Travel Support Thursday

Good morning from Vietnam, travel Thursday, travel Thursday, or Tuesday or Wednesday.

I don't know, whatever day this is coming out, probably Thursday, probably Thursday.

Okay, so we're just going to get right into it today.

We are talking about travel Tuesday, the big sort of like Black Friday deals.

Cyber Monday deals.

For travel stuff, and basically determining whether or not it was actually a real thing.

Yeah, so for those of you that missed last week, we got a question from one of our friends

who asked, is this travel Tuesday a thing?

And for those of you that don't know, travel Tuesday is supposedly this day,

the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in America, for those of you that celebrate,

where just there's supposed to be a wild amount of travel deals.

Crazy deals.

They're literally giving away airplanes.

Flights, hotels, you name it.

Anything you could think of.

Of course, the skeptics and us felt like, I don't know,

I don't know that we can just hang on to one specific day to say

we're going to book our flights for the rest of the year.

So last week, we ran an experiment and we took a screen recording of flights

leaving from Chicago, Illinois, all the way to cities, various cities in Europe.

And we did the same test on travel Tuesday, November 28.

I even, I even VPNed into the US.

Last week, what we found was the flight from Chicago to London on February 6 to February 21.

21st was $592.

When I checked on the 28th, it was $613.

Chicago to Paris round trip, $535.

On November 28, that exact same flight, $535.

So everything kind of remained the same.

In fact, a lot of the cities, the prices for the flights went up a little bit.

Yeah, there was no real measurable difference that we could find at all in flight prices.

Now, there were some very specific deals that we came across.

For example, that $500 deal with frontier airlines where you get unlimited flights with them for a year,

it seems like the worst decision anybody could make is deciding to,

that'd be like an unlimited Amtrak pass.

You know, you'd only get there half the time and it would take you twice as long as you thought.

Definitely.

I mean, there were, and we were keeping track of our emails and things like that,

things that would come in because we're subscribed to a lot of airlines,

emails, hotel deals, hotel deals.

Why is that so hard to say?

Hotel deals.

And I felt like I got the most number of emails about travel deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday,

but no mention of travel Tuesday.

Zero.

Like tons of Hawaiian Airlines deals, tons of American Airlines deals,

but yeah, everything that I got was all specific to Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving,

and Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Yeah, and I think most of the deals that did exist were for very specific dates.

Yes.

For very specific flights.

So you get like, so you get like very small window to actually be able to book these deals

and I don't, it just doesn't feel like a real thing yet.

The question is, would we, would we rely on this one date to plan out our travel for the next year?

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

I would just say when you see something that's a good deal to the place that you want to go,

book it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think we saw the same thing across hotels, like every single hotel website was

like, we're giving you 20% off, but then they just like up the price 20% and then say that

it's 20% lower.

Yeah.

So it's not actually a deal, it just makes you feel like one.

And I feel like all these different hotels and travel agencies and everything else, they

just kind of like publish these crazy deals that are only good for one weekend just to

get in on the Black Friday thing, but they're not actually any cheaper.

Yeah.

It's just, yeah.

So I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They all do the same thing, which is they say like, hey, is there more demand in this flight?

Are lots of people searching for it?

Awesome.

We're going to automatically jack the price up to the moon.

So therefore like a Black Friday deal where everybody's searching for flights is incompatible

with that system.

It's just going to jack the price up as soon as lots of people start buying it.

So they'd have to do something like manually and keep the price down, which means they'd

have to like build a whole new system for pricing these flights out.

I just think it's unrealistic.

Yeah.

I mean, it just all comes down to consumerism and like getting people in on holidays, you

know, like, I mean, we won't even go into that topic, but I have a lot of feelings about

mass marketing around Valentine's Day and things like that.

But yeah, just like weaponizing people's sadness and loneliness to make them buy more stuff.

Happiness.

Right.

So yeah, I think, I think still the solution to this, like if you are genuinely looking

for really good flight deals, it's still just to sign up for Scott's cheap flight slash

going, going, going.

And I mean, that's the only way.

It's the only way it can be said.

Or and I think this is probably the best travel hack that we've discovered recently is just

to find new routes that airlines are offering that are just beginning this year.

And then as soon as they offer those routes, like as soon as you can book them, generally

they're crazy cheap.

So we took advantage of that with Jetstar to Australia three times this year already.

And that was two hundred and something dollars roundtrip from Honolulu to Sydney, which was

just what?

Yeah.

So I think if you know, there's an airline that you are loyal to, or you just know that

there's a place that you want to go to, I would start following or checking, you know,

specific airlines, sign up for their newsletters, sign up for their Instagram accounts.

Honestly, that's how we found out that Hawaiian Airlines was flying a new route to Fukuoka

from Honolulu and it was a wildly inexpensive flight.

It's like a hundred and seventy dollars one way.

It was so cheap.

It was so cheap.

I think there are lots of different ways to find a good deal.

I don't know that travel Tuesday is the one, the one and I'll be all one.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

So yeah, I think that's it.

Moving on.

Travel Tuesday, at least from our perspective in the experiment we've run, not a real thing.

But what is a real thing?

Travel Thursday.

Yes.

Yes.

Every week.

Here, helping you travel.

Just ask questions.

Please ask.

We're just like in the comments section every week, there's all these like really nice supportive

things of people being like, this is great and we love that, but ask some more questions

so we can help you guys travel more directly.

Okay.

So next thing we want to talk about, Lisa, tell us about this terrible news that has occurred.

I don't know if you remember a few episodes ago, we talked about, we posed the question,

if you could get on a cruise ship for a year, two years, three years for like $1,000 a month,

would you do it?

A lot of people overwhelmingly said no, but there are a lot of people that were really,

really excited about it.

Unfortunately for them, this one three-year cruise around the world was canceled all because

they didn't have a ship.

Just that small detail of we don't have a cruise ship to take you on a cruise with.

I was reading the article, all the things to screw up, I mean, just listen to this.

They were promised the world, but cruise company Life at Sea recently told customers who bought

passage on a three-year voyage to visit 140 countries, their trip was called off.

Those customers are now scrambling to make new plans for where they will live for the

next three years and to extract refriends from the cruise line.

Could you imagine?

It's wild.

Okay.

It's a three-year long cruise that was supposed to leave in November.

You're making like big life changes.

You're selling your home.

Yes.

You're moving everything out.

You're selling all your furniture.

You're like, someone's taking care of your cat.

You're making so many life changes to be able to go on to a cruise ship for three years

and then just say, we forgot to get a cruise ship for this cruise.

It's not wild.

The worst part is there was no lead time.

They were set to depart on November 1st departing from Istanbul.

Some passengers reportedly only learned of the cancellation after arriving in Turkey.

Geez.

Oh, God.

They had already done everything.

They're there.

I know.

I just, oh my gosh, and they put deposits down.

It's wild.

I can't even imagine.

Some people are, I mean, do you think this is, some people are comparing this to that

like festival fire thing that was put out on Netflix a while ago, right?

This kind of sounds like a.

It sounds like a scam.

Yeah.

It's like a San Francisco startup that like doesn't ever launch a product.

You know, they're like, get everyone all excited.

They're like, this app is going to change your life.

It's going to make money for you.

It's going to fix all your problems.

And then they like never actually release anything, but they take all of the customer's

money and then just disappear into the wind.

Or basically, it's like NFTs, like NFTs where like everyone was promised that that was going

to be the thing and then it's just not.

It's just wild because I think, and this, I love this article because it's actually

putting like the reality of what it means to get on a three year cruise ship and plan

for a big life change like this to, to like it's, it's humanizing it.

I mean, there are so many people that said that they were excited about this because

they were looking forward to making friends, having a community on this cruise ship.

They were looking for, I mean, they were going to see over a hundred different countries

in this three year period.

Now they have to deal with all these things like airfare costs, refunds for visas, even

like, what do you, what do you even do?

And some people are still waiting for their refund.

I just can't, can't even imagine.

Especially because I think the three year long one costs like over a hundred thousand

dollars per person.

So yeah, life at sea cruise costs.

So the cheapest package started at $196,000 for a single traveler, 231,000 for couples.

Some people already started shipping boxes for the cruise ship.

They didn't have a ship.

They didn't have a ship, what?

And they didn't communicate this to anyone until literally the day that just, ugh.

And think of all the people who were going to work on that cruise ship who had secured

three years of employment.

And then all of a sudden they're told, oh yeah, by the way, we're, we're not hiring

any of you.

Oh, like, that's not something to play around with.

And this is something that was totally in their control, you know, even communication

about it anyway.

Yeah, we're talking like thousands of people's jobs who are like taking care of the rooms,

taking care of the people on board, cooking the meals, driving the ship, like all these

people who had been like, okay, we're going to be able to feed our family for three more

years.

They're just, yeah, I honestly can't imagine.

I feel like I'm the type of person who would just sell everything to go live on a cruise

ship for three years.

I mean, we did that sell everything to like go, go travel for a year, but then, but then

the pandemic upended it, but that was a different story.

And I feel like what I would do in that situation is I would just travel anyway.

I would just say like screw it, thanks for the $200,000 back.

I have that now or however much it was, like the ton of the money and just, and my entire

plans would be changing.

There would be this long grieving process of like three weeks to a month or I'm like,

what the, did I just do like, why did I sell everything?

I quit my job, I moved out, I'm out in Istanbul, I sold everything I own.

But I think the next thing I would do is I would just keep traveling.

I mean, I think, yeah, I agree.

I think that is an easy thing for us to say though, because that's what happened to us,

right?

We like quit our jobs to travel, take a one year honeymoon pandemic upended everybody's

lives.

We were grateful and very lucky to have a place to stay.

And we, you know, started making YouTube videos, but, but I think like, yeah, it took

us like a month, almost three months to realize, no, I think we shouldn't just sit here, you

know, and that's when the camper van started.

But I can imagine for a lot of these people who get on a cruise ship, they might not have

that option to just get up and travel.

You know, many people might, um, might not have the means to walk around, get around

easily, you know, navigate traveling, traveling for a long time is hard.

And I can see the benefit of a cruise ship and why something like this sounds like a

dream for a lot of people, especially those who are retired and, and want to live out

their retirement dreams of traveling 140 countries in three years.

Like what a dream you get to see like, yeah, like that's, oh, that's like three quarters

of the countries on planet Earth.

Like that's so, that'd be so cool.

I'll keep following the story, but I really do hope that some of their travel dreams do

end up coming true.

Yeah.

Moving on.

Moving on.

Next question.

Okay.

So this question comes from Stefan Pete.

Oh, what's up?

Stefan Pete.

Stefan Pete and Hayes.

Hi.

Hi, guys.

Who asks a really good, um, actually asks us two good questions.

So Stefan Pete say, here's a boring, perhaps two personal questions still on the healthcare

topic.

What do you guys do for healthcare in the States?

This past summer was our first time submitting a significant amount of time in the U S without

companies sponsored healthcare and man, that search was tough.

I mean, I think to answer that briefly, we'll also just say, yep, we understand.

And I know this doesn't apply for many, many of you watching, but I think the TLDR or the

the short version of it is that in the U S when you don't have healthcare through an

employer, you're searching on something called the marketplace and the marketplace is full

of different kinds of insurances that you can purchase.

It is very challenging to navigate.

Yeah.

And so we had to do the same.

Yeah.

So the, this like, um, this website, which we call healthcare.gov is this marketplace

that just is in between of selling other companies, health insurances to individual people.

They kind of do all like the background checking.

They figure out how much income you make and then based on that, it'll spit out a bunch

of quotes from all these healthcare companies about how much it'll cost for you to either

sign up as a family or individually.

It makes me sad for health insurance in the United States.

It really does.

All of it does.

And I, I mean, we won't go into too much detail about healthcare and healthcare specifically

in the U S. All is this to say is when we were traveling, when we were traveling full

time, you know, we, we were able to use safety wings, nomadic and travel insurance and it

was just fine.

But now that we have a home base, it's definitely a lot more challenging.

Yeah.

For sure.

For sure.

And there's not even like a good answer to this question.

What I've become now that we're not working for it, like we are our own employers basically.

I think we've just become more accustomed to paying out of pocket for things to not really

answer your question.

We don't have a good solution to this.

And it feels like a larger problem, you know, that honestly makes me sad whenever I think

about it, I mean, when, when we travel, we get to meet so many people from different countries

who talk about how their healthcare system works and it sounds honestly like a dream.

But I also think that's one of the things that happens when you start working for yourself.

I don't know in the U S or outside of the U S too.

That being said, yeah, I can't imagine how much more challenging it is to with you and

your family navigate this.

I would love to know your thoughts and what, what other ideas other people have out there

were this close to moving to another country.

Okay.

All right.

But to the other question, which I really enjoyed, yes, what's the longest in advance

you've planned a trip lately?

Okay.

So lately, right now we're in Hue, Vietnam, and we plan this trip yesterday.

I mean, well, like largely we, we do plan like what countries we're going to visit mostly,

at least like a couple of months in advance, I would say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We largely know generally what region of the world and what countries we're visiting

a couple of months in advance and we'll book those flights.

But then when it comes to actually reaching the country and like traveling around that

can change wildly depending on the day.

Yeah.

So like, for example, and we kind of base our travels obviously off of like where we're

filming, right?

Most of the time.

Most of the time.

And how we're feeling and what we're excited to see and do too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we travel for like, we have like an additional reason that we travel from what most people

do, which most people, they plan to travel like, where's a cheap place I can go to that's

going to be super awesome and fun to go to.

And then we also got to think.

What time frame do I have to?

Yes.

And then we're also thinking, where do we want to make a cool movie that would be useful

that the you guys out there would enjoy watching?

So that's like another reason on top, but we normally plan those things about two months

in advance, maybe three, for example, in middle of January, we're flying to Europe.

And we planned out just that we're going to Europe and coming back.

It's a large continent.

And we have six weeks over there to film a bunch of stuff, travel around, have a great

old time, but we haven't planned out where we're staying, which other places we're going

to other than the one place we're flying into, which is Paris and flying back out of.

We haven't planned any of that.

And we generally do that either like a couple of days before we leave or when we land, when

we get there.

But I would also say that you are very good.

When we find a city that we know we want to go to, you're very good about planning out

a rough itinerary of like the places we're excited to see, the places that we want to

make sure that we cover some like hidden gems too.

And then like, but once we get to the city, things change a lot.

All the time.

And what we decide to do changes in the middle of the day, often sometimes.

For example, we landed here in Vietnam in Hanoi, and our plan was to make a three days

in Hanoi video.

And then we started thinking like, Hey, that's probably not the way most people are going

to travel Vietnam.

They're not just going to come to Hanoi and then fly back out.

So then we changed our entire trip and we're now doing like a north to south, two-ish weeks

in Vietnam sort of thing.

So we plan these things.

But then generally, once we get there, the entire plan just like goes to, should we end

up doing something totally different?

I mean, it's just, it's just like we, I think we've learned now too.

I think we've also learned now.

It's not that like things go bad.

It's just that we start to learn that when we plan, when we over plan, I don't know,

like it takes all the surprise and the wonder out.

And so we plan just enough, you know, just enough to know, okay, where we're going, where

we're staying, how long we roughly want to be there.

But then we got to Hanoi, we loved it.

We spent three days there.

And then we thought, our initial plan was we thought we were going to go to Hanoi, end

up in Saigon and then fly home.

But we were so like wonderfully overwhelmed by Hanoi that we wanted to see more of like

the countryside and the peaceful parts of Vietnam and, and see different diverse like

landscapes of Vietnam.

And so that's really what made us decide, okay, we're, we're just going to travel the

entire coast of Vietnam instead now.

And it's been going really well, I think.

Yeah.

I guess the answer is it depends, but generally we try to plan kind of as little as possible

before we actually get there because we've learned over time that what we think we're

going to end up doing is almost never what we end up actually doing.

And the like, we always want to leave room for surprises.

Like I think it's been pretty cool.

Like we, I feel pretty lucky that, I mean, obviously feel lucky that this is even our

jobs to begin with, but just in the last couple of days from that decision to not fly immediately

to Saigon and leave, we've met loads of travelers, other friends that we've made along the way

that we got to like share meals with and sing karaoke with, you know, and things that I

think we wouldn't have done had we just stuck to the initial plan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been really cool.

It's been great.

So, uh, yeah, I feel like we double didn't answer your question in a very concise way.

So I apologize if that wasn't overly useful, but genuinely we found that like the stricter

we are, the stricter we are with our like original plan, not only the worst videos that

come out of it, but also the worst time that we have traveling.

So we found that we just need like the lightest touch, the intention of like, we're going

to go to Vietnam and that's as deep into the planning as we get.

Well, some structure with some structure, a little bit of structure, but as little as

possible.

And of course, our budget.

Yes.

And generally done the day to the week before we leave.

Yeah.

At most.

I'd love to know what everyone else thinks and what, how you guys usually do your planning.

Like, are you the kind of person that plans things to the T?

Or are you the kind of person that like just likes to see and go, go with the flow.

We met a ton of people, um, in the last couple of days who also just like know generally

that they're going to be in this country and they want to see where things go.

Um, we obviously know there's some luxury that comes with having more time to travel.

So, when you have more time, you can just be more free with your like planning.

Yeah.

Um, but I think, I think, yeah, we, we found like a good balance of like structure, knowing

where we're going, kind of, but then letting, letting the place surprise us as we arrive.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And so far, Vietnam has been nothing but awesome surprises.

Yeah.

I would also, I mean, I think, but we generally want to know what you guys do, like what your

plans are usually and how you guys like to plan.

And I know before this YouTube life, I would say that I was very much a person that to

the minute had to plan things and know exactly where I was going, check things off.

But that was also because I was new to traveling and I was traveling by myself.

And so I was a little bit more stringent and careful with my itinerary.

Just worried, right?

Like worried about missing out or not getting lost or all these other things that we just

take for granted don't happen anymore.

But I do think as we have been able to travel more and more, the like, the ability to just

let the world surprise you as cheesy as that sounds has like been more of our motto.

Yeah.

It's also a massive luxury because we have lots more time than most people do have in

these countries.

So like if we can make a week long mistake on our trip and be like, yeah, that sucks,

but like, we'll just stay another week.

Yeah.

Most people do not have that luxury.

I think it's also a mindset thing too.

I mean, I definitely noticed that the times when we were more, more intensely focused

on things and not missing out on things and where we had to go to this place and film

this place and this place, it made us less open to the world and let made us less open

to surprises.

But definitely the more we find and we kind of have to constantly remind ourselves, I

think you even said this like the other day, let's plan very loosely what our next week

is going to look like.

And I mean, we won't give it all away, but we went on a really beautiful boat ride the

other day.

And I was like going into the deep end and researching which route you get to choose

from three different routes and based on different like geography kind of.

And I was going deep and we get there and Josh was like, let's just go with route two.

And I was like, don't you want to know what's in it?

Don't you want to know what's involved?

Like what cave we get to go?

And he's like, no, let's just do it.

And then it like turned out to be the best thing because we ended up meeting two new

friends and all of it was beautiful.

It was beautiful.

Anyway, it was beautiful.

Okay.

That is it for today.

Please, please, please ask your travel questions, however we can help you.

Just throw them in the comments.

We will answer them next week or the week after or very soon.

Yeah.

Let us know what you want to hear about.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much for watching and see you next time.

Bye.