World Traveled: Shoestring, Part 2

For many, leaving everyone and everything you know behind to travel the world is nothing more than a dream. For others, jet-setting across the world with your significant other is at the top of their bucket lists. For the Shoestring Trekkers, they’ve combined both of these dreams to leave everything behind and travel the world as a couple. Anthony Forlizzi and Breada Potts, two recent college grads, packed their bags and booked one-way tickets to Bangkok, Thailand to follow their dreams. To document their journey, they’ve created a blog, theshoestringtrekkers.com, to share with friends and family back home. 

 

Over the past few weeks, The Shoestring Trekkers, Anthony and Breada, have left everything they’ve known in Massachusetts to pick up their backpacks and travel the world as a couple. In the first part of this series, we talked about some of their goals going forward for the next year or so. Here, Anthony and Breada opened up about their experiences traveling to this 

 

 

 

Anthony: It has exceeded my expectations every day. I’m truly in love with the country. Breada and I don’t want to leave, but we know there are other places we have to go and we’ll likely fall in love with them as well. The people here are just so friendly and warm, the food is amazing, and beaches so far have been the nicest I’ve ever been to. I’m already plotting ideas in my head about how we can stay here long term.

 

 

Breada: We’ve been in Thailand for just about a month, and I can honestly say I love it.  The people are so incredibly friendly, the food is amazing, and the culture is so different from anything I’ve ever experienced.  It is without a doubt the hottest place I’ve ever been, but somehow that just makes it even more exotic and fascinating.  Every time I see a local running around wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt in 100-degree weather with 110% humidity I’m in absolute awe.  And somehow they never look hot or sweaty! It’s incredible. I’ve also really loved learning more about Buddhism, and the temples here are stunning.  I find religion fascinating, and I love that I’m experiencing a new one. One thing I wasn’t totally prepared for is the language barrier.  In Europe for the most part everyone speaks English very well so it’s quite easy to get around even if you don’t know the language.  In Thailand, very few people speak English and even fewer speak it well.  I guess this would be frustrating for some, but honestly I kind of love it.  It has forced Anthony and I to learn a few words in Thai which the locals ALWAYS appreciate (in all seriousness if you’re traveling to another country learn a few words in their native language…even a simple ‘thank you’ goes a long way), and it makes the experience that much richer. Communicating with hand gestures and smiles is just part of the 

 

 

Anthony: So far we’ve had a pretty good mix of sleeping arrangements, everything from a dorm room to a semi-outdoor bungalow. Our average cost has been about $5.50 USD a night, with our cheapest being $3 and our most expensive being $8.50. All of them have been very nice, highly rated, and clean. We check a few different places before booking: booking.Com, hostelworld.Com , and airbnb.com being the most popular. Like I said earlier, being a couple is nice because we can just split a private and the cost is usually the same if not cheaper than a dorm room. Right now the guesthouse we’re staying on Koh Lanta is $6 USD a night each and has AC, a fridge, and a TV. We’re living the high life! 

 

 

Breada: So far we’ve gotten pretty lucky and only had to stay in one dorm!  There aren’t as many hostels in Asia as there are in Europe so we’ve been staying in a lot of guest houses which has been nice.  I do love the hostel environment and staying in dorms can be fun, but so far it has actually been cheaper for us to get a private room than to get two beds in a dorm so if we can have a little extra space and privacy for less than a dorm bed why not?  We’ve used an airbnb once, but other than that everything has been through Hostelworld or booking.com.  Since it’s heading into the low season for Southeast Asia we could probably just show up to places and negotiate the price, but for now it’s nice to have confirmed bookings. 

 

 

Anthony: Nothing major. I mean I wish we could have left earlier than we did, but we both needed to work right up until the end to make our goals as far as money goes. April is the hottest month of the year in Thailand, and for a country that’s hot all year that’s really saying something. When factoring in humidity, everyday we’ve been here has felt 100+. There was a day a couple weeks ago that with the humidity it felt like 125. It was terrible. Luckily we had AC at the time, something we don’t always have so it could have been much worse.I also wish we planned a little less than we did. We didn’t plan much, really only the first 3 weeks or so of accommodations, but even that was too much. I think a week in advance is best. Unfortunately, shit happens. For example, Breada and I got into a small motorbike accident. I was riding and hit a patch of sand going around a turn at the exact time I was braking. I learned not to do this in my motorcycle safety class last year, but I wasn’t thinking and that’s all it took. The bike slid out from under us and we both got banged up, her worse than me. It was nothing serious, no broken bones or anything, but the road rash made it so we couldn’t do certain things like take our SCUBA diving course we had planned on doing. The owner of the company, while sympathetic and agreed we shouldn’t be diving underwater, wasn’t willing to refund out money for our accommodation or even give us a credit to come back at a later date. It was only about $80 or so so in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a huge loss, but had I just booked later it would have never happened.

 

Breada: I wish we hadn’t planned out our first month so thoroughly. Everything I read while prepping for this trip said not to plan too much, but we couldn’t help ourselves…we were both just so excited!  Unfortunately, we were in a minor accident on a motorbike in Koh Lanta, and even though neither one of us was seriously injured, it did force us to reevaluate our itinerary.  We had planned on taking a diving course and hitting up a Full Moon Party, but instead we stayed on Koh Lanta an extra week while our road rash healed.  This wasn’t a huge problem since we LOVED Koh Lanta, but we lost the money we spent booking the diving, and half the money we spent on the hostel for the Full Moon Party.  It wasn’t a lot, but every dollar does count.  We’ve learned our lesson and have decided to have a much more open ended itinerary going forward.  

 

 

Anthony: So far not yet. One of the nice parts about keeping it as open ended as we have is that we can change on a whim. Our plans have already changed quite a bit since we’ve been here and its only been a little more than 3 weeks. For example, we were only supposed to be on Koh Lanta a week, but between the accident and the fact that we love the island so much we decide to stay an extra week. Had we had too many things booked we wouldn’t have been able to do that. 

 

Breada: Not really. We don’t have a set plan so right now we could really end up anywhere!  We had originally been thinking we would stay in Southeast Asia for four to six months, but after a week of being here we decided it would probably be more like eight or nine months.  There is just so much to do and see!  The best part about an open ended itinerary is that we can literally go anywhere.  That’s the beauty of long term travel!

 

 

Anthony: Any and every way possible. We both worked A LOT. I was working upwards of 60-70 hours a week in the final stretch before we left and anywhere from 40-60 hours for the months before that. Also, one of my many hobbies is (or was?) collecting sneakers. At one time I had over 100 pairs, but I sold more than half my collection to raise money for the trip. I still have a decent number of pairs that could fetch good money, so whenever the time comes that we’re broke and we go home, I’ll sell those to raise more money to leave again. I have also taken up a new hobby over the last couple years. “Travel Hacking” It’s the art of traveling for cheap, or free. A lot of it involves the building up of frequent flyer miles, hotel points, and taking advantage of low cost fares through a variety of methods. This is how we plan on flying most of our flights, which will save us each thousands of dollars over the course of the year. 

 

For example, last year I took advantage of a great deal: Boston to London for $150 one-way in peak summer season. Normally this flight would be about $500-600 bucks. Then I used some of my points cache to take us from London to Lisbon where we spent a week. I also used a deal I had lined up to stay our last night at a fancy hotel (every now and again you need a break from hostels) and I ended up getting back more money in hotel points than I paid for the room in the first place. We flew back using United miles so we only had to pay tax. In total our 2 week trip cost about $1200 each, and that was us going out to dinner at restaurants every night and really enjoying ourselves. We could have done it for a few hundred less each had we wanted, but it was a vacation and you have to splurge a little.

 

Breada: Well the biggest part was that Anthony’s parents were generous enough to let us live with them for a little over a year so we could save.  I have no idea how I’ll ever be able to return the favor, but I absolutely will one day.  Without them we never would have been able to save enough to do this.  Aside from the was both just worked very hard.  At one point Anthony was working seven days a week, and I was maxing out the amount of hours my job allows.  It was exhausting, but worth it.  We stopped going out to eat, and didn’t do much besides sit at home and binge watch shows on our days off, but the goal was worth the sacrifices made.  Around Christmas I stopped buying anything that wouldn’t serve a purpose on the trip, and last August I also gave up coffee.  I started looking at things and thinking “this would be an entire day and a half on our trip”, and that really put it into perspective.  Saving money isn’t hard if you’re willing to make the sacrifice.  It just comes down to what’s more important to you…three days in Cambodia or getting your nails done.

 

 

Anthony: Just do your research. As much as I would fancy myself a pioneer, there have been countless travelers who have done this before me and many have documented their travels on their own blogs. The more knowledgeable you are, the better you will be and the less likely you’ll be scammed. Scams are also more or less the same everywhere. The longer you travel the more you pick up on them. The big scam in Bangkok was the cheap tuk tuk. A driver would come up to you and tell you all the temples are closed that day for some Buddhist holiday you’ve never heard of (because it doesn’t exist), but he could get you in and would take you to all of them for a too good to be true price. When you get in he’ll take you to the temples, but not before taking you to a bunch of his friends’ gift shops, clothing stores, and any other shop you can think of. They’ll pressure you to buy things and some have been known to get a little crazy when you’re not breaking out your wallet. They get a kickback from the shop owners which is why they’re taking you to all the places. Just ask yourself, if it cost 140 baht (the Thai currency, 4 USD) to get from A to B, why would he charge you 50 baht to take you on a tour around the city? It’s just common sense.

 

 

Breada: Research, research, research.  I have never understood how people can just show up somewhere without reading about it first.  So far Thailand seems to have a lot less scams than Europe, but there are still plenty of people who see us as “rich westerners” and want to make a little extra money off of our stupidity.  A simple Google search can save you time and money, both of which are very important to a budget backpacker.