How to travel on almost nothing: Tours

I've been talking about how to get the most out of your travel dollar so that you can travel for a longer period of time. That's especially valuable for a long-term traveler like me. But even if you're just looking to make the most out of your annual vacation, saving money where you can allows you to spend it where it counts.

I've already discussed ways to save on accommodation & transportation. Today let's talk about cutting the cost of tours.

Tours are one of the ideas I struggle with while traveling. On the one hand, I'm traveling so I can see amazing things, & tours help me do that in a pre-planned, concise, organized manner. On the other hand, tours are freakin' expensive. Thankfully, there are ways around that.

Of course, doing your research is essential when traveling, but that's especially true when it comes to tours. Trip Advisor is a great place to start looking at the options. It lists the top-rated attractions at your destination with first-hand information on local tour companies.

If you find a tour that sounds good, look closer at what it offers you. A lot of times, a tour is just a bus ride to a point of interest, possibly with lunch included. Once you have the tour's itinerary, check the local transportation system. There could be a public bus going to the same destination for a fraction of the cost. The difference in price could pay for a night or two in a hostel.

Admittedly, this only works if you speak the local language, since local bus systems don't expect to have to cater to tourists. They expect the tourists to take the tourist busses.

Speaking of, be wary of hop-on-hop-off busses. They go to all your points of interest of course, but charge you out the nose to get there. Again, check the local transportation system. You could save a bundle just by being able to read a subway map.

For example, in Rotorua, New Zealand, the hop-on-hop-off bus costs $35, with the attractions grouped around three major stops. The local bus will take you to those same three stops for $2.50 each way.

In Sydney, you can take a harbor cruise tourist style for $100, or you can take the commuter ferry for $15 return, with the added benefit of getting a glipse of what life in Sydney is really like. You may even start a conversation with a local & get some insider information on the city.

If you really do want to go on a tour, do an internet search for sites offering last-minute discounts. New Zealand has a site called Book Me, where I got a $120 river rafting trip for $60. In Australia, check out Last Minute or Ouffer for similar deals.

The key to making your travel dollar last longer is creativity. I like to make a game of it - see how long I can go on the least amount of dough.

Rafting New Zealand

I went rafting today down the Tongariro River, which flows through the volcanic bed of the ancient Taupo volcano. Our trip was a lazy Class 3. The river flowed calmly over low rapids, & was surrounded on either side by high cliffs covered in pine trees. The 4-hour trip usually costs $120 NZD, but I got my trip for half price!

This is not my group, but you get the idea:

Halfway through the trip, we stopped off at a side canyon, waded a few hundred meters in & came to a cascading waterfall. New Zealand really is amazingly beautiful.

The water was about 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). Brrrr!! Good thing we had wetsuits on! (Not the guy in the picutre. He was a guide, so was manly enough to go without.)

A wonderful NZ birthday!

I've spent the last several days traveling around the northern peninsula of New Zealand with some friends from the US. We took a beautiful road trip up the coast, stopping at a couple of beaches along the way to play in the sand.

The route was dotted with lots of cute little towns, all with their own appeal. We saw the smallest library I've ever seen, with a mailbox for book returns. We perused a pub with its walls covered in visitors' personal effects: student ID cards, business cards, wallet photos of smiling families, & of course money from all over the world. We stopped at a honey farm, where we saw busy bees making honey. & finally we saw a very cool public bathroom designed by the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. In one town, we stopped at a farmer's market & got food for a picnic lunch at a winery. The view from the hill at the vineyard was gorgeous. A perfect birthday lunch.

In the evening we boarded the ferry that would take us across the bay to the tiny town of Russell. We checked in at a quaint little hotel on the waterfront. The water is just 50 feet from our room & laps quietly at the shore. There are a handful of cafes along the water, long with a town hall and a small grocery store. The main street in town, running behind the row of seaside cafes, has a museum, a library, a bookstore, a bakery, a post office & a thrift store. Cute!

Yesterday we took a boat tour out into the Bay of Islands that promised a swim with wild dolphins - & delivered! The dolphins were obviously used to the boats full of people & as soon as they heard us approaching, they started swimming toward us, knowing that soon we'd all be in the water. The dolphins swam all around us, in front of us, under us, behind us. It was absolutely thrilling to see a huge dolphin come up for air right next to me! Before we knew it, the dolphins had moved on to another boat full of people, & it was time for us to get out of the water.

Today, I'm catching up on emails & doing a little bit of work. The internet connection is not great here in Russell, so I'll have to wait until I get back to Hamilton to upload photos.

Photo of the Week: Farm Safari

Hobbiton

My friends Alexa & Dan were in Hamilton over the weekend. We all went out to see Hobbiton, the location where they filmed the Shire scenes in Lord of the Rings & the Hobbit.

It was really cool, but unfortunately, I can't post any photos or tell you what it was like. They made us sign a confidentiality agreement to keep everything hush-hush until the latest movie is released at the end of this year.

They're so serious about keeping things top secret that the New Zealand government enforced a no-fly zone over the Shire while the film crews were there. The New Zealand government! If pilots were caught "accidentally" flying over Hobbiton, they got their pilot's license revoked with no possibility of re-issue. Peter Jackson's got some clout!

So if you want to see what the Shire looks like, you'll have to watch the movie, I'm afraid. Or you could have a look at Hobbiton. I highly recommend it.

Riff Raff

Hamilton has a pretty interesting history. I saw a little of it when I went to the Waikato Museum in the city center (sorry, 'centre'), where they had a unique exhibition on the local rugby team, & a beautiful collection of Maori articles.

But possibly the quirkiest little bit is that Richard O'Brien worked on Victoria Street as a hairdresser at one point. Who's Richard O'Brien? Why, he's the iconic Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. In fact, he wrote the screenplay.

Hamilton has erected a statue in his honor, & last December Mr. O'Brien was granted New Zealand citizenship. He now lives here, & as luck would have it, he's going to be present at the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival in February. I can't wait to see this guy in the flesh!

10 Things to give a traveler

During the holidays, we like to remember our friends & family with cards & gifts. But what do you do when there is a traveler in your life? They might not stay in one place long enough to receive anything you could send through the mail. It might seem hopeless to include them on your holiday card mailing list.

But there is still a way - the internet is a wonderful thing. There are so many digital gifts & e-cards out there. Besides, your traveler probably doesn't need any more stuff. Here are ten things you can give a traveler without weighing down their luggage.

1. Credit at Amazon.com for Kindle e-books, digital music & more
2. Virtual language lessons - a couple of my favorites: ChinesePod, Lo Más TV
3. Online exercise classes - MyYogaOnline.com
4. Netflix membership - the streaming only option
5. A membership at Hostelling International
6. A donation to their favorite charity - I like Kiva.org 
7. Your unused frequent flyer miles
8. A tour in or around their current location
9. A visit - meet them somewhere!
10. A phone call - Skype.com

Wishing you a happy holiday season & a new year filled with adventure.

Potala Palace

One of the first things we did in Lhasa was to see the famous Potala Palace up close & in person. I had pictured it being on a remote mountain top, difficult enough to reach so that pilgrims could feel they had accomplished something by getting there. Instead, it was smack dab in the center of town - the focus of attention as we rode down the main thoroughfare.

We climbed the stairs to the entrance & took a look out over the city. Across the street from the palace was a large concrete plaza with an obelisk stabbed into the middle of it. We later got a closer look at the monument & learned that it commemorates the founding of the People's Republic of China.

There were hundreds of pilgrims circling the palace, spinning their portable prayer wheels & chanting, some prostrating every few feet, looking as if they hadn't bathed since they started their journey to Lhasa from the countryside. Outside the palace there was a long line of fixed prayer wheels that the pilgrims spun as they passed.

The palace was decorated with colorful images of Tibetan gods, most of them fantastically monster-like. We were not permitted to take photos inside, but we were able to take some pictures of the painted walls just outside the entrance.

Inside it was dark & musty. Everything was brightly painted with a coating of smoke from the butter urns burning at various intervals inside the palace. Each pilgrim added a little bit of butter to each urn as an offering, ensuring the flame would continue to burn. Our guide told us that the fuel the pilgrims were using was actually vegetable-based since most people can't afford to give real yak butter.

Each pilgrim placed money in small bills in front of the butter urns, on the altars or between the slats separating them from the golden statues - in every nook & cranny available - bowing in prayer as they did so. The place was littered with money that would be used to make repairs to the palace, buy more Buddha statues & feed the monks living there.

Among the stashes of bills & coins, we saw hair clips, strings of beads & other every-day baubles - even grains of barley. Our guide explained that those who don't have money to offer the gods choose to offer what they do have, sacrificing what they can to ensure good fortune in the future.

Chinese-Style Yard Sale

Parks are where people hangout here in Shanghai. Families go there to relax on the weekends, engaged couples go there to take wedding photos, middle-aged men & women gather there in the evenings to dance the cha-cha or the waltz. Parks are bustling hubs of social life.

As I was walking around near the center of the city over the weekend, I stumbled upon what I might call a bird market. There were all manner of little tweeters for sale in handmade bamboo cages. Along side the bird sellers, men were selling wiggly worms by the kilo - bird feed.

But birds weren't the only attraction. The sidewalks were lined with cloths covered with all manner of mostly second-hand goods - from shoes to knives to tiny little teapots. Several of the vendors had one-of-a-kind items - a tibetan bowl, a wooden cricket cage, a porcelain figure painted in blue. It was the closest thing to an American yard sale I've ever seen in China.

Thames Town: Surreality

Last week I went on a self-guided tour of the Xuhui District of Shanghai, where I saw Longhua Temple & the Xujiahui Catholic Church on the same day. I had so much fun that this week I took another itinerary from the Travel China Guide & went out to Thames Town, an English-style community on the outskirts of the city.

I had heard from others that Thames Town was an empty carcass of a tourist community that was built & then abandoned just as quickly - a veritable living ghost town - but I wanted to see it for myself.

Songjiang District is situated southwest of the Shanghai downtown area. One of its main attractions is the famous Thames Town on North Sanxin Road of Songjiang New City. This imitation of a British traditional old town is actually a community and was completed in 2004. It offers a tranquil oasis from the hustle and bustle of the city, and is worth a visit whether one has been to Great Britain or not.

Tranquil is a good word.

Subway No. 9 has stops at both Songjiang New City and Songjiang University Town. One can get off at either of the stations and take Songjiang public bus No. 14 or a taxi to the town, which is 4 kilometers away.

From where I live it took me an hour & a half to get to the Songjiang subway station. There I found plenty of taxi drivers waiting in a queue outside. Of course none of them understood me when I asked them to take me to Thames Town. I didn't have the Chinese name for it, so I called it the English-style town. That worked.

Thames Town has an area of about 1 square kilometer. It is equipped with everything that the residents need. Lakes, rivers, and trees surround Georgian and Victorian style villas and apartments.
There is a 4 star Liston Hotel (Tel: 021-37721998) by the lake, a Gothic church, advanced kindergarten and school, supermarket, clubs, and clinics.

It's really a beautiful town & could be something wonderful - if there were anyone there. In Shanghai, no matter if it's day or night, you're pretty much guaranteed to bump into someone every few yards or so as you walk down the street. But here in Thames Town, you're free to wander collision free.

Walking in the community, it is like being in a wonderland and many newlyweds like to have their wedding photos taken here.

One of the few shops open for business was a photography studio. It was easy to see why - the town has become a humongous backdrop for deep, meaningful glances.

Even with the lack of activity in the town, I spent a good two hours walking around, entertained all the while. Thames Town takes up a mere one square kilometer, so I ducked in & out of every nook I could find.

Tucked away where no one would find it was the Songjiang Art Museum. I love museums anyway, but the cool breeze of the air conditioned interior was irresistible. I saw more people in the museum than any place else in town.


幸福 Happiness



Inside were woodcut prints commemorating the 90th anniversary of the communist party, elaborate watercolor paintings on long silk scrolls, and a whole room dedicated to local photography.

After a few hours of walking around I sat at one of the few establishments open for business & drank a German beer. Europe's Europe, right?

Getting to Thames Town was easier than getting back - no people means no taxis - so I walked about a kilometer to the main road where I caught the bus back to the subway station.

Even though the town was quiet, it still held that China charm, & was well worth the visit. 

Not Harry Potter - No glasses or lightning bolt

Random bus dressed up like a dragon

Making a movie about rain

Tourist-ing in Shanghai

While surfing the internet recently, I came across the Travel China Guide. As I clicked through their pages, I discovered quite an extensive list of do-it-yourself tour routes for places all over China.

On the Shanghai page, the first five tours have prices & are run by Travel China Guide, but if you scroll down, you'll find 23 more routes with instructions for doing them on your own. I haven't done much tourist-ing around Shanghai lately, so I decided to give one of their routes a go.

I chose tour number SH16, the Xuhui District, which includes Longhua Temple, Xujiahui Catholic Church & Library, & the Xujiahui Shopping Center.

To prepare, I looked up all the addresses on Google Maps, & made sure that I had the names of the roads & the attractions written down in Chinese. This is useful for communicating with taxi drivers as well as asking people on the street for directions.

Today's city tour leads you to Xuhui District which is in the southeast area of Shanghai. This self paced tour starts suggests starting from the Longhua Temple in the morning. Longhua Temple is located at No. 2853 Longhua Road and can be reached by public bus No. 41/ 44/ 73/ 87/ 104/ 734/ 809/ 864/ 933, Hushen Line or subway No. 3. The opening hours are from 07:00 to 16:30 and the admission fee is CNY5.00. Longhua Temple is the oldest and largest temple in Shanghai with a history of about 1700 years.

It took one hour to get from my apartment near Shanghai Circus World to the Longcao subway station on line 3. The temple was a 20-minute walk from the station. That's pretty typical for Shanghai - it's such a big city that it takes a while to get from A to B.

In the bell tower, there is a 3.3 ton bronze bell which is used on the Evening Bell-Striking Ceremony every 31st December to welcome the New Year. Spend CNY10.00 and you can strike the bell three times to dispel all bad luck and wish for good things. Everyday from 08:00 to 11:00 and from 13:00 to 15:00, you can watch the monks praying for souls of the deceased in the Grand Hall (Da Xiong Bao Dian).

The entrance fee at the temple was CNY10 (about US $1.50) instead of 5, but the rest of the description is accurate. I didn't ring the bell in the bell tower, but I was able to catch the monks chanting their prayers.

The vegetarian restaurant in Longhua Temple is very popular. Many people regularly come to pray and have lunch. Remember all meals are vegetarian. 

The restaurant had one thing on their menu: a very yummy bowl of noodles & mushrooms for CNY10. You buy a ticket out front, then take it to the window where the cook scoops a ladel full of delicious into a bright orange bowl.

After lunch, take a taxi to the Shanghai Xujiahui Church at No. 158, Puxi Road. The public bus No. 15/ 72/ 42/ 43/ 126 and subway No. 1 all have stops there. The church was built in the early 20th century. It is the biggest Catholic Church in Shanghai and the birthplace of Shanghai Catholicism. Now there are tens of thousands of conversus in the parish.

It was a ten-minute taxi ride between the temple & the church (CNY18). I'm not sure what a conversus is, but there seemed to be only a handful of them at the church when I arrived.

There are several masses held each morning. If you are not a chiliast, you can only visit inside the church each Saturday and Sunday. The opening hours of the church are from 13:00 to 16:30 and you will be led by the conversus. If there is a special occasion, the church will not be opened so it is better for you to make a call in advance to confirm this. The telephone number is 021-64382595 and there is no admission fee. During the visit patrons are asked not to speak loudly and to refrain from eating.  Visitors are encouraged to wear conservative clothes to minimize exposure of the body.

The church is a beautiful European style building with high arched ceilings & stained glass windows. These particular windows depict the life of Jesus, from the angel's message to Mary up to the crucifixion, with a mixture of Western & Chinese imagery. There were several people inside praying while a few tour groups gathered around their guides in the back.

Keep heading north along the Caoxi Road and you will soon arrive at the Xujiahui Shopping Center. Supermarkets, shopping malls and office buildings make it the biggest underground shopping center in Shanghai. It is said that one can get everything you need here. Your Xuhui District tour ends here so take your time to have a dinner, watch a movie or do some shopping.

I decided to skip the shopping center & instead went grocery shopping at Feidan, an imported food store a couple of subway stops from the church.

Longhua Temple was by far the highlight of this tour. I love temples - the ochre yellow buildings, the smell of incense, the chanting monks, the Buddhas with blue hair - & the vegetarian restaurants.

Xujiahui Church was interesting in that most Chinese people are not religious - it's unusual to see prayer ribbons with Chinese writing & stained glass scenes with Chinese images in a catholic church. Otherwise it’s your basic European style cathedral.

I'd say this experiment was a success. The directions given in the route description were easy to follow & the stops were rather interesting. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I think I'll go ahead & try another route next weekend.

Shaoxing, China

This past weekend was Dragon Boat Festival, which meant that the whole country got Monday off from work. I didn't expect to see any festivities in Shanghai, since holidays like this are more an excuse to spend the day relaxing at home or shopping at the mall. So I decided to take advantage of the three-day weekend & go on a trip.

I found an outdoor adventure tour with SISU, a local outfitter & tour company. Plans for the weekend included biking & hiking in Shaoxing, a city about two hours southwest of Shanghai. Transportation, one night in a five-star hotel, all meals & bike rental were included in the 1300 RMB fee (about US $200).

The tour participants included Americans, Canadians, Brits, Finns, Danes, Dutch & Germans in the bunch - & two Chinese women - all friendly & outdoorsy. It wound up raining for most of the weekend, but we were able to do a short hike between downpours through the nature preserve next to the hotel on Sunday morning. There we saw pagodas & Buddhas & canal boats a-plenty, & we heard birds chirping - real birds!

We also visited a traditional huangjiu distillery in town where we sampled the famous Shaoxing wine in various stages of aging. When the Chinese say "wine", they don't mean the kind made from grapes. Instead, Chinese "wine" is a kind of liquor, though it's often not as strong as whisky or vodka. Some of it can be pretty harsh - along the lines of white lightning - & our first taste at this distillery wasn't exactly the smoothest. But each sample got better & better until the final sample, the creme de la creme - the 20-year-old wine selling for 800 RMB per jug (about US $125).

After I got back, I was looking for links about Shaoxing & stumbled upon this self-guided tour itinerary, perfect for those who don't have an extra 1300 RMB to spare. The site has some other routes that look interesting as well. I'm looking forward to trying some of them out on my own. 

My hotel room

The view from my hotel room

Hiking through the nature preserve

Buddha carved into a huge rock

Traditional canal boats

20-year-old Shaoxing wine

Free Walking Tour of Shanghai

One of the members on Couchsurfing posted that she would be hosting a free walking tour of Shanghai over the weekend. It sounded like a good way to meet some new people & get some exercise while I was at it, so I decided to join them.

The tour was led by three volunteers from Shanghai Impression, a local non-profit organization. According to the volunteers, the group's main mission is to help Shanghai visitors leave with a good impression of the city.

They took us to all the important sights near downtown, including the Grand Theater, Shanghai Museum & Xintiandi, telling us interesting stories along the way about each place.

At the end of the tour, they asked for suggestions for future tour routes. One person said she'd love to go on a tour of Shanghai street food. I seconded with a hearty "Hoorah!". Perhaps I can act as their consultant on the route planning.

Platform Nine & Three Quarters

I'm not particularly a Harry Potter fan, but I do appreciate a good joke. I had heard from some co-workers that you could find Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station, so I went to check it out. When I asked a burly man in a station uniform to point me in the right direction, he half-heartedly pointed down a passageway & said, "Down there, left, then left," then turned back to his work, uninterested in my quest. I wasn't the first, apparently.

London's Tower Bridge

I love all the textures, shapes & shadows that make up the London landscape. There are so many lovely surprises down every street. Even an ordinary office building can be the frame for an imposing structure that looks more like a Medieval castle than a bridge.

Westminster Abbey

I was so impressed by Westminster Abbey while watching the royal wedding online last Friday that I couldn't wait to see it for myself. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. The line was out the door & around the block - there were hundreds & hundreds of people waiting to see this magestic cathedral. I was able to get this shot between the heads of some of the hopefuls in line.

Buckingham Palace

Harbin Snow Festival

There are really only a few things to do here in Harbin in January, when it's 20 below outside. You can go to the Ice Festival, or you can venture out to the Snow Festival. I went to the Ice Festival a couple of nights ago, so today I thought I might as well see what the Snow Festival was all about.

I asked at the reception desk at the hostel where I'm staying how one might get to the Snow Festival since there was no tour offered this time. They said I could take this bus, then get off at that stop & switch to another bus, which would take you here, then take a taxi the rest of the way. Or I could just walk across the river - half an hour & you're there.

They weren't kidding. I got to the river & found it completely frozen over with a definite footpath leading across. Half an hour & I was on the other side, where I paid 150 RMB (about US $23) entrance to the snow park.

Inside, it looked as if they had randomly plopped down huge cubes of packed snow all over the park, after which the sculptors had at it with their snow chisles. Here are some of the incredible results.

Of course these photos don't even come close to showing how awesome these sculptures are. This last one won first prize in some category or other - it was in Chinese - but I'm guessing it was for being really friggin' badass.

The festival has been open for about a month now, & many of the sculptures are showing some evidence of evaporation. You know how if you leave a tray of ice cubes in the freezer for too long, eventually the ice cubes turn into tiny slivers of their former selves? Well, apparently the same thing happens to snow sculptures.

I found myself wondering how long it takes for the sculptures to completely melt - or evaporate - away when I came across another area of the park. Here, I found that the winners from previous years have been immortalized in concrete, to be enjoyed winter or summer. Here's the overall winner from 2003.

At around 2:00 pm the sun was starting to dip in the sky - we're pretty far north here - so I headed back to the hostel to warm up over a bowl of noodles.

I'd call the trip to Harbin a win. My super duper winter force field did the trick, & I got to see some pretty cool snow & ice sculptures. Now I'm looking forward to the next part of my trip, which involves taking in some California sun - I leave for LA tomorrow.

Harbin Ice Festival

A dream is realized.

I went to the Harbin Ice Festival last night with a group from the hostel where I'm staying. 280 RMB (about US $42) got me entry to the festival, plus transportation to & from the festival grounds. 

Our guide dropped us off at the entrance, saying that we should meet her back at the van in two hours. She said that we were lucky because it was warmer today than it has been recently. Instead of minus 30 degrees Celcius (about minus 22 F), it was only minus 20.

In addition to taking photos of the ice & snow sculptures, there were several other things you could do there.

Ice sculptures

Snow sculptures

Reindeer rides

Yak photos

Fling-o-Whirl

Ice slide

I zinged down the ice slide more than once. Wee!

Even though I had all my state-of-the-art snow gear on, my fingers & toes were pretty cold after about an hour. I ducked inside the warm-up tent, happily paying 40 RMB (about US $6) for a Lipton tea, & sat down to watch the goings on in comfort.

There is apparently another festival grounds where they have many more snow sculptures on display. The ones I saw were pretty impressive. Since the snow sculptures aren't all lit up with neon like the ice sculptures, I think I'll go over to that one in the day time, when it's a bit warmer.