Travel Support Thursday

Don't fight it. Don't fight it.

Just, I'm gonna keep fighting it.

Travel Thursday.

Travel Thursday.

We just got back, we're in Singapore.

We're in Singapore.

We're in Singapore.

And we're gonna try to finish this podcast before the sun goes down.

We don't have much time.

We are jet lagged beyond belief.

So, welcome back to Travel Support Thursday number 11.

This is the first one that's only gonna be on the new channel that we moved everything

over from like our main channel to here.

Yeah.

If you missed all of that, then you're probably not watching this podcast or just realizing

that.

Well, if you're listening, you're still listening.

If you're listening to this, there's no change.

All that podcast stuff is gonna stay right where it was.

If you're just an audio only listener, but if you're watching this on YouTube, we have

a separate channel for the podcast now.

So what are we talking about today?

What's the topics?

We got some good questions.

So today we got some questions about travel planning as it relates to chase points.

You start in the US, you're going to Asia and then you need to stop off in Europe before

coming back home to the US.

Around the world trip.

How do you do around the world trip?

I know it's tough.

We're also gonna talk about something that I think we're not experts at, but how we

stay healthy while on the road and our 2024 budget travel destinations and also in between

all of that, a very fun, lighthearted BuzzFeed article in air quotes.

Oh man, we got some more BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed's really got their finger on the travel pulse.

That is right.

Have never gone wrong, especially not with recommending a hairbrella as a must have travel

item.

If you miss that one, that's a couple of episodes back.

This one feels a little bit more legit.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna recommend a product.

There's nothing more legit than a hairbrella.

That's for sure.

Here we go.

That's for sure.

Okay.

I'm gonna bring this up.

You can tell we're in cozy mode here.

If you're listening only, we are under blankets on our bed and it's almost sunset.

Okay.

Let me bring the laptop of truth here.

Rachel Mack, 2954, hi, hello, hello.

So the basic question here is Rachel Mack's taking a trip to Asia that's ending in Hong

Kong and she then has to go all the way to a wedding in Lagos, Portugal.

She has to make it all the way back home to San Francisco.

So a literal full round the world experience and she's wondering, how do I do this without

just like burning all of the money that I've ever made in my entire life and having to

triple mortgage my house?

And this is a good question because this is not exactly an easy thing to do.

So we're gonna break this down into three different sections, which is how do you get

a flight from Hong Kong to Europe for free for not spending a whole bunch of chase points,

which luckily she has.

And then how do you get to the actual wedding itself, which is in Lagos and there seems to

be some confusion here about like which airport to go into and how to use chase points to

go to.

Which country?

Yes.

And then how to actually get all the way back home from Europe.

And I just want to start by saying here that a lot of this question seems to infer that

you're using your chase points directly on the chase portal, which is, there's no easy

way to put it.

Be gentle.

It's just the wrong way to do it.

It's just the wrong way to do it and I'm sorry to say that as harshly as, but you're

never going to get as much value out of your points when you spend them directly on the

portal than if you transfer them to somewhere else.

And that brings me directly to the first solution to this problem.

So I did a bunch of looking, looking, did a bunch of looking and I found that the best

way to spend your chase points is actually to transfer them to British Airways and book

a British Airways flight that only costs 35,000 points per flight from Hong Kong all the way

to London Heathrow.

It's one of their longest halls that they have out of any of their flights.

It's apparently very, very nice service, very excellent.

Only has a $43 additional fee.

Oh, that's not bad.

I was going to ask about the fees with British Airways.

Yes.

Usually it's quite bad, but that's generally coming from the US into London or if you're

like transiting through London as part of it, that's where they hit you with all the

fees.

So 35,000 points per person is flying with you to get that direct flight from Hong Kong

straight to London Heathrow.

Amazing.

And there's a couple of other options.

I would say the best of which is definitely that Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore

all the way to Frankfurt.

So you could just take like a quick $100 flight to Singapore, spend a couple of days here.

I mean, we're here right now.

It's beautiful.

The food's so good.

And then hop on that Singapore Airlines flight for like 42,000 points per person a little

bit more, but I think that would be an even better experience than that British Airways

flight.

And then from Frankfurt.

This is the second part of the question, which is why can't I find Lagos, Portugal in the

chase portal?

And it's because Lagos, Portugal doesn't have an airport.

That's why you can't find it.

The closest major airport that you can get to is Faro.

Yes.

And that's like 40 or so miles east, but that's the way that everybody gets into Lagos generally

as they fly into Faro and there's tons of cheap flights from there.

So what I would do is whichever airport you end up flying into in Europe, I would just

take a cheap flight into Faro and then just grab a taxi across to Lagos.

But if you are talking about Lagos, Nigeria, very different story, then they're very different

story.

I don't want to go too far into it because I assume that you're talking about Lagos,

Portugal, but if you're talking about Nigeria, let me know and we'll solve that one in the

next one.

I will say this, that the chase portal is very convenient so that you don't have to

do all this searching, but it doesn't always get you the best deals.

But what we usually do is search on Google flights to see what is in the realm of possibility.

Like what are some major airports in Europe that fly kind of affordably from countries

and cities, major cities in Asia to Europe and then from those cities to your next destination.

Yeah.

Or if you just want to shortcut to all this, there's a service called point.me that I've

been using a lot lately and it's just an award flight search engine.

And that's what it is.

And I think a lot of these have popped up over time, but this is the first one that's

actually useful.

Cool.

There's a lot of ways.

So you can just type in where you're going from, where you're going to, and it'll just

print out a big list of how much it would cost, the actual flight that you would get

on, how much availability they have, and how you could transfer points to which airline

to be able to book this thing.

So it just kind of solves the whole problem for you.

Okay.

So I found something pretty crazy for this final leg, which I was very excited about

and I think we're going to use now.

So thank you very much for asking this question because it's going to help us get to Europe

and home much cheaper than what we had originally thought.

I found using a Chase transfer partner called Virgin Atlantic that for 15,000 points per

flight, which is crazy cheap, you can fly from Madrid to SFO nonstop.

That's wild.

15,000 points.

15,000.

So like if it is a family of four, that would mean 60,000 points total to get your entire

family home to San Francisco.

It's like a 10 or 14 hour flight or something.

It's a long one.

Yeah.

It's a little high at 200 euros, but that's like way cheaper than any other option that

I could possibly find.

I mean, $200 in the U.S. can get you from SFO to L.A. sometime.

Right.

Maybe.

So yeah.

So reposition yourself.

You just take a flight from Faro to Madrid, which is like $30 per person, very cheap,

or just even take a train and then book those award flights through Virgin Atlantic after

transferring your points from Chase to there.

Hopefully that's helpful.

I know that's a ton of information, but summary is that all of it's possible.

And you don't have to pay very much to do any of it.

And please don't use your Chase points directly in the Chase portal because it makes me sad.

So our second question comes from Evelyn Grammer 8469 who asks, how do you stay healthy?

I saw your bread diet on the Camino.

I was in Ireland and Portugal this year and both places I found it difficult to get veggies.

Thank goodness for markets where I can find fresh fruits.

First of all, thank you so much for that question Evelyn, and second of all, we don't

stay healthy.

We struggle with this all the time.

I don't know if you've seen, I mean, for those of you who've seen our last several

videos, most of our diet consists of beige fried food.

Yeah.

Because it's the cheapest to get everywhere and we're doing everything on a budget.

It is definitely very, very tasty though.

I think we're eating well, but not.

Yeah.

Healthy.

But I do think this is something that we struggle with for sure.

I mean, we try whenever we're visiting a new place or any, and when anytime we're going

on a trip, we try to try the local cuisine.

We try to try things that are on a budget of course because that's our main priority.

But as it turns out, like you say, it's really hard sometimes to find good veggies.

I mean, part of us feeling fortunate enough to have a home base means that we can go home

from our trips now and cook at home, make vegetables.

We have salads every single day when we come back from a trip mostly because we haven't,

yeah, when we're traveling, we just don't.

Yeah.

We feel like we need to.

So we just like gorge on salad for weeks on end.

Also, I would say just generally in life, if I like go to a restaurant and I look and

I see that a salad is like $20, I'm going to order anything else, any other option on

the menu, because that seems so not worth it and I'm so like value oriented in my brain

that I'm just going to order whatever the most amount of food I can get, which is always

french fries.

And it's a real problem.

On a daily, my mom messages us and says, I saw in your latest video, you guys eat french

fries again.

What's going on?

I'm worried.

I'm worried.

Right, Felicia.

Right, Felicia.

How do we keep healthy?

I mean, we don't, but we do walk like 13 to 17 miles.

We go out and we walk basically all day, every day for the entirety of the time that we're

here.

Part of that is cheapness because we don't want to pay for a taxi or a transportation

if we don't have to, if we can just walk it.

And part of that...

And that's a great way to see the city.

Yeah, and part of that is walking just makes us happy.

We did the Camino two times.

It's not an accent.

We like that.

We love long walks.

I also think that something that we've been trying to do a little bit differently on these

last few trips have been sharing foods a lot more.

So I think before we felt like we wanted to each get our own dishes to try different things,

but we realized we were eating probably far too much and far too much unhealthy foods.

But we do appreciate the question.

I think it's very flattering that you would ask that.

You would think that we are healthy.

Oh, do you think that's an assumption that we are healthy or...

I don't know.

I would ask a healthy person how they stay healthy, but I wouldn't ask a person that

I thought was unhealthy.

But then our bread diet on Camino, that's not...

I think that this is something that we're thinking about a lot recently of trying to

get more healthy, but also trying to do that without spending a lot of money.

And so far, even after like a dozen years of traveling around the world, I don't think

I've solved this yet.

Yeah.

But I will say in our last trip, like in New Zealand, we were able to do this pretty

well because we had access to a cook stove, of course, in our camp and in our camper.

And we were able to go grocery shopping.

So it depends largely on where we're traveling and what mode of transportation we're taking

when we're traveling.

But I will say in larger cities, it's definitely...

We hear you.

It's harder for us to find a vegetable to eat.

So I think we have been, whenever we pass grocery stores, I mean, like here in Singapore,

there's so many great, amazing hawker stalls that sell so many different kinds of foods.

But also, there are awesome produce stalls.

So we've been loading up on a lot of fruits here because they have amazing, amazing tropical

fruits here.

Yes.

Yes.

I'd say this is definitely an area that we're trying to improve in.

Yes.

But we appreciate the question.

Moving on to the buzz-worthy news article of the day.

And I put article in quotations because it's BuzzFeed and it's not an article, it's more

like a listicle.

It's time for the news.

So...

I feel like we do a news one every...

I feel like we do a news one in every episode.

Yes, I love it.

This part makes me happy.

All right.

It's my favorite thing to look for.

I mean, I love your questions too.

What news themes have we talked...

Okay.

What contentious news topic have we chosen today?

This BuzzFeed article is actually a list of compiling people's responses to things that

they've discovered while they've traveled in other countries that they feel like make

the U.S. where they're from feels like they're living in the 1800s.

Oh, okay.

So ingenious things that they've discovered while traveling abroad.

My mind immediately goes to Japan when you say this.

It made the list like five or six times.

Of places where I went to and when I got there, I was like, whoa.

They are living in the future.

And everything that I had experienced before this was just invalidated immediately.

Number one on the list, Aruba has a machine that puts on sunscreen for you, basically

stand inside this like receptacle thing and it sprays it on you.

It's kind of like a sprayed hand, but with sunscreen.

That's so smart.

I hate putting on sunscreen.

I know you do.

I hate it.

I know.

I would pay almost any amount of money for this machine.

So it sprays it so you don't have to get your hands greasy, you know?

Yeah.

You can't.

You just get in.

And you never feel like you've rubbed it in enough, you know?

Sunscreen.

I know that there's a lot of ways to take that sentence and please don't clip that out

of context.

I appreciate that, but I think that they're, you know, like you put on all this sunscreen

and you never really know if you did it right.

And then invariably you go out to the beach and you come back and you just have this huge

red spot just somewhere on your body that you're like, oh, I'm sure I put on sunscreen

there, but nope.

It's just like...

And you can never have enough sunscreen, which is what I love about this thing.

Okay.

Number two on the list is no surprise, but one that I think we absolutely need.

And it's the fact that a lot of public restaurants in Japan have buttons that allow you to play

music while you're using the restroom.

Oh.

They play naturey sounds.

Yes.

I mean, it just...

Yeah.

Why not?

I think it's just...

And also, I think it's the bidets there as well, just like the intelligence and attention

put towards...

The washlets.

Making like the going to the bathroom experience really good.

Japan, South Korea also does this really well.

Singapore does this like kind of good better than most, but not nearly to the realm that

Japan does.

And I think that after using bidets now, and we bought one for home, after like living

with it now for a couple months, I just can't imagine not living with it anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's true.

It's definitely changed the way...

It's just something that we take for granted.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Going to the bathroom in a public bathroom sucks.

Yeah.

Let's make it a little bit more...

Yeah.

It's scary and mostly gross and...

More anonymous, please.

Yes.

And can we also talk about how in the U.S., you know how, and I can't figure out why we've

done this, but they leave like a gap at the bottom of the door?

You know, like it's like two to three feet off the ground and you can see everybody's

feet.

Oh, but...

And like, why?

In middle school, ours was a gap at the like...

The head.

Oh, so they could like look over and say, I just...

So they could actually see your face when you're like going to the bathroom.

And then there's also little gaps on both sides of the door, which people can like peek in

at and it's just so not private and it makes using a public bathroom in the U.S. just...

I mean, it's bad enough in the first place, but then to have it where like people can

look behind and be like, hey, what are your feet doing?

What kind of shoes are you wearing?

Like, why?

What does your face look like?

Yeah, exactly.

Why?

Yeah.

In what world is that necessary?

And I think that...

Bathroom traumas, bathroom traumas.

And I think that Japan really nailed the idea that bathrooms should be like a private space

and a comfortable space and that if we throw a little bit of money at technology to make

this experience better, everybody's lives get better immediately.

And I fully agree that after using like the bathrooms there and stuff like that, that

it just feels...

You know, you like look forward to it.

Yeah, it's true.

You're like, oh, yeah.

This is...

I love going to the bathroom.

This is spa time.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

The bathroom's playing.

It's just like...

It's wonderful.

It's not a bird, but I got to show you the sunset.

It's just beautiful.

Sorry, audio listeners.

To describe this to you, it is bright pink and blue going from top to bottom and there

are just streaks of like pink and blue and there's a mosque in the background.

And you can just see the sunset like kind of enveloping the mosque around it.

Very beautiful.

It's incredibly beautiful.

Very beautiful.

Okay.

What's the next thing?

Okay.

This one I thought was interesting, but someone said that in Warsaw, Poland, there's a whole

section of the sidewalk specifically reserved for people looking at their phones.

So it's like on the side of the road and then everybody else that doesn't want to get stuck

behind them, they move on over.

I don't know if that is ingenious to me or it's like promoting bad behavior.

I don't know.

Well, I think it's inevitable.

It's just accepting that out in the world, there's a subsection of people, probably more

than not, who are just going to be staring at their phones the entire time that they're

outdoors, not seeing any of the world that they're in.

And I think that those people being like separated from the people who are paying attention to

what is happening as they're walking is a good idea.

I think it benefits both people.

It was interesting because it reminded me when we were in Seoul, I mean, Seoul has crosswalks

that are lit up basically.

And so when you look at the bottom, like when you're looking down at your feet or your phone,

when it's your turn to walk, the crosswalk turns green, which is I think is amazing.

Yeah.

And promote safety, I guess.

Speaking of traffic lights, apparently in Moscow, there are entire pole lights like

for the red light, green light, stop lights.

The entire pole lights up the color, either red or green.

So there's no way you miss the color change.

Like, you know, sometimes, sometimes the sun is perfectly shining on the red light and

you tell the police officer, no, I didn't, I didn't run the red light, just couldn't

see it.

True story.

Or you're on your phone while you're driving and you just don't see a change.

That wasn't me.

Well, okay.

So quick question for you.

Your first couple of times out of the United States, what do you think was the first thing

that you encountered where you were like, whoa, like the way that they do this, we should

take this back home immediately.

Like I can't believe that we don't have this capsule hotels in Japan because that was my

first time I had ever traveled by myself and, and I didn't want to pay $100 a night for

a hotel and, and I was getting to a place really late.

I have, I have, I have trauma from like sleepovers as a kid and the thought of sharing the same

space like a bunk bed with somebody where they could see me where there's no curtain,

no privacy curtain, nothing, like no privacy at all.

Yeah.

Freaks me out.

Like sleepovers because I wasn't so afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid of bothering

people or people would make fun of me for talking in my sleep.

Like I just would just stay up the entire night until everybody else fell asleep.

And so I think capsule hotels really changed the way that I thought about, yeah, budget

travel, solo travel, saving money, and they make them so cool.

They're so clean.

They're so futuristic.

I stayed in one that was like railroad themed, like train themed.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I just think, I think it's a really cool way for people to travel on a budget and by

themselves.

Yes.

What about you?

I think for me, the biggest thing that I saw that really like changed the way that I look

at the world is, is, and this was kind of per everywhere throughout my travels.

But I saw that people, and this was especially true in healthcare, so I'll start with that,

was that they would go to the doctor frequently when they were healthy and then expect the

doctor to then keep them healthy.

And I think that that was such like the other side of the coin from the way that we think

about healthcare in the United States, which is that you only go to the doctor when you're

about to die.

And even then you're going to like Google as many other like DIY at home options.

WebMD.

Do whatever you possibly can to avoid having to go there.

And the only time you're at the doctor is when things are really bad.

And then you're expecting them to cure you of that thing.

And it's a whole different relationship.

How did you, when did you notice this?

So it first started with actually car maintenance, with car maintenance, yes, was the first time

that I noticed this.

I started talking to people.

I think this was in Australia when I was there because we were like driving a camper

van all the way down the coast.

And like this camper van was super old, but it was still working.

And I looked at all like the maintenance records I had and I saw that it was like every three

months like clockwork.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, like that's an entire different way of thinking about maintaining

things.

And then I went across Asia and I saw that everyone was doing the same thing.

Like they would get a little cough or whatever.

And then they would immediately go and see the doctor.

And I thought that that was so crazy.

And I'm like, they must be bankrupt.

They must be spending millions of dollars every single year just like going to the universal

healthcare.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it was that, it was that realization over time that like the entire model was flipped

on its head of like, you go to your service provider, whatever that is, whether it's your

mechanic or your doctor, whatever, and you say, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I would like

to stay that way.

What do I need to do to make that happen?

It is wild because I mean, I think what was it 2021?

We were in Thailand and we got in a little motorbike accident.

It wasn't a very big deal, but it was one of those things where like, we should just

get checked out since we're here.

We had, you know, travel health insurance, but it never once crossed my mind that this

was something that I would ever consider.

And I knew medical tourism was a thing, but I had never participated and I never thought

that it would be like, I never wanted to because I thought, oh, I'm afraid you just assume

it would be the same as home where you like, you go in and you'd ask them like, Hey, how

much does this cost?

If you did that in a hospital back at home and you asked them how much does this cost,

they would, they literally could not tell you and you wouldn't even get a bill to like

three months later.

We were in Chiang Mai and we told them, you know, I hit my head, I was wearing a helmet,

but I just want to get checked out.

They got me registered in five minutes.

I saw a neurologist in 10 minutes and then they told me even before the appointment,

how much the neurologist appointment was going to cost, I think it was $20.

And then they offered me a CT scan or imaging.

They told me how much that was going to cost, but they gave me the option, which I think

is what amazing.

And they offered it to me the day of and then I left and I was like, I'm not going to do

the imaging.

They called me a couple of days later just to check in with me and see how I was feeling.

And I was like, what?

Is it feeling a little Halloweeny, dark and spooky?

It kind of looks it.

Sorry.

The sunset a lot sooner than we thought.

And I'm realizing now the light is very, very bright on my face.

And now we are telling spooky ghost tales.

I think one of the ones that I thought of, it's not super tangible, but, and I, you know,

like this BuzzFeed article is really, really fast.

I keep calling it an article.

It's not an article.

This BuzzFeed list is really hilarious and lighthearted, but one of the ones that I thought

of, I mean, we were in Munich what in 2020 visiting some friends and we met a friend

of a friend and this conversation that we had with him kind of changed my whole perspective

on like the kind of place that I want to live in and the world that I hope that we all get

to live in someday.

So yeah, the story was we were crossing the street.

It was the middle of the night.

Everybody was around Josh decides that he's going to J walk.

He's just, and, and everyone, all three of our German friends kind of went, how dare

you?

Yes.

It was, it was such a big audible gasp and coming from basically anywhere in the U S J

walking is not only encouraged.

It's people are disappointed at you.

If you don't, it's just, and, and I know this is not specific to just Munich or Germany.

I mean, everywhere.

There's so many countries that we've been in where J walking is definitely, definitely

like not allowed.

You're fine for it.

People just follow the rules.

But what like that conversation that I had with this friend really changed my entire

perspective and he explained it.

He said it's a really big deal to me and maybe to people here that people don't J walk because

I follow rule, I follow the rules because I know that other people follow the rules.

It's a way of peacekeeping.

I have peace knowing that if I follow the rules, I know that other people will.

Any time that I hear a rule, I'm just like, yeah, that's cool, but like, I'm not going

to do that.

But the fact, the fact that he, but the fact that he equated it to peace, yeah, that like

touched my heart in a way that I cannot, I cannot get it out of my mind.

Like I do want to live in a world where everybody is following the rules because they know that

the rule is there to protect them and protect other people.

And if I follow them, I know that other people will follow them and we're all in this together.

It just, yeah, but who's like, who's making the rules?

Get out of here.

What do you know?

I don't know.

I don't know if I, I don't know if I feel that as much like I understand that it probably

creates like a more peaceful society, but then everyone has to agree on what the rules

should be and how they should go.

But wouldn't you want to live in a world where everybody is feeling, I mean, obviously

I don't know what it's like to live there and I don't know the nuances, but when he

described that in that way, it was the first time that I realized, oh, there are places

in this world where people are accountable for one another.

Yeah.

And I do.

Yeah.

I kind of like that idea.

I like that idea.

It just made me, made my heart sing.

Travel Thursday.

Okay.

What was yours?

Oh boy.

Oh boy.

What else?

Did you think of anything else?

I'm just going to quick rapid fire if you're here.

How about this?

We're in Paris.

You can get seltzer water or flat water out of a machine.

That's pretty cool.

In Italy too.

Morocco hid their utility pools under cool palm trees, which I think is great.

You can get an umbrella out of a vending machine in Hong Kong.

Makes perfect sense.

And the most German thing, maybe of all time, grocery stores have a special place in the

back of their shopping carts for beer.

I love it.

What about the one in Sweden where the trash bins and the recycling bins are actually shaped

like the actual things and objects that you're supposed to put in them?

So a plastic bottle, that bin looks like a plastic bottle cardboard box.

That bin looks like a cardboard box.

Yes.

So smart.

Yes.

This last trip to New Zealand really just boggled my mind, but produce stands on the side of

the road from the farms.

Oh yeah.

Farm fresh produce stands.

Yeah.

Talk about a thing that would never work in the United States.

Not for a second.

People would just steal from it or do or yep, nobody would trust that anywhere in the U.S.

Like, could you imagine that?

I would love that.

It would be amazing.

It would be amazing.

I've been noticing in a lot of different countries, Japan, Korea, there are, when you go to the

restroom, I don't know if this is true for the men's restroom, but for women who have

children, there is like the toilet seat, but also a little like seat for your child or

baby.

And I was like, oh yeah, like until I saw that, I had no idea.

I asked my friends, what do you do with your baby when you go to the bathroom?

That's true, they're just like running around and especially with that like two foot gap

under the thing, like they could just leave, just like crawl out and say see you later.

Yeah, my friends are like, oh, well, we usually pass them off to our partners or bring them

in the stroller, but they have to wait.

Right.

I just, it's.

Yeah.

Wow.

Right.

As non-parents, I would never have thought of that, but now that you bring that up, I'm

like, that makes perfect sense.

My fault.

Right.

You have this little agent of chaos that is trying its best to escape or do whatever

you don't want it to do.

So yeah, you need a little seat to put them into it, to have them do that.

And I think this last one is one that I think all of us can kind of agree on, is that in

South Korea, they have just a little pocket holder for your phone.

So that way you can put your phone like into this thing.

So that way when you're using the bathroom, you can just like, you know, watch whatever

movie you want to watch or like browse the thing or do whatever.

And it's just right there for you.

So that way you don't have to do the thing where you're like sitting down on the toilet

and then you got to pick the phone out and then out of your pocket, accidentally drop

it in the toilet.

And then drop it in the toilet.

There is like a special little holder for it.

And I think all of us can agree that that, that that is just a public good that should

just exist everywhere throughout planet Earth.

How many of these things on the list are toilet related?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Surprisingly large amount.

I don't know.

Okay.

All right.

Moving on from this one.

Our final question.

If you guys have any out there of things where you like left the US or left home and you,

when you went somewhere and you were like, wow, that is amazing, we need to bring that

back home.

Put those down in the comments below.

Please.

I would love to hear this.

I love these stories.

Yes.

They're so, so good.

This is why we travel.

Okay.

So last question here.

Toilet upgrades.

That's it.

Toilet glow ups.

That's the whole point of travel.

The entire point of travel is toilet upgrades.

All right.

So Tom Gralty, final question of the day here, congrats again for really stellar job on the

New Zealand video.

Thank you.

I can't wait to see what's up next.

Singapore is what's up next.

Season two baby.

All right.

So would love to take your pick for 2024 budget friendly travel destinations.

That's a great question.

Very top of mind.

The short answer to this is wherever travel influencers are not going.

Or they're where they're currently at.

Yeah.

Where they're currently at but where they're not going to be.

Maybe where they were two years ago.

So I can tell you where it's not going to be just right off the top.

It's not going to be Rome and it's definitely not going to be Paris next year because they

have the Olympics.

I think Vietnam is going to be like a big up and coming travel destination next year.

I think Vietnam is also put in a ton of work into making their country really accessible

in a lot of ways that it wasn't before and really safe and really like comfortable to

travel to especially these like East Coast beachy destinations like Hwa Hin and some

of the other islands around the area and oh man, there's so much great stuff.

We're going to Vietnam in a couple weeks here and there's so much to look forward to there.

But I think they've really put in the work to really start to bring a lot more tourists

to their country.

Applying for the visa was one of like the clunkier things about going to Vietnam and

I think removing that out of there for a whole bunch.

It's almost like 50 countries that are visa free now.

That's my pick is that like budget travel destinations.

I think Vietnam with their new connections to the U.S. and to Europe through Vietnam

Airlines, getting people there and then getting people around the country and then having

like really nice hotels, great super fast internet, like all the stuff that travelers

want, right?

Like a great food and like cool stuff to see and do and beachy destinations and cultural

stuff and just I feel like they're really excited.

I feel like they've really started to nail it.

I think I agree with that and I've never been to Vietnam, so I'm very excited for this leg

of our trip to a place that I'm really excited about exploring that we've never been, but

I've heard a lot of great things about that's also budget friendly is Albania.

Apparently, it's got beautiful, beautiful nature, beautiful architecture.

It's really clean.

It's beautiful.

That's what I hear.

And it's really affordable.

Maybe we should go.

Okay.

Up and coming.

And I think that for a lot of people who want to go to Europe next summer, but don't want

to get all wrapped up in the Olympics, ludicrous prices and absolute shenanigans that are going

to be like enveloping most of Central Europe.

I could totally see a lot of people going to Albania and the area over there.

I think it's an up and coming travel destination.

So much cool history to offer there.

So much incredible culture there.

The food, so good.

And I think it's still kind of flying under the radar as far as tourists are concerned

and us travel influencers haven't ruined it for everybody yet.

Have you been there?

No, I haven't been there, but I've watched a lot of other.

Someone just says, the food's so good.

Yeah.

The big answer is.

YouTubers like to use their favorite phrase when they eat meals.

Oh yeah.

I think all of us just like watched Mark Wiens and just saw that he was getting like 13 million

views of him just like eating something spicy and going like, wow, couldn't you believe

how good that was?

And just like really overdoing it that I think all of us just took that cue as traveling

influencers at the same time like, oh, okay, yeah, we need to really oversell this.

So we got to oversell this food.

Have you ever had a french fry before?

It blew my mind.

I mean, that was so good with every single french fry.

I do love french fries.

French fries make me very, okay.

Taiwan would make that list for me too.

It's very, very affordable to find a good hotel there and to eat very affordably there

and to travel around the trains are incredibly affordable to get from different parts of

the island.

I think a lot more people are going to be going to Taiwan.

It's just one of these cool underrated.

I mean, I'm biased, but I think it's a really incredible, incredible country and just food

so good.

And it's yeah.

And it's one of these places where like for $100 per day, like what we had for a budget,

you can eat spot on every meal out at a restaurant.

You can stay in a pretty nice hotel.

You can take public transportation to go and see cool stuff.

You can actually partake in activities.

Yes.

And you can like do stuff while you're there and like all on a very reasonable budget.

And I think it's one of the very few places that you can go and do that where it's like

super safe and the food's super good and there's so much history and so much culture and so

much cool stuff to see.

And people are super friendly and welcoming and even if you don't speak the language,

it's quite, quite easy to get around a lot of the bigger cities.

All right.

That is it for this one today.

It's fully dark.

So if you have any questions that you want answered in next week podcast, please just

stick them down below.

We'll answer them next week.

YouTube comments.

Yes.

Or email us or send us a smoke signal or leave those comments down below and we will answer

them next week.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much for watching.

Bye.

Bye.