I am not much of a career-oriented person, and I never seem to have much money consequently. So I will probably not get to travel. But I am fascinated and delighted with the world. Please tell me about the most wonderful, amazing, beautiful, or fascinating stuff you have seen overseas. (even if, when you went overseas, you were visiting my hometown!)
Thanks!
Best vacations ever: photo safaris in Botswana and Tanzania. Victoria Falls and its gorge are fookin’ awesome, and you just can’t beat sundowners on a boat on the Zambezi River, unless it’s cocktails at dusk on a deck looking over a hippo pool on the Linyati River, or New Year’s Eve celebration on the Serengetti, or dinner on the hotel deck overlooking Ngorongoro Crater.
Chefguy: I google-imaged “Ngorongoro Crater,” and got this.
Hell yeah! Very cool!
I’m not sure about your premise to start with. Travel doesn’t have to be so expensive. And you don’t have to “travel” to go abroad. You could conceivably go somewhere to live and work, instead. I prefer to do that, myself, over going to places for vacation.
I was thinking somebody might pop in and say something like this. I’m curious about the possibility of doing that. Tell me, do you have a particularly in-demand skill that makes it more likely for you? Have you gone into places cold, where you don’t speak the language and the culture is unfamiliar? Please tell me a little bit about what it’s like, if you don’t mind — I’m fascinated.
brujaja, if you have time but not much money, you can do the “backpacking” circuit living in guesthouses and going very local. It requires a lot of time (months) and willingness to “go local” but man it can be great. I did that for a few years in the 1980’s and wish I could do it again but have a family and career that wouldn’t allow it.
China Guy: Where did you go? Did you speak the language? How did you arrange accomodations beforehand?
Does anybody know if this sort of thing is possible in Italy? (my ancestral homeland.)
For me, I simply got on a plane the day after I graduated college, flew to Europe with no real plans, and travelled on my own for three months.
It was one of the smartest things I have ever done in my life.
Lots of great cheap hostels, cheap pensions (small hotels), sleep on overnight trains - you meet all kinds of people, hang out with them a few hours or a few days, then go off and meet new people. You discover things, you stop longer in one place than planned, you go places you never planned to go, you are in awe at a museum, or drunk in a pub, you wander down strange streets and grand boulevards…and all the while, you are eating, drinking, learning and living and life is great. Every minute is an adventure.
If I were king of the world, I would make it mandatory that everyone leave their home country for at least a year and travel abroad - it gives you a whole new perspective on life.
Two years ago I got fired from my job a few moths after breaking up with my girlfriend, deciding it was now or never, I cashed in some mutual funds and bought a one way ticket to Hong Kong to spend 5 months in Asia.
I went from southern China through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar then India. Over fives months I saw plenty of wonderful, amazing, beautiful and fascinating things but one of my favorite accomplishments was biking down the highest motorized pass in the world (National Geographic calls it number 4, but technically taking a dirt bike up a goat trail can be called a ‘motorized pass’) It’s called Khardung La and its in Kashmir in the middle of the Himalayas. Some new friends and I rented transportation to take us up to the top (17,500 feet high and on one side the Indian Subcontinent and the other Central Asia) and we biked all the way down to a Tibetan town named Leh. 4 hour bike trip and I didn’t peddle once. The views were incredible, but the mangle carcasses of trucks that had fallen off the edge was a bit daunting.
Learning scuba diving in Vietnam is number two.
Italy is wicked expensive, and not doing so hot economically. Unlikely unless you speak Italian.
First off, let’s put some numbers here. In India, you can get a room consistently for $5-7 a night, and eat three meals a day for a total of $5 (perhaps even less). A bus/train ticket from one big city to the next is like 2 bucks. Getting into most palaces/museums will set you back $5-10 ($15 for the Taj).
In Central America (excepting Costa Rica), you can get a dorm bed for $5 in a hostel that has a kitchen. With the kitchen, you can eat three meals a day for $5 pretty easily. Eating in cheap restaurants will cost you about $10-12 a day, depending on how much you eat. Transport will cost you $1-3 depending on how far you want to go on a chicken bus. Most of the stuff in Central America is beach/nature based, so you don’t have a whole lot of entrance fees to worry about.
In short, you are looking at $15 a day as a reasonable expense for basic traveling needs. Add in about $10-15 for fun money/incidentals and that’s a reasonable 25-30 a day for travel. For a three month trip, that’s $2200-$2700 dollars. So that’s a chunk of cash, but it’s also just one 8 hour minimum wage shift a week for a year. The economy sucks now, but you can pick up extra shifts in the next up cycle, and then travel for the down.
I did this!
Khardung La! You’re right, it’s breathtaking! Tell me, did you try the local drink, is it yak’s milk? Did you speak enough of the language to connect with people?
It’s cool huh! 
Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.
No, I had my fill months earlier near Lijiang, China. Tiger Leaping Gorge is a breathtaking dramatic hike. After walking a day on ridiculous mountain trails (I’m from the Midwest, were falling off a cliff is not a common cause of death) I came to a tiny secluded town called ‘head-how-yen’ perched on a cliff face, with the wild beginnings of the Yangtze far below. For almost a week I lived on that stuff when I stayed at a youth hostel run by a Tibetan family.
I had mine with Yak butter and they drown it in salt, Tibetan tea tastes like warm greasy sea water. I ate each meal with the rest of the family and they kept staring at me so I kept politely choking it down when they served me and every time I did they kept filling my tin cup back up. I was only able to do a few glasses each night and later had to chase it with a small whiskey bottle I brought with me.
Trying it once is more than enough.
Of the five countries in Asia I’ve been too, China was by far the hardest language-wise. I made an effort to learn basic phrases in every region I went too (yes, no, please, thank you, sorry) but I got nowhere in China. I made an incredible effort to learn basic Cantonese a month before I left to make sure my trip started on a good step but it was all for naught, what little I did get that was useful was the numbers 1 to 10 and ‘hello’. I’m no shrinking violet and I tired to get the tones right, but everyone just stared at me dumbstruck when I tried to flex my new skills. Though, you’d be surprised how far you can get with pantomime. Fortunately Chinese symbols stand out when nothing else makes sense, and it won’t, so you find yourself looking for the two bars and a squiggle next to a backwards three because that is your train destination.
10 basic words and a good sense of humor is more than enough in any country, I urge anyone reading this to not let language be the barrier between you and a neat trip.
That’s pretty much exactly where we were sitting. Next day we went on a game drive down into the crater.
In 2004, the company I worked for sent me to work at one of their subsidiaries in Nuremberg, Germany. Interesting place, and I got to do some amazing weekend trips. (Typically, I’d take the overnight train on Friday, and come back on Sunday afternoon.) Vienna is the classic, clean, storybook version of a European city. Prague was grabbing on to capitalism with both hands. (And met a few dopers, too.) Paris is sort of a combination of those two ideas; an equilibrium of a working city and a classic art-museums-architecture touristy place. Berlin has history that happened during my lifetime. Plus Munich (during Oktoberfest), Ulm (climbed the cathedral), Neuschwanstein, Legoland, the Nurburgring. Amazing opportunity; I checked a lot of sites off my lifetime list.
A couple years after that, I did a trip as a trainee on a sailing ship. Went from Nova Scotia to Grenada. The North Atlantic in December is not to be messed with. We lost someone overboard and searched for four days. Some extraordinary moments, too; saw dolphins jumping in the ship’s bow wave, and one day we stopped to go swimming about 800 miles off the coast of Florida. Met people that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I went for the time on board and not the destination, but the Caribbean is beautiful and relaxing, especially after a trip like that.
My ship is doing a trip to Europe next spring; it’s tempting.
Oh, two years ago I hiked across the Grand Canyon. I had heat exhaustion at the bottom, piled on layers at the top, and could barely walk for a week. But that’s probably not overseas enough, is it?
Earlier this year I visited Lamu, which is like stepping back in time about 500 years. I traveled by “ferry” (overcrowded boat) to get to Lamu town, wandered through the cobblestone streets with fellow donkeys (there are no cars at all), ate amazing Swahili fish, drank Swahili coffee and tamarind juice, and traveled by dhow to a breathtaking and remote island where the children greet you with “Hello, I love you!”
I fell so in love with that town I am going again in a few weeks for Eid ul-Fitr.
Three days riding a bike around Angkor in Cambodia. An incredible number of jaw-dropping temples to explore. The third day was mostly lying in secluded parts of Angkor Wat, escaping the sun.
Motorbiking around the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos. Going to waterfalls and walking off the road through farmland and tiny villages. I think I’ll be reflexively saying “Sabaidee” to kids weeks after I leave this country.
Walking by myself around Lugu Lake on the Yunnan/Sichuan border, then meeting a group of young Chinese women who offer me to join them on their tour for the next 24 hours. Plenty of dancing and baiju that night. Getting invited to group tours and being offered food and baiju was very common in China. No charge, of course.
Just missing (about 15 seconds late) the last bus of the day in Hong Kong to the border, resulting in four hours of subways and bus rides to the 24-hour border crossing. Followed by over four hours of walking through the deserted streets of Shenzhen before arriving at my apartment at dawn. For such a giant boom town, much of it is completely dead at night.
Spending a night with a Miao family in rural Guizhou, China. Great food and an amazing view of the rice terraces and traditional wooden buildings below.
Walking about Moscow’s Red Square at 1 AM alone, with no one else in sight.
My favorite thing to do in a new town is to walk around aimlessly, then rent a bike or take a bus to a random place outside of the city, with no idea where you are going or what you will see.
Talking to locals using my very limited and crappy Mandarin was fun and made me decide to take a formal course next year in Beijing. Full government scholarships are available for Mainland China and Taiwan, if you are interested.
Traveling around this part of the world (China/SE Asia) can be done for under $20 per day, including visas and everything except the flight to get here. For me, it’s been about 10,000 dollars for a year including flights from the US. If I didn’t have the money for this trip I would have found work in China, which is what I plan to do after the year of studying in Beijing.
-kenner116 (posting from northern Laos)