I used to proactively write about every upcoming travel adventure I had, but I tend not to do that much these days. One of the reasons is that sometimes my plans change, and then I end up with a post that’s no longer accurate. Another reason is that people, while well intentioned, tend to sometimes aggressively give advice on how I should change my trips around, which ends up putting me on the defensive regarding my choices (most of which are well thought out in terms of what I want to get out of that trip). That said, this next three month trip of mine is pretty exciting, so I wanted to share ...

It’s 7am in the morning, and the trail in front of me is barely lit by the LED headlamp I’m wearing on my head. I’m up earlier than I have been over the last few days, mainly due to the orchestra of snoring in my albergue room throughout the night. Yesterday I limped my way into town, hobbling in pain due to sore knees and a pair of star-crossed blisters on my feet. I had been chewing ibuprofin for the last 12 hours, hoping it would take away some of the pain in my knees and allow me to continue on today. But after only about 10 minutes of walking this morning, both of them are once again ...

In about ten days I’ll be jumping in the vehicle with my girlfriend and driving across North America, yet again. We moved out to Ontario last year from the British Columbia-area to spend a year in Hamilton, and were forced to do the drive in four days due to commitments that were waiting for us. Thankfully we are going to do the drive back in about nine days, which should be a lot more enjoyable. This is actually my fourth time moving across the country, and I’ve done this song and dance enough times that I thought I would give some advice on the subject. First, moving across the country ...

My girlfriend left the other day to spend three weeks in Italy and Hungary. I have to say, I’m more than a little jealous. I spent three years basically up and travelling whenever I felt like it, but currently we’re too busy at work for me to slip away. But the thought of sitting around a patio, nibbling on a wood-oven pizza and sipping a beer sure sounds appealing right now. As people may remember, Luciana and I moved out to Hamilton, Ontario last year to spend a year working in the new office. It’s been a great experience, and it will be hard to say goodbye to everyone we’ve spent time ...

As I pointed out previously, I’m in the process of moving to Hamilton to spend a year working out of BraveNewCode’s new offices. I flew out and spent some time out there in April and May, mainly just to find a place to live. But now that I have an apartment lined up, I’m back in British Columbia getting ready to do a road trip across North America with my girlfriend. My Car, a Mazda 3 Sport Most people really have no appreciation for how large of a country both Canada and the United States are. I once had a friend fly into Toronto and email me to see if I could drive out to see him from ...

One of my main strategies for earning free airline travel that I discuss in my eBook is leveraging a travel rewards card. For most people simply using a travel reward card for day-to-day purchases is enough to earn a free vacation each and every year. I’ve been using a few different cards for three years now, and I’ve earned a full return trip to Machu Picchu in Peru, a free return trip to Auckland, New Zealand, and enough for another trans-continental trip already accumulated. And all I had to do was sign-up and use it monthly. Almost all travel reward cards include health-insurance for short-term ...

Over the past few years I’ve flown to many exotic destinations New Zealand, Brazil, and even Peru. Normally those trips would costs thousands of dollars, but I managed to do all three trips for free thanks to several of my travel reward credit cards. Most seasoned travellers already know this, but many credit card companies offer travel products that help their customers earn free travel. For every purchase you charge to your credit card, the credit card company will give you a credit for future travel in the form of ‘mileage’. That mileage is usually tracked on your credit card statement ...

There are a few privileged travelers that you encounter from time to time who don’t really seem to have any sort of budget. Often they have saved for several years and intend to continue traveling until it simply runs out. But for the rest of us, traveling for more than a week or two often means that we have to stick to a pre-defined budget for a particular trip. I know personally that spending money is the one main aspect of traveling that causes me stress, more so than worrying about theft or how to get to and from places. That’s why I try to set aside a certain amount of money beforehand ...

Whenever a person goes to a new destination, one of the first things they need to decide is what they are going to bring. And for most people, that depends on the duration of the trip and likely how far they will be traveling. If I go anywhere for a month or more, I often take one of my larger suitcases to minimize laundry. I figure since I am allowed to check a bag on the plane, I may as well take advantage of it. And since I usually rent a full apartment in a new location, I have room to store the suitcase. But when you have a suitcase it’s often hard to be spontaneous. If you go sightseeing, ...

One of the hardest parts of working remotely and traveling is the need to find reliable internet from time to time. In some countries free internet is almost as ubiquitous as beer, and often advertised as prominently. But in some countries (I’m looking directly at you Australia and New Zealand) almost all the internet you will find in the wild is either time limited or bandwidth limited. It’s not unusual to be in a coffee shop on only be given 10MB or so, which is hardly enough to check your email or Facebook feed. The Solution If you’re using a Mac computer (and I’m sure the procedure ...

It’s November 1st, which means that shortly we are going to start seeing Christmas lights, trees, and of course all the great sales leading up to Christmas. It’s only about 7 weeks away now, and I’m sure that time will go by quickly. Christmas Presents for Travel After travelling the world for almost three years now, I thought I would share some of my best ideas for Christmas presents for people like me. If you have someone in your family that loves to travel, or is thinking about taking a big trip, then hopefully this list will help you. I’ve ordered it by price, lowest to highest, so ...

Con-Sonar: CRAZY IVAN! In the movie The Hunt For Red October the Russian submarine captains use a technique called a Crazy Ivan by the Americans. Basically every once and a while the Russian captains will make the submarine do a complete circle, startling any potential followers behind them. Unless the other submarine is extremely careful, the Crazy Ivan is meant to detect them since it will likely catch them by surprise. I have a similar technique I use for keeping safe while traveling, in that every so often, usually every few minutes, I do a full scan of everything and everyone around me. Normally ...

A few months ago I started a small series to talk about my ongoing goal to make at least $500 a month from this website. You can read How To Make Money From A Travel Blog: Part 1 and Part 2 here. This Month’s Results In the month of October I made $709 from this website, which is a 100% improvement over the previous month’s revenue of $347. That means I not only hit my goal of making $500/month, but I passed it by over $200. In terms of revenue, here’s where it came from for the month of October. Amazon Associates – $349 Last month I predicted that my Amazon revenue would likely go down ...

If you’re a routine flyer around North America, you may have heard today that United Airlines dropped a bombshell on its loyalty program members. But chances are you didn’t, because it seems that they chose to release the information at night. You know, during Halloween, when everyone is reading the news. The long and short of it is that many people with accumulated mileage, myself included, are facing a pretty severe devaluation of our mileage. On some international routes on other Star Alliance airlines, it will now take almost twice as many miles for the same flight. Their domestic routes ...

I recently sent this out to my newsletter subscribers. For information like this on a periodic basis, sign-up here. I hate SPAM too, so don’t worry, I’ll only send you great travel tips, and you can unsubscribe at any time. I hope by now most of you have read my free eBook, “The Beginner’s Guide to Long-Term Travel and Lifestyle Design”. I plan to update it periodically and send a new version to all of you from time to time, so please contact me if you felt there was anything missing or if there is a particular topic you would like addressed. One area I realized I left out was information ...

One of the first orders of business I take card of whenever I land in a new country is to try and get a pre-paid data plan for my phone. Some people chose not to have a working phone when they travel, since it’s sometimes a bit of a pain to find the right provider. But I don’t see much point in owning a smartphone and not having access to data with it whenever I want. Getting A Pre-paid SIM When You Travel Here are some other reasons why I love having a prepaid data plan with my phone when I travel. I can message friends and family back home using WhatsApp or iMessage whenever I want I can ...

If you travel outside of North America you’ll quickly realize just how different we do things with regards to power. First, power in North America is typically around 110V, but can range from around 100V all the way up to around 125V. In Europe and many other parts of the world, a voltage of around 220V is normal. In the old days, prior to intelligent power adapters, if you plugged a device designed for 110V into a wall socket wired for 220V, you could pretty much kiss that device goodbye as it would likely fry with a puff of smoke. The same goes for razors, hair dryers, curling irons, etc. Different ...

One of the downsides to always having the latest and greatest iPhone is that most places outside of North America and Europe seriously lag behind in terms of adoption rates. For places like Brazil and Argentina, that’s even more true because the cost of picking up a new iPhone is nearly twice as much as we would pay in North America. When I went to Argentina in 2012, I couldn’t find a Micro SIM card anywhere, and was forced to buy a normal full-sized SIM card and perform surgery on it to make it fit into a Micro SIM holder. I had to do that twice while travelling around the world with my iPhone ...

The following is an excerpt from my FREE Travel Book. If you’re like to learn more travel tips like these, sign-up to receive my travel book as soon as it is released. Every time I tell my mom about some of the places I’ve recently visited, she seems to reach as though I just barely escaped being killed or taking hostage due to all negative media that certain parts of the world get on the local news. The truth is though that in much of the world it’s just as safe as it is in your part of the world. But crime does happen from time to time, and many criminals purposefully target tourists. ...

Many people don’t realize that if they are in another country that they will often have to pay for all their medical expenses out of their own pocket. A simple visit to a doctor’s office probably won’t set you back too far in most countries, but being hospitalized can potentially bankrupt a person in certain parts of the world, such as the United States. I had a friend who got into a scooter accident in Thailand years ago, and only avoided hefty medical bills thanks to the travel health insurance he purchased before leaving Canada. So without a doubt one of the first items that should be ...