Summer Survey Assignment

Welcome to readers from AlmostFearless! I hope you enjoyed my post! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this guest post I wrote called “Traveling the World, One Bag of Popcorn at a Time.

In a few weeks, I will embark on the wildest trip of my life. Hands down.

I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was waiting on my itinerary to be finalized and flights to be locked in. You ready? Here we go.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

My summer survey kicks off in the heart of Ethiopia, where my colleague Stephanie and I will spend a week gathering prices in Addis Ababa. I’ll be honest – I don’t know much about this side of Africa. The one Ethiopian restaurant I ate at in Boston was tasty, so I’m looking forward to expanding my palette with some new dishes. Other than food, there are plenty of markets and museums to get lost in, and I’m hoping to learn more about the Jewish diaspora in Ethiopia.

Djibouti, Djibouti

From Ethiopia, Stephanie and I fly direct to Djibouti. During a Model UN conference in high school, the Djibouti delegation proposed a resolution to turn the entire country into a world-dance-floor. I’m not really sure what they were thinking, but these days, when I hear Djibouti, that’s what I think of. Let’s hope I can form a new word association.

The weather is supposed to be hot. Real hot. Likr, 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently, there is good snorkeling and scuba diving, so I’m hoping Stephanie and I can get our work done and cool ourselves in the open ocean. Though, I don’t plan on wading too far from shore – Somalia shares a border to the south.

Amman, Jordan

After Djibouti, Stephanie and I part ways. She leaves for Cairo, and, after an overnight stay in Dubai, I leave for Amman, Jordan. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be going here. Interestingly enough, I’ve wanted to visit Jordan since the age of 8 or 9, when I first saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In the film’s final scenes, Harrison Ford and company dip into a crescent canyon where they find a secret temple built into the rock. That temple actually exists, and let me tell you, it looks incredible. Here’s a short documentary:

Like Chernobyl, I’ll be taking lots of pictures.

Speaking of pictures, have you seen nepalprints.com? It’s where you can find all my best travel shots.

Damascus, Syria

After Jordan, I fly direct to Syria. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus cannot be entered with an Israeli-stamped passport. Good thing I travel with two different passports 🙂 Syria is an incredibly historical crossroads of commerce and culture for many of the world’s major religions. Instead of staying in the Sheraton outside of town, I booked a 17th-century, 9-room boutique hotel within the walled compounds of the Old City. Hopefully I won’t get woken up at 4am by the muezzin’s call to prayer.

If I play my cards right, I should have a few days to get outside of Damascus. I hope to visit Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage oasis in the middle of the Syrian desert. I also hope to talk to as many locals as possible in an effort to separate the people from the politics of the country. Can’t wait to share my experience.

Doha, Qatar

As little as I know about Ethiopia, I know even less about Qatar. While I don’t have much free time in Doha, I’m hoping to get together with a friend I met on Twitter and learn as much as I can. If I can squeeze in a few leisure hours, there are plenty of beach and desert-related activities to keep me happy.

Anchorage, Alaska

I’m super excited to head to Anchorage. Several years ago, I went on a month-long backpacking trip to Alaska, and my group spent a few days in and around Anchorage. I should have a day or so of free time, so I’m hoping to retrace what I can – namely a hike on the Wolverine Peak Trail, and time permitting, heading north to catch a glimpse of Mt. McKinley. Maybe some fishing as well?

What an itinerary, right? Karma is on my side this quarter. I’ll be traveling from July 18th – September 1st, coming home just in time to enjoy what limited decent weather New England has to offer. Stay tuned for more updates!

Travel Blogging with Dave and Deb

Case Studies in the 9 to 5 alternative: No. 2

Welcome to a series of profiles on alternative lifestyles. If you think that you (or someone you know) would make for an interesting interview, then drop me a line. Hope you enjoy!

theplanetdMeet Dave Bouskill and Debra Corbeil, by far the coolest adventure travel couple I’ve ever come across. They have traveled to over 35 countries, with extensive experience in southeast Asia and Africa. Last year, they cycled from Cairo to Cape Town and climbed Mt. Kiliminjaro!

Though as interesting as their experiences are, I am much more impressed with how they have completely transformed their Internet presence over the last few months. From knowing nothing about Google Adsense, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc., Dave and Deb now maintain one of the more popular travel blogs on the web. You’ll hear it from them–that’s not an easy feat.

Read below to learn about how Dave and Deb met, about their recent trip to Africa, and about their strategies for building a successful blog. I look forward to following their upcoming adventures in Central Asia. Apparently they have all kinds of surprises for us.

Let’s hear it. How did Dave and Deb meet?! What are your respective backgrounds?

Dave and I have been together for 18 years. We met in college at the young ages of 20 and 21, and it was love and adventure from that moment on. After graduating, we settled in Toronto, but the wanderlust had already hit us and we packed up to move out west to Vancouver. We lived there for 3 years and that is when we started working in the film business. The industry was booming and it was easy to get a job at the ground level. We worked on such projects as Rumble in the Bronx, Jumanji and The X-Files. We had never been out of North America at that point and had listened to all of the older veterans of the film industry talk about their travels. They would work during the summer and leave for exotic destinations during the winter. It was inspiring and we wanted to have the life that they were leading. We have fulfilled that dream and for the past 10 years have been splitting our time between movies and travel. Dave works as a Rigging Gaffer which is the head of the lighting department and I am a Make-up Artist.

daveriding

Tell us a bit about your most recent expedition, the Tour d’Afrique?

We took on the Tour d’Afrique with the intention of turning our part-time travels into a business. It is a 12,000km cycling expedition from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa. We entered as racers with the hopes of raising our profile as adventurers. We had always been very adventurous, the rest of the world just didn’t know it. We are avid snowboarders, skiers, rock climbers and mountain bikers. We can paddle and navigate canoe routes and we love camping and the outdoors. Whenever we travel, we always make it an adventure. From Paragliding in Peru, climbing South East Asia’s highest peak; Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, or swimming with sharks in Belize, we love to add elements of adrenaline to our itinerary. People really seemed to enjoy the idea of a couple racing down a continent together and we gained a lot of publicity. We ended up having a great finish as well. I was women’s champion and Dave came 5th in the men’s race. Our intent before leaving was to pitch a travel adventure television series when we returned. Between our newspaper articles, television and radio interviews and our fabulous finish, production companies were willing to meet with us. It was much easier to pitch an adventure show when you had already received a lot of publicity as adventurers. It was a really brutal tour. We rode through the desert in Sudan, rocky mountain roads in Ethiopia, We had mud and rain in Tanzania and long mileage in Botswana. We would cycle for 6 days in a row and then have a rest day. This lasted for 120 days. Being on a bicycle for 5 to 8 hours a day was difficult, but since finishing, we feel that we can accomplish anything. There was civil unrest in Kenya while we were in Africa, so unfortunately we had to bypass that country. Our support trucks drove through without us as we flew ahead to Tanzania. We had 2 weeks to wait for them, so we decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro while we were there. It was an incredible experience, and another one of those moments that make you feel that you can achieve anything in your life. It also was important to us to add another adventure to our repertoire.

kiliminjaroWhen did you decide to take blogging more seriously? To transform your Internet presence?

We started seriously blogging again about 2 months ago. We had been blogging while in Africa but stopped when we returned home. We felt that since our trip was over, we didn’t have anything more to say. It was while we were doing research on travel writing for our next trip that we stumbled upon some articles about blogging for a living. It never occurred to us to run our travel blog as a travel website that we can share information with people wanting to travel like we do. We realized that we had a lot of experience under our belt, and that we had a lot to say. We felt that we could reach a wide audience with posts on our favorite places, information on destinations and advice columns. When we saw other people actually making a living out of it, we decided to concentrate on having our blog up and running and making money by the time we leave at the end of this year.

What strategies did you use to revamp your blog and connect with new readers?

This has been a challenge. We didn’t know anything about SEO (search engine optimization) or monetizing our blog. We didn’t know about keywords or tagging. So we have had to go back through all of our posts and basically start from scratch. Our first order of business was changing our theme. Our theme was originally set up as more of a personal blog and we needed to make it look more like a website. We had to submit our site to search engines like Google, we joined travel forums like the Travel Blog Exchange and social networks like Twitter. We applied to Google Adsense and Commission Junction and others and put some ads on our site. And as time went on we refined our choices to fit our content. We learned how to connect with our community. We have found this to be invaluable. Speaking to and learning from other travel bloggers has been a huge help and we are building friendships that we feel will last for years to come. The support system out there is incredible, but you have to work at it. You can’t just expect people to help you out if you aren’t active in the blogging community. We have really enjoyed reaching out to other travelers. We didn’t know the first thing about Twittering, networking in forums and had never heard of StumbleUpon or Digg. It has been a lot of fun watching our community grow as we learn how to utilize these tools. The learning curve has been pretty fast because we have put in a lot of time. Almost every spare moment is spent at the computer, but we still have a lot to learn. Each day we find new ways to gain viewers. We just discovered Reddit and have found that our numbers have risen dramatically.

Have you run into any problems?

Yes, not having any Internet background whatsoever has been difficult. Editing HTML to change the website is a slow process for us. It has all been trial and error. We think that we have found the perfect set up one minute and then we discover that it could be better and need to change it again. Learning and understanding SEO is a big challenge as well. We have to rethink how to write our articles to optimize them for search engines and we are learning how to tag our posts properly. We are still not sure if we are doing everything optimally yet, but at least we have the general idea as to what we are doing and heading in the right direction.

homesweethomeWhat can we expect from theplanetd in the future?

You can expect to see a lot of us. We are taking this as far as we can and have no plans on giving up. We will be leaving on a journey at the end of this year for an indefinite amount of time. We will be traveling through Central Asia, Europe and Northern Africa writing about our adventures as we go. We have big plans on how we are going to travel, but you will have to wait and read about it once we are there. Expect a lot of adventures that are unique to each country along the way. Our travel show is still in the works and we have signed with a production company. They are still working on development and distribution at the moment. These things take time and we don’t need to be here for that so we can go off and keep the adventure alive until the first episode starts filming. We are jumping in with both feet and not turning back. We believe that if you give yourself an ultimatum and set a definite goal, with enough hard work and persistence things will work out in the end.

You can follow Dave and Deb’s adventures on their personal website, theplanetd.com, as they paddle, hike, climb, scuba dive and trek their way around the globe. You can also follow their micro updates and say hello at twitter.com/theplanetd. All images in this post come from their personal stash 🙂

*Update: Check out John’s interview at Jet Set Citizen to learn more!

Mileage Running with Dan Pierson

Case Studies in the 9 to 5 alternative: No. 1

Welcome to the first in a series of profiles on alternative lifestyles. If you think that you (or someone you know) would make for an interesting interview, then drop me a line. Hope you enjoy!

danpiersonMeet Dan Pierson, an entrepreneur/digital nomad currently “planning world domination.” Originally from New York, Dan has been living in Buenos Aires with his dog Nevada, practicing his Spanish and running BsAs Copy, an Internet marketing firm specializing in sales copy and SEO articles.

Last year, I wrote a handful of SEO articles for Dan and we got to know each other through email and Gchat exchanges. Among other things, we chat about entrepreneurship and travel, so I was very excited to hear about his plans to travel on a round-the-world ticket.

Dan, in preparation for his future travels, used a frequent flier technique called “mileage running” to nudge himself to the top of American Airline’s elite statuses. Over the course of a week, he used my apartment as a launchpad for trips between BOS and LAX  (Dan, thanks again for cleaning up after yourself). I’ll let him tell you more.

Tell us a little bit about what you are doing. What is mileage running?

I’m flying back and forth between Boston and Los Angeles (there and back) for five consecutive days. On the sixth day (tomorrow!), I’m once again flying to Los Angeles, but only as a stop-over on the way to Maui. Aside from earning a butt-load of miles, my goal is to reach American Airline’s holy of all holies: Executive Platinum. This status entitles the holder to various perks, including free upgrades to first class more or less every flight, increased award availability, priority boarding, etc… and some bad-ass luggage tags.

First things first: I’m a novice when it comes to mileage running.

A “pure” Mileage Run (MR) is a flight taken solely for the purpose of earning miles or status on an airline. Aside from cost and whatever particular promotion might be running, the destination doesn’t matter. In fact, if the fare allows, the mileage runner will likely turn right around and hop back on the same plane to avoid having to pay for accommodation.

It’s purely an economic proposition; how many dollars will garner how many miles. That’s a bit simplified, and there are other considerations (am I really sitting in coach for that 14 hour flight to Bangkok?), but it’s a good, basic definition to start with.

It all comes down to the “CPM,” or Cost per Mile. A “good” mileage run will usually come in at under .02 cents per miles. For example, the current mileage run I’m on nets me 21,000 miles per 180 dollars spent.

I still don’t get it. What are you using these miles for, free tickets?

Let me preface by telling you a bit about my life these days. I’m pretty mobile. I’ve been living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for about 6 months, and plan to devote the next 6 months or so to travel. I have no schedule: generally, May 5th is as free as May 6th is as free as May 7th. That’s the opposite of most folks with 9 to 5 jobs.

People assign “dollar values” to frequent flyer miles, but I think that’s a mistake, on a number of different levels.

  1. First of all, there are 1001 ways to accumulate miles. For example, opening a credit card could net you 25000 miles (essentially free). You could also go on an airline’s site and purchase 1000 miles for 30 dollars. Therefore, I don’t think it makes sense to say that x miles cost x dollars.
  2. For the sake of argument, let’s say that one mile costs one cent (an arbitrary number). A typical “saver” roundtrip fare within the 48 states “costs” 25,000 miles. Here’s the thing: it’s only available three flights per week. Most people can’t take advantage of any of those flights due to work, family, etc. Fortunately, I can.
  3. Airlines frequently announce frequent flyer sales, in which they’ll discount the number of miles needed to travel to a specific location. “Wow, they knocked Sydney down to 40,000 miles? I’m there!”.

To sum it up: the more flexibility you have, the more your frequent flyer miles are worth.

How did you find out about this promotion? Where should my readers look for information like this?

As I mentioned before, I’m a novice. The leading site for all things miles is FlyerTalk.com. You’ll find gurus who know how to work the system to a tee. This particular mileage run is pretty straight-forward, but there are others that require significant tweaking; I’m still learning myself. Don’t be intimidated by the abbreviations, acronyms, and words you don’t understand. You’ll pick it up soon enough, if you lurk for a little while.

How do you stay organized?

I entered all of the flight info into a spreadsheet: cost of each flight, miles flown, miles accrued, status points, etc.

Have you run into any problems so far?

Surprisingly, no! My third day of BOS-LAX, I arrived at 7:45 AM, only to find that I was on the 4:30 PM! Luckily, I was able to get on standby on the earlier, 8:20 AM flight, so I didn’t have to wait around the airport all day.

On the other end of the spectrum, I sweet-talked an off-duty gate agent (incidentally doing the same run to earn miles for her niece and nephew), and she “bumped” me up to the little cocoon where the flight attendants hang out on Trans-Atlantic flights. Way nicer than coach, and we enjoyed a nice conversation about the different destinations in Latin America.

Let’s talk some numbers here. How many flights? Days? Miles? Cost?

I’m factoring in some travel done aside from these BOS-LAX runs, including trips to North Carolina, D.C., New Orleans, Miami, and Europe. But the vast majority of miles earned and status gained will come from 7 round-trip Trans-Continental flights, as well as a trip to Hawaii.

Redeemable miles: 155,450
Qualifying miles: 100, 377 (100,000 necessary for Executive Platinum)
Butt in Seat miles:  (50,185)
Cost: $2,483.00

This cost includes a $100 change fee on my Hawaii ticket (“you know what, I’m gonna need that extra week on Maui after all these flights”), as well as a $150 Platinum Challenge (needed because of time constraints-normally, I could have waited for the miles to post and status to be attained organically). I also factored in the trips to both domestic and international destinations. The Pure “mileage run” cost came out to a little over one thousand dollars.

Here´s an example of what this all comes down to:

I´m sitting in an Internet cafe in southern Spain. I just got off the phone with AAdvantage after booking my flight from Thailand back to the United States. I´m going to fly Qantas BKK-SYD, and then SYD-JFK. In first class. On the new A-380.

Total cost=67.5k frequent flyer miles (three round trips BOS-LAX, or about $600).

Each of those first class tickets would normally cost about $10,000.

In a nutshell, that´s how to work the frequent flyer mile system. It´s not for everyone, but if you can make it work for you, those worthless miles you hear people complaining about can be turned into golden flights of Dom Perignon and world class service.

You can follow Dan’s travels on his personal website danpierson.com or via Twitter at twitter.com/danpierson.

Tirana, Albania: Mother Teresa and the Dajti Express

35 days, 9 flights and 4 countries later – poof, I blink my eyes and I’m back in the U.S. As always, it was a wild survey, and as always, it’s good to be home. This will be my first summer in Boston, and with plenty of friends to romp around with, it’s sure to be a fun one.

This survey, my last stop was a 10-night stay in Tirana, Albania. Nestled amongst the Balkans, Albania is quite a country. Historied with a turbulent past, a promising future awaits, a future that will begin with increased international presence. On April 1st – just a few weeks ago – Albania joined NATO, and just a few weeks later, formally applied to be the newest member of the European Union.

Needless to say, I was excited to visit. Below are some highlights and pictures from the trip.

Getting Settled

Mother Teresa was arguably the most celebrated Albanian of the 20th century. The airport is one of many architectural elements named in her memory, and I crept into it just after midnight. As my taxi glided toward Tirana (the capital city), the puntz-puntz of house music was just loud enough to keep me (and probably the driver) from falling asleep. It was a two-lane road, and high grass was flanking the shoulders. At first, I thought the small dots a few fingers above the horizon were low-lying stars, but then I remembered that mountain ranges cover most of the country. Mountains, house music, entering a new country – it doesn’t get any better folks.

View from hotel balcony

Broadway Hotel and the Shower from Hell

I was fortunate enough to stay at what has to be one of the friendliest hotels in the Balkans. It is small, just about 20 rooms, and there is definitely a Vegas/Egyptian thing going on – pharaonic symbols line the hallways. In front is a lush terrace that is packed almost every night with both guests and locals. The grilled fish is delectable and best served with a hearty amount of Tirana beer.

One of my friend’s cousins actually owns the hotel (Kristi, thanks again!), so I was given a nice corner room on the top floor. Between the quiet balcony, the wireless Internet connection, and the wooden ceiling, I was set. That is, until I battled the shower from hell.

I’ll do my best to explain. At the sink, I learned that left=hot and right=cold. At first, I thought it would be safe to assume that the shower was the same way, but I had made that mistake before, so I timidly stood outside the doors and conducted a new temperature experiment. Immediately, when I turned it on from the left side, the water was scalding. I then proceeded in the shower by turning the knob to the right, then turning on the pressure. Bad move, Alan. Due to cylindrical confinement, I narrowly escaped the piercing wrath of fiery water. My chest and arms were red for two days.

The shower from hell

Once I got the shower temperature right, I realized that about every 20 seconds, the water became freezing cold for 2 seconds until the heater kicked back in. Between varying temperatures and massage settings, I never took an entirely relaxed shower. Future guests, beware.

Skanderbeg Square and Bllok

One thing I really liked about Tirana is that you can walk everywhere. When I wasn’t working, I was exploring, and I found that most of my time was spent around Skanderbeg Square, the central park, and Bllok. Skanderbeg Square describes the square expanse of asphalt in the center of the city. Watch out for crossing Mercedes cars and plastic, battery-operated kiddy mobiles. Around the square you can find the Opera, Skanderbeg Statue, the National Library, the National History Museum, and Et’hem Bey Mosque. Often described as a majority Muslim country, 70% of Albanians are estimated to be non-religious or non-practicing.

Skanderbeg Statue and Et’hem Bey Mosque
Clocktower near Skanderbeg

Bllok, prior to the fall of communism, was an area sectioned off for government officials. Interestingly enough, since then Bllok has become the number one spot for Tiranian youth, boasting the best cafés, shops, and restaurants. The streets, especially in summer afternoons, are filled with people.

The Dajti Express

Originally, I had planned to rent a car in Tirana and drive outside of the city to tour the countryside. After a few days, though, I concluded that with my lack of aggressive driving maneuvers, this would be a nearly impossible task. Thus, in an effort to escape citified Albania, I settled with the Dajti Express, an Austrian-constructed cable car that whisks passengers to a 1230m shelf on Mt. Dajti in just under 18 minutes.

Overlooking Tirana

The ride was quiet. We soared over rolling pastures, a lake, steep, craggy outcroppings, crowing roosters, and barking dogs. At the top of the lift are picnic grounds, some restaurants, and rainforest hiking trails. When I tried to climb higher, I was turned away with a pointed gun (and a smiling face), reading much later that the top of the mountain is controlled by the military.

It was a Sunday, so families occupied all the non-trash grass patches. I walked around, took a few pictures, and headed back to the city before it got dark. For future travelers, it is definitely worth checking out as a nice half-day excursion. On a clear day, the views of Tirana are stunning.

Overall Impressions

If you’re traveling in the Balkans, or feel like jutting out over the boot of Italy for a quick ferry ride, Albania is a fine choice. People are friendly, Tirana is geographically manageable, and as a cost-of-living surveyor, I can vouch that prices are good. I wish I had had more time to explore surrounding cities like Durrës and Shkodër, but I had to leave something for my next trip, right?