Leaving things in taxis

I have 2 stories now of leaving things behind in taxis. You'll have to read more to discover what happens, but both are fun stories.

Story #1

The first time I left something behind was in Beijing, China. I was headed back to Beijing just for one night to catch my flight to Japan, after having already been to Beijing for a week before. I got in a taxi to go to my hostel from the airport, and there was a little TV screen on the headrest of the seat in front of me, bright and in my face. I couldn't turn it off or turn the brightness down so I took my shoulder bag that was given to me in India and lodged it over the screen so it wasn't blinding me. Anyway, I just got out of the cab without it since it wasn't on the seat where my stuff usually is, and walked up to my hostel. After knocking and waiting for answer, I looked at my stuff and realized my lapse. I looked at David, the owner of the hostel, as he answered the door and told him I left my bag in the taxi as I covered my face in disbelief. He logically asked if it was still there.

Then the gears started turning and I realized that we were in a hutong (alleyway) in Beijing and the taxi couldn't go that fast through it. Even though it had been maybe 2 minutes or so, it might still be in the Hutong! I left everything the care of David and took off running. I round the first corner and see a car far off in the distance. I can't tell if it's a taxi or not, but I continue running. This is a longer alleyway that you might think, so I was running for a good minute or so. I see the car in the distance now waiting at a light for the main street. As I get closer I realize it is a taxi...and probably my taxi! I get closer and closer, and I hope that the light stays red as long as possible, but right before I get there it turns green.

Noooooo!!

The taxi starts moving and I go to a full sprint to catch up with him in the middle of the intersection as he turns left. I banged on the window and got him to pull over so I could take my bag out as I panted. Whew, that was close. I walked back to find David patiently waiting and checked in while I panted the whole time from doing such a long sprint.

There was nothing even that important in the bag except for a camera battery and some earbuds, but it still would've been inconvenient to lose those and the special bag from India!

Story #2

So I'm in Sydney, Australia and I have to catch a 6:15am bus to a surf camp called MojoSurf at Arrawarra Beach, a place they dub Spot X. I take a cab at 6 or so to the central station, and while in the cab I handed my phone to the driver so he could look at the text the bus driver sent me. I must've just put it down on the seat and forgotten about it. It was still raining at 6:10am when we stopped at the station, so I jumped out, grabbed my two backpacks and ran for the covered area on the sidewalk. The taxi drove away pretty quickly, and I realized too late that I didn't have my phone. I ran after it for a few moments, but the cab was going way too fast for that. After searching my bags quickly, I was sure I had left it in the taxi.

Now I'm freaking out, because not only is this phone expensive, it is my only link to the bus I have to catch in 2 minutes and all the other people I've just met and all the other notes I've just written. Even though the taxi is definitely gone, I have a few ideas before I give up. First off, this was a taxi I had the hostel call for me, which means that the taxi company probably knows who they dispatched out to me and I can call them.

Fortunately, I have my iPhone from America, and even though at the time I had no roaming data for it, I had no choice. I pulled that out, got the hostel number, called them. No answer. Then I realized I could just call my phone...of course. But wait, I didn't know my new Aussie number! I had taken a picture of it when I first got my phone, but I switched memory cards a few days back and no longer had that quickly available on my camera. Still rushing as I can imagine the taxi driving farther and farther away, I frantically find the other memory card, pop it in my camera and get my phone number. I call it...it rings...no answer. I'm pretty sure it wasn't on silent. I call again...nothing. I call the hostel back...nothing.

Now that I've exhausted all of my options, I really start to freak out. I think by this time it's after 6:15am, and I haven't really moved from the place where the taxi left me and I have no idea where the bus is supposed to be because all I have is a text (on my lost phone) that says central station.

I now start to try and get ahold of the bus so I can find out where it is and maybe hold them off a bit. I pull out my voucher and call the numbers listed on there...no answer. The guy who's awake and on the bus doesn't have his cell listed on the voucher!

After standing there wondering what I'm to do for a few seconds, I see a bus that says OzExperience on the front, and MojoSurf along the side. Well hot damn that's my bus! I run over to it waving my arms, bang on it a few times, but it passes me by without anyone noticing. Another few seconds of failure pass over me, and I look the other way to see my taxi driver behind the bus with my phone in his hand! I run over and take my phone and give him a hug. That takes a huge weight off my shoulders. He tells me that's my bus. I agree, get my stuff, jump into the cab, and shout what I've always wanted to say after running into a cab, "Follow that bus!" Really I probably want to say follow that car but it's close enough.

Now that I have my phone I realize I've had some missed calls and texts, obviously from the guy on the bus. I call him back.

Me: Hi, it's Dylan.

Ross: Yeaah. You missed the bus.

Me: No, I'm in a taxi following you. All you have to do is stop for a minute and I can jump on. I see you turning left that's you right?

Ross: Yeah, that's us. 

*talking to bus driver or something*

Ok, we'll stop in a few minutes. See you soon.

Almost immediately the bus pulled over in an extra lane, and I jump out of the cab and onto the bus. By the way it's been pouring rain this entire time. I'm soaked, stressed, and I have so many different things in my hands from looking for my phone in the first place still that I'm worried I'm going to lose something else. But finally, I'm on the bus with everything I own (except for a charger I later realized I left at my hostel dorm, recovered later by a friend bringing it to Spot X), and I made it to Spot X that evening with no other problems. Whew.

The Tea Scam in China

FYI - 1 USD = 6.3 RMB (Chinese Yuan) at the time of this writing.

One night, while out in Beijing with a few guys from my hostel, we met these 2 Chinese girls who, at the end of the night, invited us out for karaoke. My friends didn't want to go, so they ended up going back and it was just me and the 2 Chinese girls. Now the fun starts.

One of the Chinese girls has an electric motorbike, which just runs off a battery. This means it's nice and quiet, but also slow. I think I had slightly forgotten that this girl was downing glasses of wine earlier in the evening, so I had no problem jumping on the back of her electric motorbike with her AND her friend. After we take off I realize this is quite scary, since the motobike goes so slow that we don't have as much momentum keeping the bike from falling over. It probably doesn't matter too much with 1 or 2 people, but you really feel it with 3. Sometimes we were driving through posts supposed to keep cars off the street, and I was worried we would swerve into them!

Anyway, I'm sandwiched between these Chinese girls looking for karaoke and I see nothing of note. The bar we were at was not on a strip or anything, and I don't see anything else around. They start telling me that they want to have tea before we go to karaoke, and I didn't really try to object, they weren't the greatest english speakers. While telling me this we actually circled a block once and then went around to circle it again…which started to make me a little suspicious. We end up stopping in front of this place, I'm not even sure what it was, but we started walking away from it down the street around the corner anyway, the girls knew where they were going. As we were walking away this guy starts yelling at me from the place that it's a scam and that he bought a 200 RMB bottle of wine that actually charged his card 5000 USD. I thanked him for the advice since I didn't really know what he was talking about, but it did get me even more suspicious.

When we round the corner and finally enter the tea place, this is when I immediately know that it's the tea scam. We sat down in the front and on a board was a bunch of chinese characters with a few numbers I assumed were prices. One said 20, reasonable, the other 30, ok…and then one said 6660 and the other 8000. I didn't know what they was but it couldn't be good. I had heard of the tea scam vaguely before, but I knew was that they take you to tea and order a bunch of things and then make you pay for it at the end, so I was ready. I told them that I'm not buying them anything and the only thing I'm buying is my own tea. They kind of acknowledged this…but not really.

They give me a menu and the thing is ridiculous. The cheapest price is 20 RMB for a glass and 50 RMB for a pot of tea. After turning a few pages I easily see prices of 500 RMB, 1100 RMB and the like. I pretty much ignore them as they try to recommend me to some of the more expensive teas, but I didn't want to leave right away, I wanted to see what else they had in store for me. I decided to get a pot of the cheapest tea.

Them: Ohhh why don't we get this one! (points to one twice as expensive)

Me: No.

Them: Well we should get two of this one. (points to the cheap one that I want)

Me: No, we'll get one.

We sit down and start chatting as the waitress brings us our tea. As soon as I get it, I give her 100 RMB and tell her I want to pay for it. Everyone goes up in arms haha.

Them: Don't pay yet!

Me: I think I'll pay now.

Them: But we want to get snacks, don't you want any snacks?

Me: No we're not getting any snacks, this is all I'm getting.

Maybe we said a few more things, but the waitress took my money and gave my change, so I was squared away and ready to bolt if things got ugly. Before she left one of the girls said something to her in Chinese…hmmm, I figured she ordered something else without asking me. I drank my tea only after they did, not knowing what else they had in store. Conversation started to get boring since I no longer cared about these scammers and took everything they said with a grain of salt.

Soon the waitress came back with a small plate of peanuts.

Me: I don't want that, take it back.

Them: But it's only 20 RMB!

Me: I don't care, I'm not buying it.

Them: Do you want any other snacks?

Me: Nope the only way those are getting on this table is if you agree to pay for it.

Them: *Whine, bitch, moan* Ok we'll pay for it.

It wasn't long after that I decided it was time to go, so I quickly said it was getting late (which really it was almost 3:30am) and bolted out of there. They didn't chase me.

Still, if I hadn't known about this scam it would've been easy for them to start ordering things and I wouldn't have thought that everything would've been all put on my bill. Beware the tea scam.

The adventure has begun!

Today I left for Peru. After over a month of preparing in Dallas, I've finally started my adventure. The last few days have been pretty hectic trying to get everything together and get it through my head that I'm actually leaving for 5 months.

One thing I finally did was pack my backpack COMPLETELY. Before yesterday, I had packed it up with "most" of my stuff and figured that I would have no problem, but when I really had to put everything in it, it got a little crowded in there. So many little things that make it cramped.

As I packed everything up, I started to get worried. Everything definitely fit, but boy was it tight. I was hoping for some extra room in there for snacks and whatever else happens during travelling time. I decided it was best to unload some of the things I would be using more often into my daypack (which had since been rolled up and put in my big pack). I have this awesome little northface rucksack that's really small for storage but is surprisingly large when you're actually using it, with all the full backpack features like cynches, small pockets, and the like. I unloaded things like my tablet and ukulele, which were respectively some of heaviest and biggest single items in my pack before, albeit the lightest and smallest of their kind!

Only problem now is I have 2 backpacks to carry! Well it looks like one goes on the back, and one goes on the front. At least for the airport travel. During some treks I might try to get everything in the big pack again. I tried to hang the dayback of the back of the other pack, but it was going to be very unweildy and perhaps swinging all over the place throwing me off balance.

Speaking of balance, I have around 30 pounds to carry around with everything packed! I was hoping for something more like 20 pounds, but it seems like that wasn't gonna happen. I went through and took out a few unnecessary things, but that's not many things. A 50 L pack is not that big compared to your usual backkpacking packs of 65 and 80 L, but at least I can put mine in the overhead storage bin with no problem!

This morning, after not much sleep caused by making sure all my electronics were charged and synced up right, we were off! Here are some pics of us going into the airport.

Right now I'm on my second flight from Miami to Lima, Peru. I'm definitely enjoying myself in business class. So far the best part about it is really the food. Not that the food is that good, it is airplane food, but it's a multi course meal with as much alcohol and other drinks as you please! Those flight attendents are quite busy serving us during the beginning of the flights. I got lunch from Dallas to Miami and dinner from Miami to Lima. I think they might actually give us another little meal before we land. We were supposed to get into Lima at midnight, but we were delayed over an hour over what the pilot said was a "paperwork issue." Whatever, I have plenty to do now that I've realized I haven't practiced my spanish at all. I practiced a bit with the guy from Peru sitting next to me...I got some work to do.

When I arrive in Lima my flight to Cuzco is at 6am on a local flight...so I'll have to rough it economy class for the hour flight :p. What I'm really worried about is the elevation once I get to Cuzco. I don't know what Lima is, but Cuzco is over 11,000 ft! I hear I should drink lots of Coca tea at the Lima airport to loosen myself up haha. I have 2 days to acclimate to the elevation before I actually start my inca trail hike to Machu Picchu. I'm starting this trip with a bang, and I have no doubt my legs will feel it.

 

Travel Hacking

One thing that made this whole trip possible was my realization that I wouldn't have to pay for this ticket. It took a while to figure that out and do my research, but boy has it paid off. At first I had no idea where I wanted to go and how I was going to do it, but when there's a will there's a way.

I mentioned my idea of a trip to my friend Mark and he told me about "credit card churning" or "travel hacking" as some call it that got him some free flights and hotels around southeast asia. The basic idea is to get a credit card that has a sign up bonus where if you spend X amount of money you get Y amount of points for some reward program. One of the best ones at the time were some American Airlines cards where you could get 75,000(!) bonus points if you spend $1500 on the card within the first 3 months. Even better, you can get more than one of those cards that has a slightly different spending limit. Then I was remembered reading a post on Gizmodo a while back and found out that I could get a HUGE reward ticket with AAdvantage points. I called American Airlines and planned out a mock itinerary so they could give me a quote. They said 160k for economy and 220k for business. Ok, with 2 of those 75k credit cards and little extra, I could easy make that happen.

I called my mom about my plan and after talking with her I discovered that she had over 100k miles in her account already! She travels a lot and has credit cards that get her AAdvantage points as she uses them. Now I could see that 220k business class ticking becoming more in reach, and my mind was set. To do this, however, my mom would have to get the credit cards under her name and her AAdvantage number, and then she could buy the ticket for me.

Fortunately she agreed to help out, and since she runs a business hitting those limits wasn't too much of a problem. In a matter of less than 3 months she had around 250k miles in her account. Nice. I finalized my itinerary and prepared to make the big call to the AAdvantage rewards desk.

I woke up the morning before I called AA and had a little scare with the top headline of the news reading "American Airlines files for chapter 11 bankrupcy." I called immediately; I didn't want to get caught with a bunch of useless rewards points for being 1 day late! Fortunately, for customers that doesn't really mean anything other than maybe they'll have less flights sometime in the future.

After many hours and days of talking to the AAdvantage reps, I finally had a priced out itinerary that still only cost 220k miles, whew. It was such a large itinerary that their system was having some trouble processing it, resulting in much time on hold.

Of course nothing is without its surprises, and I got caught off guard twice! Apparently I hadn't done quite enough research.

Surprise #1: Every flight in the trip counts as a "segment," even if it's just a connecting flight. The only place this screwed me was when I was trying to go from Rio to Mumbai. There are no direct flights there, so I go Rio -> Madrid -> London -> Mumbai. Oh well, I'll have some time to catch up on everything I will have neglected while traveling.

Surprise #2: I still have a pay for taxes on the ticket? Over $700?! No one told me that! But I should've expected it hah.

Introducing...

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my travel blog where you can find all sorts of fun info on my travels, adventures, and how I'm actually doing this. If you don't already know, I'm a 24 year old who just graduated the University of Michigan in December 2011 with a Computer Science Engineering degree, and I have 6 months until I start my job in the bay area! What better to do than travel the world?

I always planned to take some time off after I graduated, but it wasn't until last summer when I actually started thinking about it. Props to my friend Mark for giving me all sorts of links and information on "travel hacking" which allowed me to get enough AAdvantage miles by last November to get my entire around the world ticket on business class for free! Which actually means 220,000 AAdvantage miles plus tax which ended up being hundreds. Still a small price to pay to go all the way around the world I thought. I naively thought I could keep my expenses low if I just got my plane ticket, but I have already discovered that this is most definitely incorrect...and I haven't even left yet.

Here's my itinerary as of now, with details on what I expect to be doing in each place. The ticket I have does have flexible travel dates, but realistically that depends on availability which is already pretty slim for the beginning part of my trip, but once I get to China and onwards I might be able to change how long I stay in each place.

Peru: Jan 24 - Feb 13
First I head over to Cuzco and do the inca trail, then I head down to Puno and lake Titicaca. Then I still have 10 days or so and need to figure out what I'm doing. Probably some Arequipa, Lima, sand dunes, and maybe some Amazon.

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil: Feb 13 - Feb 28
One word...CARNAVAL!! I'll have a few days to do some other things but the first weekend I'm there is all about carnaval. I already have a costume that I can pick up once there and dance in one of the parades with a samba school. No idea what I'm doing after carnaval. Maybe I'll leave Rio for a bit...

India: Feb 29 - March 22
I think I may first go to New Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur first, which are some common tourist destinations. If I have enough time I'll take a train back to Mumbai for Holi: The Festival of Colors that is on March 7th and visit my friend CK who lives there. Then I'll have a while to explore more of India, still figuring this one out.

Southeast Asia: March 22 - April 18
I arrive in Bangkok, but I plan to go to Singapore for a weekend right away to visit my friend Mark. After that I plan to bus/train to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. Then maybe Vietnam. Then I'll actually spend time in Bangkok, especially during Songkran, which is some water festival in town where everyone shoots each other with water guns. Yep sounds like fun.

China: April 18 - May 10
Damn China is big. I fly into Hong Kong for a week, and then I go to Beijing for two weeks. From those places I can take smaller transportation options to other surrounding places.

Japan: May 10 - May 24
People tell me it's really expensive over there in Tokyo, but I found this link to a hotel that I could stay at: http://www.newkoyo.com/index.html, or maybe I could couchsurf. They advertise their price so hard I might have to book way in advance. I also plan to go to Kyoto and probably some other places around Japan.

Australia: May 24 - June 7
I fly into Sydney, but my no means do I intend to stay there the entire time. By this time it'll be a little cooler than the hot summer months of Australia.

New Zealand: June 7 - June 17
Fly into Auckland. I'll probably go to the south island for a while too, but before that I'll have to visit the guy who made my ukulele.

LA: June 17 - June 26
There's no direct flight from Auckland to Dallas, so I figured I'd spend a week in LA.

Right now I'm in Dallas, TX planning, shopping, and preparing for my epic adventure. I have plenty more to tell about everything that's going on, so look forward to future posts!