to watch it.
     Worst of the worst at NBC was Ryan Seacrest, one of a plethora of hosts where you ask yourself, “Does NBC get a group discount for botox injections?” He was the social media guru and every night he had a little segment where he breathlessly said nothing more than famous athletes were popular on the internet and sometimes they even tweeted to each other. OMG! I blow-torched my eyes to ease the pain until I ran out of propane.
     Next time NBC won’t be a problem as Rio de Janeiro is only one time zone ahead of the USA East Coast, but wouldn’t it be better to actually go to Rio? As I tell anyone who asks, Brazil is in the Top 5 of my favorite countries in the world. Resourceful travelers can get there inexpensively and it should be easy to get tickets at far below face value to see sports that Brazilians don’t care about such as field hockey, handball, and (as if anyone does) synchronized swimming. The one and only impediment to having a good time is finding a cheap place to stay. Maybe I will move there and get a place just for readers of The Dromomaniac (i.e. a studio apartment.)
     Did you have a favorite moment? For the last time with the BBC voice: have your say.

Meet me in Rio!

A Week Two guide to the 2012 Summer Olympics

Posted on August 5, 2012 by The DromomaniacAugust 6, 2012

Who doesn’t love the Olympics? What’s not to love? I can’t get enough of it. All travelers should have a special relationship with sport competitions among countries. How can you visit Ethiopia and not be curious about the marathon? How can you visit Jamaica and be indifferent to the sprints? How can anyone visit Japan and not be intrigued by the hot dog speed eating? (Huh? It’s not an Olympics event? How can that be?! Are you not familiar with the athleticism of Takeru Kobayashi?)

I went to the Los Angeles Olympics. I saw the men’s handball final, the men’s soccer final (with 101,798 others to see Brazil vs. France!), field hockey and women’s volleyball

A two-paragraph rant
     It kills me that I can rarely watch the olympics live. NBC, the American TV station with exclusive broadcasting rights, has unconscionably chosen to show everything tape delay many hours after the event has happened, pretending it is 1988 and no one has access to information. It is theoretically possible to watch online, but I’ve only seen a few events where it wasn’t buffering at crucial moments. Of course, the commercials never buffer. Frustrating with a capital F. NBC has a nightly four-hour show in the evening with no set schedule, forcing me to sit through the nonstop Michael Phelps lovefest. (A great swimmer, but there are too many swimming events. I keep waiting for the 320 meter butterfly and the 65 meter backstroke. Nice to hear that since he’s retiring, he says he want to travel.) It’s perfect for my mother, hell for me.
     I thought I was being thrown a bone yesterday afternoon when the NBC studio host started to profile Oksana Chusovitina, a 37 year old German gymnast who is representing her third country. OK, great, this is a nice surprise. Maybe I have been too hard on NBC. Then the host says in a pitying tone that she doesn’t speak English, which is mentioned as an explanation as to why they won’t talk to her in the segment. It’s an interesting story, but they only interview an English-speaking teammate. What the hell?! You can’t use subtitles or dubbing? NBC can’t do anything right.
     OK, let’s get on with the highlights this week and let me patronizingly say to not be closed-minded about sports you might only think you know, such as table tennis and badminton. However, I invite you to be closed-minded about synchronized swimming, which is only a great party trick.

Men’s Weightlifting, clean and jerk, 105+ kg weight class (Tuesday)
     My favorite. The snatch (lifting the weight off the ground and over your head in one continuous motion) doesn’t have the drama of the clean and jerk (lifting the weight to your shoulders and then lifting it over your head). I love the rituals of the whole process. In preparation for the lift, just off the stage there is the unintentional comedy of the trainers and coaches glomming on to the lifter with their hands all over him, massaging and toweling off, giving encouragement, followed by the slow walk up the stairs of the lifter to center stage. If it’s near the end of a close competition, there is rising noise from the crowd in anticipation of something great, then it quickly drops to a respectful silence as the lifter crouches down, and then a rush of a unique combination of sounds when the enormous barbell is up on the shoulders. Another hushed silence again portends something potentially spectacular as the lifter tries to remain composed while carrying the weight of a couple of refrigerators on his shoulders and finally the full-on freak out if he is successful.
     This is video from the 2004 Olympics of the final lifts of the great Iranian gold medalist Hossein Rezazadeh and his subsequent world record attempt. It doesn’t capture the drama so well of the showman, but it at least I found commentary in British English, which always has a gravitas and authority that make everything seem more important.
Water polo final (women on Thursday, men on Sunday)
     Water polo is a brutal sport. Even without the grabbing, pulling and dunking I couldn’t last more than two minutes in the pool. A message to the men: if you don’t mind the big shoulders–and you shouldn’t–you can’t go wrong marrying a Scandinavian female water polo player.
Handball final (women on Saturday, men on Sunday)
     Are you aware that the Icelandic men are undefeated and leading their qualifying group? Can you imagine if they win gold, something no one from Iceland has ever done in any sport? I just want to hear the announcers scream, “They’ll be dancing in the streets of Reykjavik!”
Men’s Volleyball final (Sunday)
     Another of these sports that you only think you know if you haven’t seen it in a while. This isn’t reminiscent of elementary school tetherball. This has serves of over 65mph (100kmh), agile 7’2″ (218cm) blockers, and amazing displays of quick reflexes and high jumping. Rules have been tweaked to make the game progress at a healthy clip.
All running events (most days)
     Did you know long distance running was a contact sport? Check out how much they jostle and elbow each other while keeping an incredibly quick pace. Unfortunately, I have to stay away from all news sources during the day so I can watch it “fresh” on NBC at night. I had to wait 10 hours after the actual race to see Usain Bolt win the 100 meters! After Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce won the women’s 100 meter dash, retaining her crown of fastest woman in the world, NBC chose to interview the second place finisher, who just happened to be American. Unbelievable. I also felt gypped because I love hearing Jamaican English. #deathtoNBC!

     If you don’t have Olympics overload, the soccer has been entertaining. I am hoping Japan beats Mexico in the first semi-final. In the other semi is a gang of plucky South Koreans who defeated yet another overrated, technically deficient British team, and will play Brazil Tuesday.
     I’m going to watch men’s basketball, but I’m not on the bandwagon. USA has great players, but few talking heads on TV can wrap their head around the idea that great talent doesn’t necessarily translate to a great team. Our advantage is to score a lot and hope we don’t need to play defense. There were headlines when we scored 156 against Nigeria, but the headline should have been that we allowed Nigeria to score 73 points.
     I’d like to see basketball copy soccer by making Olympic basketball an under-23 competition except for three older players and establish a basketball world cup every four years. It wouldn’t be a slam dunk that USA would win every time. When the World Baseball Classic was established, it was thought that Americans would dominate, but we have yet to make it to the finals.

Three questions:
1) Shouldn’t 200 meters in any Olympic event be eliminated?
2) How can field hockey players not grow up to be hunchbacked?
3) If swimmers wear two caps when they swim for aerodynamics, why don’t female sprinters wear anything? If they aren’t allowed to, why not at least have shorter hair? When races are decided by hundredths of a second, surely that huge hair creates drag.

Do you have a favorite event coming up this week? Do you wish there was marathon synchronized swimming? Or, could you not care less about the Olympics? Have your say!

Advanced CouchSurfing Tips

Posted on August 1, 2012 by The DromomaniacApril 11, 2014

“Advanced CouchSurfing Tips.” Sounds like I’m full of myself, doesn’t it? I have yet to write Beginning CouchSurfing Tips (1. Fluff your pillow.), but I am going to assume you have a general understanding of it. I have a CouchSurfing and Servas overview on my website, but CouchSurfing can be an unwieldy and buggy thing to navigate, and its powers aren’t fully utilized by most. While a lot of this is focused on strategies in finding hosts, it’s really only one aspect of CouchSurfing, which is invaluable in bringing travelers in contact with local people whether you stay with them or not. There are several overlooked tools I will explain, though the real lessons are to be proactive and, as always, don’t forget that life is too short to be shy.

Nobody loves me, it’s true
A traveler over 40 lamented to me that CouchSurfing is a tough way to go as they felt marginalized, that CouchSurfing was a young man’s game. It may be so. When I was in my 20s, I wasn’t keen on hanging out with people in their 40s and I’m sure I muttered under my breath that I hope I’m not backpacking when I become 40. As you can see, I’m in total denial about my age and I don’t think anything of asking to visit someone half as old as I am. We’re travelers first! Age schmage! However, sometimes I need a dose of reality.
The answer is you need to raise your game. You can’t rely on things coming to you as they might have in the past. You have to create your own luck. There are a few ways to do this whatever your “handicap”: age, being new to CouchSurfing, not having a lot of time to examine hundreds of profiles, etc.

Raphael, my CS host in Aracaju, Brazil (looking stunned that I am wearing such short shorts) and his family

     On the CouchSurfing surf page it states, “We recommend sending thoughtful CouchRequests to at least 5 hosts per location”. That’s a lot. (I guess it is in keeping with how CouchSurfing began, when on a trip to Iceland the founder randomly e-mailed 1,500 students from the University of Iceland asking if he could stay.) The problem is I hear of hosts who don’t get the “Thanks, but no thanks” email when the surfer choses to go with someone else, which is incredibly rude but not uncommon, unfortunately. I also don’t like it because as a host I would feel I am being juggled or leveraged to see if the surfer can get a better situation. If I agree to host someone and they tell me two days later that they are going to stay with someone else, will I be so eager to say yes to the next request I get?
     I never send five requests at once. What I do is try to pinpoint two or three people who seem interesting and also look like they might host me. I send one request one day and then one to another person the next day. If the second person agrees to host me, I email the first person before I’ve heard back from them to say that I’ve found someone.
     I will search for the unusual: hosts in Japan who speak Hungarian or hosts in Hungary who speak Japanese–something I can point out that we have in common. In the “Tell your host why you’d like to meet them” part, I give that some thought. Are there books or movies we both like? Usually my big selling point is that I have been to most of the countries on their “Wants to Go” travel list and am happy to talk about it if they are interested. I have the feeling most of the time that the person is impressed that I bothered to read their whole profile.
     I do a lot of filtering. If they haven’t logged on in a long time, I ignore them. If they have logged in from another country, I make a mental note of where that place is because often in developing countries proxy servers will be used or there is some CouchSurfing glitch where, for example (and for reasons I haven’t figured out) hundreds of people show that their last log-in was Potwin, Kansas, USA. Otherwise, I ignore them. If I am looking for a host and there isn’t much time before my arrival, sometimes I also use the filters to show only male hosts older than 30. It’s just the odds. That said, the last few hosts have been women because they found me and offered to host. How did this happen?
     One way was in Berlin a few months ago when a woman emailed to ask if I was still in town and wanted to meet to talk travel. She knew I was in town because she simply logged in to her CS homepage. In the “Locations Traveled” part of your profile, when you edit it by going to “Create a new destination” and then “Places I will be going”, if you fill that out completely, then the next time someone from that place logs in to their account, on the CS homepage your profile will appear as “Surfers looking for a host”. If you just fill in the country you are going to without the city, it won’t appear. I was leaving town when I got the email, but she offered to host me when I returned the next time, which I gladly accepted. The same thing happened in several places in Indonesia when I was there earlier this year.

CouchSurfing in Mombasa, Kenya. The good life. Sometimes.

     If you do a general search of a big, popular city, you will see a zillion hosts, almost all of them sick of guests. You can always tell by the caps and exclamation points in their 5000-word manifesto for the “Couch Information” section of their listing, often in the first sentence: “ATTENTION: READ THIS COMPLETELY BEFORE YOU CONTACT ME!!!” Stay in the suburbs. If you think this is hardly a novel tip, then why are the people in the middle of the cities inundated with guest requests? Suburban hosts are more enthusiastic to have a guest, more likely to have time for you and more amenable to you staying longer or returning.
     Take San Francisco, the city I was born. Instead of wasting a lot of time whittling down the hundreds of listings, try the nearby towns with excellent transit connections into the city like South San Francisco, San Leandro, or Daly City. Those of us who grew up in the Bay Area snicker at the mention of these places, but that’s just our local prejudice. In other parts of the world I’ve had the best times visiting people in unsexy suburbs or in non-touristic towns.
     Going about it is a little problematic because of the difficulty in searching the suburbs. The “search by map” feature is OK, but it doesn’t work as precisely as one would like and the “browse locations” feature on the surf page will take a long time to use since there are many suburbs to check. Compounding this is the always-mystifying search results shown by “relevance”, the website is often down or overloaded, I don’t receive all my CS emails, etc, etc. No one said it would be easy.

The Power of CouchSurfing Groups
     How would I go about finding a place to stay in Istanbul for a couple of months? Where could I buy a second-hand bike in Bogota? Meet someone to hitchhike with me in Norway? CouchSurfing groups! Don’t just search through the ads, put one up. You never know who is looking. Someone might know someone who knows someone whose uncle’s cousin’s sister’s mailman can help. Your timing might be good. You simply never know until you try. There’s a surprising amount of activity with thousands of members in a wide variety of groups such as Vegans and Vegetarians, Cyclists, and Language Exchanges and hundreds of members for more alternative groups like Nudist Lifestyle and Polyamory—Wait! I’m not finished yet! Come back!—but I’m still crushed the Fans of Visiting Jails group never got going.
     The power of CouchSurfing groups is that no one owns them. Anyone can create a meeting, propose an excursion, ask for advice—the possibilities are endless. When I was in Jakarta I slapped up a post on the local CouchSurfing group seeing if anyone wanted to get together the next evening at a cafe. To my surprise we became a group of 12 or 13, which I call a great success since it was less than 24 hours notice, I’m a man, and traffic in Jakarta is horrendous. (Indonesians are taking to CouchSurfing with gusto; it’s a fantastic place to visit anyway, but being able to meet locals in more remote parts of the country through CouchSurfing is a big benefit.)
     You don’t even have to be a traveler. If I moved to Tokyo (and I’m thinking about it) the first thing I would do is sign up for the CS Tokyo group to meet people, get acclimated and get inspiration of what my possibilities are.

Some of the gang at a last-minute Jakarta CouchSurfing gathering

     I try to join the CS groups for the next two or three places I am visiting a few weeks early to get clued in as to what is going on. If you aren’t going to be in town very long, you don’t want to wait until after you arrive to join the group because some things take time to arrange and some opportunities may have passed. I joined the Rio de Janeiro (“January River” never sounded so alluring) CS group well before I arrived and I saw a notice someone had placed an ad where they were looking for North Americans without strong accents to do voiceover work for a children’s educational CD. I made $75 in less than two hours on a fun project and believe me when I say that earning $75 on the road feels like a lot more than saving $75 at home.
     Earlier this year I was headed to Semarang, Indonesia, a big city where very few travelers go. I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay one night or two, so I didn’t look for a host because I never feel comfortable asking to stay one night. It’s too short and screams of insincerity (“I arrive in the evening and leave in the morning—looking forward to meeting you!”). What I did do was post an ad in the Semarang group asking if there were some new hostels that the Lonely Planet book doesn’t show. One girl responded to say that she had a friend who rents a cheap spare room in his family home, and I arranged a stay with him, easily and perfectly.
     What I think is a waste of time—if you aren’t a girl—is to join CouchSurfing Last Minute Request groups for the particular city you are going to. I don’t think anyone is trolling there looking to host guys. That said, it doesn’t take much time to make a posting and you have nothing to lose. The Facebook CouchSurfing group is almost completely useless, full of people investing no effort by writing half-sentences like “Anyone from Buenos Aires?” though I like the guy who asked, “Do you have some informations about interesting events in USA (22 August – 1 September 2012)?”

About half of a big group at a Bangkok CouchSurfing meeting.

CouchSurfing can open up a world of possibilities, I love it to death, but I feel compelled to repeat something I wrote on my website: the main reason people stop hosting or drop out of CouchSurfing altogether is because of inconsiderate guests. I hear the stories: guests that hardly say two words and hide out in their room to listen to their iPod, guests who never arrive and never call to cancel, guests who make demands, guests who make bold assumptions about their plans fitting in with their hosts plans, etc. I’m not saying I’m a model guest—I can hardly keep track of all the restraining orders against me these days—but I try to be conscientious of the fact that I have been granted an enormous privilege to be a guest in someone’s home.
What do you think of CouchSurfing? Do you have different ways of using it? Have you had good or bad experiences? Conversely, is it not your thing and you prefer something like airbnb.com? I’m interested to hear your opinions, as always.

Why signing up for credit cards to get frequent flyer miles is a bad idea

Posted on July 15, 2012 by The DromomaniacJuly 17, 2012

If you look at enough travel websites from my peers, you will notice that many have ads with sexy come-ons like “Get a free flight ticket! or “25,000 miles guaranteed!” The idea is to get a bunch of credit cards to take advantage of their frequent flyer mile offers. I love frequent flyer miles, don’t get me wrong. I have a long page on my website about how to get the most out of them. However, I feel the need to be a wet blanket as I can’t support getting credit cards just for that reason.
I use the plural, “cards”, on purpose. By all means get one (or a case can be made to get two cards for those rare moments where VISA isn’t accepted, but MasterCard is, or vice-versa) as it is hard to travel without a card, primarily for buying flight tickets online or for use in an emergency, but the problem is that credit cards are serious business and churning them puts you on the precipice.

I flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Marsa Alam, Egypt for $55 one way including all taxes on Condor, using no miles and accruing no miles (and paying cash, I think), so frequent flyer miles aren’t always the be all and end all.

So how exactly does this lead you down the road to ruin?
     There are two problems that can easily snowball on you: debt and a lower credit score. Debt would seem to be obvious, but many people have a surprising appetite for it. Since having more cards begets more spending, keeping track of it can get out of hand, and if there is anything worse than credit card debt, I don’t know what it is. Maybe loanshark debt, but the gap between a private, third-party collection agency that hounds debtors relentlessly and Fat Tony with his “associates” is getting narrower.
     It follows to ask: does any of this matter if you are diligent about paying your card off? Yes, because the other issue is a lower credit score. Credit cards are powerful instruments. If you acquire a lot of credit cards and close them after you get the mileage benefit (known as “churning”) this affects your credit score, and, like it or not, a credit score is nothing to mess with.
     If you aren’t much of a consumer like me, and you think that a credit score only matters when you want to take out a mortgage to buy a house, here are two sobering articles about the myriad of ways your score can affect you, the first from Forbes and the second to put the fear of God into you with this nugget: “A low credit rating or bad credit report can negatively affect virtually every aspect of your life.”
     In the second article it’s mentioned that a landlord is allowed to access to your credit score and can decline to rent based on it. This sounds absurd, but it’s true. Landlords have power. I lived in Silicon Valley during the dotcom bubble and landlords wouldn’t let you rent a crummy apartment without seeing your internet startup’s business plan and a cut of the action.
     I can also vouch for a utility demanding a huge deposit. I lived in West Palm Beach, Florida one winter and my Polish roommate had no credit since she wasn’t a resident and had no credit history, so the utility would only give us service if it was my name on the account. This is understandable to a degree, but I find it maddening that no credit is worse than bad credit.

If you are a frequent flyer in Los Angeles, you want to sit on the right side window of the plane for both arriving and departing for the best views, trust me.

     There is an unsettling lack of balance I read about the wisdom of getting multiple credit cards. I read one website touting churning that claimed to the effect, “My score went down a little in the beginning but then came back up”, but that applies to him and only him, making it almost irrelevant as it’s unlikely any two people have an identical credit history. Usually the website will invoke a very cavalier “use credit responsibly” mantra, but I find that disingenuous at best and irresponsible at worst.
     The small print on these “amazing offers” needs to be scrutinized, as well as the tendency to regard the fees and the conditions as an afterthought. I’ve become inured to the screams on one page that a credit card will give you tens of thousands of “free” miles and then when you click on the link, on the next page you then learn of the hefty spending minimums, annual fees, and, what I dislike most, having to sign up for scheduled payments so the onus is on you to opt out by cancelling. Why not just bill me? It’s a credit card, after all. There is also a definite opportunity cost to communicating with your credit card company, especially on the road, and let’s not forget that you are traveling. You are a traveler. You want peace of mind while on the road, not worries about juggling your credit cards.
     This is why I say it puts you on the precipice. If you can manage them well, you might be perfectly OK and you can get reap all the perks and miles, but it can also put you at risk.
     If you want to see the details of the credit card companies’ tricks, there is an excellent documentary from Public Broadcasting Service, “Secret History of the Credit Card” that will make your blood boil, plus an extensive website with all the background. Politically, there isn’t much pressure for reform, not when our Vice-President and his son are knee-deep in the industry.

I do like that Capital One lets me use my own photo for the card

     Going to the other extreme, do you need a credit card at all? I discuss this in the money and credit cards part of my website. I have a supposed travel-friendly credit card, Capital One, and while I’m a big fan of the lack of conversion fees, it tests my patience.
     One example: when you call to tell you are traveling (you can’t email), they want to know the exact dates of every country you are visiting for the next 30 days, and then call again and repeat this every 30 days. Even then it doesn’t make your card immune to being blocked, which means another panicky Skype session. Calling Capital One on a shaky Skype connection while announcing your credit card number out loud in a cramped internet cafe in India isn’t my idea of a good time. (At least I could use Skype; I had been in Ethiopia before, where it was impossible.)
     This is a very North American-centric post. I don’t know how credit card companies work in other countries, if there are many airline mile offers, or what consumers’ rights are. My guess is that non-Americans shudder in horror at our system, but maybe it’s similar elsewhere.

What do you think?
I know this is a minority opinion. Am I the Master of the Obvious and an overreacting alarmist? Do I seem like the type of person who wants even more labels on cigarette packs stating that smoking is dangerous? Is it indeed enough to say, “Use credit responsibly?” To quote the BBC, “Have your say.” Don’t be shy.

New info: the cheapest flights this summer from Europe to USA

Posted on June 30, 2012 by The DromomaniacJuly 1, 2012

I’m going to need to update my website. On my How to travel cheaply all over the world on one-way tickets page, near the bottom in the Standby/Last minute section, I said that Airtech, the last bastion of standby travel, had died a quiet death last year—but no! Out of the blue, Mike, the man behind Airtech, sent out a mass email today:

“Well, we tried over the year to get a new contract to Hawaii but alas the industry & TSA want nothing to do with last minute travel. We had a nearly 20 year run so we all have a heavy heart about this. But life goes on, here is the latest news about Airtech: we do have one last flight left, it is from Amsterdam to Boston, New York and Seattle. There are no flights to Europe and we don’t anticipate getting one. These Amsterdam to US flights cost $189 plus 200 Euros (about US$250) tax (paid at departure) to Northeast USA, and $269 plus 200 Euros tax (paid at departure) for the Amsterdam to Seattle flight.”

He’s not allowed to say, but I am 99% sure this is on Icelandair. If you are stuck in Europe this summer, this is probably your cheapest way from Europe to West Coast USA and it’s not bad to Boston and New York. The competition is with Condor which now flies Frankfurt-Seattle—I flew that route two weeks ago, in fact, semi-cheaply—but I just checked and prices are very high for the rest of the summer. The best way to contact Mike is through his email: mike@airtech.com. I’ve done Airtech many times and it’s totally legit.
It’s a great shame Airtech is becoming a relic of history as it answers the question travelers always have about airlines and standby: isn’t it better to have a last minute passenger than an empty seat on the plane? Lamentably, the answer is no. I can’t tell you how many mouth-wateringly cheap standby flights I’ve had over the years with Airtech and it’s cousin, Airhitch, but the concept has sunk to the point that Airhitch has now become a German porn website.

Recognize the town in the background? Condor often has great deals to Las Vegas. It’s my go-to airline now for cheap flights worldwide.

Last thing: where else would you get this information? Who else is talking about this? The Dromomaniac always comes through with the best info for traveling cheaply. Don’t forget it! Stick with me via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or the RSS feed that I am going to fix any day now.

A Short Hitchhiking Story in 300 Words

Posted on June 11, 2012 by The DromomaniacJune 18, 2012

     I’m standing southwest of Berlin at the end of a highway gas station rest stop, trying to hitchhike to Frankfurt, cursing my bad luck on not having shaved the night before.
     An old sedan pulls up. The man leans out the window and says, “Turkce?”
     Turkish? That’s funny. I was in Turkey two days ago, but I don’t speak Turkish. I say, “American”.
     He’s surprised, even though between us is my backpack with a big American flag on it. “American?”
     “Yes,” I confirm, and then I notice a woman wrapped in Old Country clothes in the back seat. I assume it’s his wife.
     The man is unconvinced. “Poland?”
     “No!” I laugh. “American!” and I point to the flag. “California!”
     He hands me a business card in Polish that I can’t read and starts a rambling story in hard-to-follow English about losing his documents in a McDonald’s and needing money. I shrug my shoulders helplessly and gesture to my backpack, trying to convey that I’m not his target demographic. Undeterred, he fidgets with a big gold ring on his finger and when he pulls it off, he makes a final, desperate flourish by trying to put the ring in my hand while asking me to give him something for it, anything.
     Is it a wedding ring? I pull my hand back and snatch a glance at the woman in the back seat who stares blankly ahead, revealing nothing. I step back, shrug again, and say “No thank you, sorry.”
     He gazes at me for a couple of seconds, crestfallen that I’m not going to be his savior. He then stares out the windshield like his wife is, perhaps realizing that I’m the last person before the open road. He puts the car in gear and pulls away, slowly, into the abyss.

In praise of Istanbul’s Ciya Sofrasi

Posted on June 9, 2012 by The DromomaniacJune 14, 2012

The Hotel Kent in Istanbul. 'Kent' means 'city' in Turkish. The cheery facade is surely a mask for a den of vice.

     I had one of my best airplane descents ever when I sat on the left window for my flight from Berlin to Istanbul. No photos; I wanted to savor it nonstop. We came due south from the Black Sea over the European side, right over Taksim with a long view of the Bosphorus and the Asian coastline, and then a right turn just before the Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn, giving me a view of Topkapi, Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, New Mosque—gotta love that the “new” mosque is 400 years old—and Suleymaniye Mosque, followed by the city walls and Ataturk airport. (Very quick travel tip: most cheap flights go to Istanbul’s other airport, Sabiha Gokcen, so don’t lazily do a search on IST, Ataturk’s airport code, but also check SAW, even though distant SAW feels halfway to Armenia.)
     I made a beeline to Ciya Sofrasi, a restaurant I had read about it in this well-written article in the New Yorker magazine. (The New Yorker could have a 10,000 word feature on a public toilet in Uzbekistan and I would be speed-dialing the embassy to get a visa. If you want another great read, check this story out.) Ciya is on the Asian side of Istanbul, not a long walk from the Kadikoy ferry terminal, meaning that there is no logistical excuse to avoid it wherever you lodge in Istanbul. After I’ve had a long day of harvesting kidneys in the Hotel Kent’s bathtub, I’m looking forward to Ciya’s creamy hummus and flatbread.
     The three dishes in the photos below cost about $15, if I remember correctly, about the same as a decent restaurant in the Sultanahmet area where all the tourist attractions are, so take the 2 lira ($1.10), 20 minute intercontinental ferry and make an evening out of it. That ferry ride is one of the world’s best. It acts like a bookend to the Hong Kong Star Ferry on the other side of Asia.

In front is the first dish mentioned in the New Yorker, the kisir, a sort of Turkish tabouli. It tasted as good as it was described in the article, however...

...these vegetarian kofte (meatballs) stole the show. I think these were wheat-based, too, but they had a rich flavor by itself and so succulent that this amount of yogurt was unnecessary.

There was no keskek the day I visited. I was in a deep funk, inconsolable, and I blame my mental instability for the weak move to get the dolmas (stuffed grape leaves). Too predictable.

Ciya Sofrasi has an unassuming location next to a pharmacy. It's a mistake to eat this food in the outdoor heat. Hunker down inside.