Charles Schwab, the Traveler's Dream Bank

Charles Schwab may just seem like another financial institution, but if you look a little closer you may be surprised at what they offer. First off, it's helpful to keep a separate bank account for traveling as you can see exactly what you are spending on your trip and keeps your travel funds organized. While traveling a few years ago, we met a couple who mentioned a bank in their country that with a minor fee per month they could withdraw an unlimited amount of money and be reimbursed for the fees incurred, which made us look for a similar option in a US bank. Then after some research we found Charles Schwab.

Why we love it:

It’s Free

There is no cost for setting up the account. No annual fees. No fees for transferring from one bank account to another.

Reimburse ATM Fees

It’s true. All ATM fees. Anywhere in the world! Seriously. For those of you who have traveled using a debit card you know those fees add up. Especially if you have a small budget. The fees can add up to around 10 percent per withdrawal. That can be around ten dollars or almost one whole day of travel per each $100 you withdraw. Charles Schwab charges you no fees at all and then the fees the other bank, or the ATM charges you, which you still have to pay are reimbursed by sweet Charles at the end of the month. What a guy! I’ve searched and searched and it seems that is one of the only banks that offers you that without any fees on top of it!

But that’s not all...

Fly on the Cheap: Low Cost Airlines

There are many websites and airlines that allow us to fly for a very low price within a region, country, or continent, of course our normal go-to website is Skyscanner (read our previous article), which compares many of those sites, but often by going directly to the airline’s site, better deals can be found. Here are our favorite discount airlines:

Asia

Air Asia (flies almost everywhere)

Tiger Air (mostly flights which pass through Singapore and thus a chance to experience the most awesome airport Changi - check our upcoming article)

Peach (mostly within and in or out of Japan)

Firefly (within and in or out of Malaysia)

Lion Air (within and in or out of Indonesia)

Indigo (within and in or out of India)

Europe

Easy Jet

Ryan Air (watch out for out of the way airports and hidden fees)

Couchsurfing: A "How To"

Couchsurfing is one of those things that will revolutionize the way you travel and even change your life and perspectives. When traveling, not being a tourist on vacation, but really traveling we often try to find out more about those places we pass through or linger in for awhile. We hope to find out more about the culture, history, sites, food, and most importantly people. We count on those small interactions at the market, getting invited to a beer or coffee with a friendly guy at a restaurant, playing with some children in the train, those small interactions make one’s experience. Couchsurfing, check out our article, gives us the chance to get a sort of full immersion in the culture even feeling a part of it, living, eating, and so much more as a local. If you have an open mind and hope to discover this side of a city, country, or culture then go ahead open up a new tab and set up your account.

If you don’t have a couchsurfing account, here’s how to set one up, and if you already have one, but have never used it you might want to check out this “How to” for some tips in guaranteeing you’ll get accepted when you write your next couch request!

What To Pack: Getting Ready For Your Next Trip

Ready for a new trip and having a tough time deciding what to pack? Here are some suggestions based on our experiences and the one sure thing that we do after every trip is to vow to take less and carry smaller backpacks for the following trip. Regardless of whether your trip will last only two weeks or as long as two years these tips are still the same.

It's easier to walk around with a small pack

What to Pack?

Pack the LEAST POSSIBLE! After you pack take out half of what you were going to bring and leave it. Here are some suggestions on what to bring or leave and some important reminders.

Skyscanner: The flight god

Oh, Skyscanner, how glad we are to have met you so long ago. How many dollars did we save thanks to your divine search skills? You might think we are crazy but as soon as you start using the website, it will truly become a god to you, the kind with many arms that can pull cheap flights out of nowhere. Oh and in case you were wondering, no, we are not paid by the marketing guys of Skyscanner, we just use this website every time we travel so we thought it might help other travelers as well.

So what is Skyscanner?

Skyscanner.net is a website that allows you to search for a flight from one destination to another, well nothing amazing you’d think, but it also looks on other flight websites and airline companies’ sites to find the lowest one, you can compare all the prices. Still not convinced?

Bromo: The road less taken

For those of you that are exploring Indonesia or interested in taking a trip there a must visit site is Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. In our previous article “Getting to Bromo on the cheap” we talked about the natural beauty of the park as well as how to visit the park with a small budget and while avoiding the majority of other tourists. However what we didn’t tell you is what you have to expect on the way, as riding your motorbike there is not a piece of cake. In saving money and getting off the well trodden path a little adventure is to be expected. If you haven’t read our previous article please read it here first: http://broketravelers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-to-bromo-on-cheap.html

Mount Semeru, another attraction of the park

Getting out of Malang isn’t the most challenging part of the trip, even though the ordinary chaos of maneuvering through Indonesian traffic can be tricky. If you make it alive, well congratulations, you’re just a step away from the beauty of Bromo, though we didn’t mention the height of the step...

Getting to Bromo on the cheap

When traveling, we all want to visit the most important and beautiful sites, the sites that are so breathtaking they literally make your jaw drop, the historical sites that we read about in our history textbooks, the world’s wonders that we see in a book, the natural sites that make you marvel at how the world can be so beautiful. These are the sites that no one wants to miss. Who wants to go to India and not have seen the Taj Mahal, or to Peru and not have visited Machu Picchu? Unfortunately, they are famous for a reason and thus flocked by the masses, filled with swarms of tourists and tour groups everywhere, each with a giant hundred pound camera and all with loud voices. In addition, they, in turn, are usually quite pricey, especially for budget travelers like ourselves. As for us, we also want to see these sites, but we try to find another less trodden and usually less expensive path.

View of Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park

The Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, simply known as Bromo, is one of those sites. Understand, Bromo is one of Indonesia’s most visited tourist attractions. The park is described in Lonely Planet as “ a lunaresque landscape of epic proportions and surreal beauty,“ as the park is huge and encompasses 5,520 hectares with the main attraction being the volcano, Mount Bromo, whose name comes from the Javanese way of pronouncing Brahma, the Hindu creator god. Mount Bromo is one of five volcanoes, of which four are active, jutting into the sky surrounded by a huge sea of sand which in turn is surrounded by an ancient crater, a wonderful chain of barren mountains and on the edge a bright green plateau, these images are almost unreal in their beauty as you stand in the middle of it all.

Saving Money and Giving Back

It’s great to be able to travel for very cheap but it’s also important to give back at the same time especially to those communities that need it most. Often with couchsurfing (see our post) we end up teaching English, working on a farm, and culturally sharing so many things, but there are many other ways that are often better for communities more in need.

WWOOFING 

Couchsurfing

Hotels, hostels, guesthouses, not only do they get to be pretty expensive but you never get the true feeling of a place, you never get to know the true local culture. Your interactions with people include only the other foreigners where you are staying, or the person that works in the restaurant, the hotel, the shop, or if you’re lucky the random person you met on the street.

There are many options to cut your accommodation cost, but hands down the best is couchsurfing!

What is couchsurfing?

Couchsurfing www.couchsurfing.org is basically a social network for travelers. Couchsurfing is like a “couch” exchange. So, when you travel someone let’s you have a place to stay, that can be either a couch, a bed, a room, a space on the floor, and when you aren’t traveling you offer a place for others that are traveling. Now you don’t have to have someone sleep at your house, some people just use the site to meet other travelers, or to meet locals for a coffee, meal, or drink while traveling.

Is it safe?

I’m sure almost everyone upon hearing about couchsurfing is thinking “what if this random stranger whose house I’m staying at is actually an axe murderer?”. Now the great thing about couchsurfing is it works on a reference system. So once you search for a potential host you can see how many references they have, and read the references. If someone has no references and no pictures and another guy has 50 positive references and pictures with his family, etc you may decide to only send a request to the guy with the references.

Hitchhiking: A "How To"

Carry A Sign

Now it is not necessary to carry a sign and some hitchhikers may just prefer to thumb it, but by carrying a sign you can usually arrive to your destination a bit quicker. Of course in every country and region hitchhiking is different, but by carrying a sign that is large enough and written in the local language with a black marker (and a smiley face) the passing car has time to read your sign and decide if that is on the way. This also avoids many people being confused as to why someone is sticking out their thumb on the side of the road and the time wasted speaking with each passing car to ask where they are going and tell them where you are going. Also in many languages the pronunciation may not be the same as in your language and the romanization of characters may be incorrect to pronunciation. For example Gyeongju, in South Korea, is pronounced “Kyeongju” but copying how it is written in hangul (Korean), we can avoid the miscommunication as there is another city pronounced “Gyeongju” as is nowhere near “Kyeongju”.

HITCHHIKING: Advice for the Adventurous

Look the part:

People don’t want to pick up some oddball wanting a free ride somewhere, and thus locals usually have a very hard time hitchhiking. A traveler, especially a backpacker, is a more welcomed guest. The potential car will see you as the poor, lost foreigner. (That’s always a good image). So carry a backpack and look like a traveler.

Look presentable:

A big, burly guy with a beard, holes in his jeans, and a heavy metal t-shirt may scare someone from picking him up, especially to the tiny Japanese guy who may have flashbacks to the last American horror film he saw. It will work a lot more in your favor to be dressed presentable. Clean jeans, a nice shirt and a smiling face always works wonders. For women, if hitchhiking alone, you should avoid any unwanted impressions. Lipstick and a short skirt may not be the best hitchhiking outfit. Of course common sense is always advisable.

Cheap, I mean, free transport? Hitchhiking.

Now hitchhiking isn’t for everyone and just like riding a motorbike, taking a bus in Bolivia, and walking under a coconut tree there are risks. There is always a chance that the sweet family that just picked you up, offered you snacks, and set their two year old next to you is actually a gang of psychopath serial killers or maybe they’re just a kind-hearted family picking up the funny and lost-looking foreigner.

Other than it being free why do we like hitchhiking so much?

First of all hitchhiking is always an adventure, and an unexpected adventure at that. You never know if the couple that just picked you up will end up taking you to a giant family lunch that they had planned to go to before they drive an hour out of their way to take you to your destination, or if the funny guy that due to a language barrier you can’t communicate with except for sign language and laughs will end up taking you to his house to show you his farm animals and invite you in for a cold glass of milky rice wine, or even if the ride will end up inviting you to stay at their awesome beach house equipped with a yacht, or maybe the next person will just pick you up and drop you off at your destination with only light conversation and a picture to show his friends later.

Welcome Readers, Browsers, Friends

So you would like to travel the world would you? Not enough money you say? Lucky for you that's no longer a problem. Of course some people have special circumstances, like a single parent with three kids who is out of work. There are exceptions and it may take longer for some people than for others, but don’t be discouraged if you really want to travel you can!

Our purpose in creating this blog is to help scratch the idea that only those who have a lot of money can travel. It’s possible for almost anyone that can spare $15 per day, which would be $450 for one month of travel! It may seem like a large chunk of change, but you would only have to save a little over $7 per day for two months to afford a one month vacation anywhere in the world! Maybe instead of buying that $5 Moccachino, make a coffee at home and add a little chocolate syrup and milk, instead of going out to eat, start cooking at home. Do you really need to buy that new shirt? Is cable really necessary when you can use the internet to (now legally) watch anything you want for less than the monthly cable bill?

We hope to share some tips and our experiences to not only show that it is affordable to travel but to hopefully also inspire someone to go themselves and search for their own wonders in the world, to pop the bubble of the world they exist within and see what lies outside of that bubble, to learn new ways, try new foods, meet different people, see new people, or just to realize that the possibility exists!

So go ahead: learn new languages, try local food, climb a few mountains, swim with the fish, pray in a temple; live your dreams, don’t just dream them!

How much do you usually spend per day traveling?