Andrew Varvel

Sharing ideas in tech, media, design & travel

[andrewvarvel-blog]

How I Find Cheap Flights

There's lots of ways to find cheap flights anywhere in the world. There's some that involve reward programmes and many cancelled credit cards and there's some that involve tracking seat availability across thousands of routes. 

The key to a great fare is flexibility. Avoid peak travel times, travel without a checked bag (it's easier than you think) and embrace stopovers!

In this example, we'll try to find a fare from Sydney to Tanzania in August 2014

Find a Baseline Fare

Most people still use a travel agent such as Flight Centre, so let's start there and find a baseline fare. 

So we're looking at over $2000 which is pretty expensive. We should be able to get anywhere in Africa, Europe & the Middle East for much closer to $1500 or less. 

Routing

The best fares are often to destinations where there is multiple routes to reach a destination. In our Tanzania example, there's no direct flights from Sydney to Tanzania, so we're going to have to stop somewhere. 

Jump on to Google and search for "wiki tanzania airports" and you'll find a list of airports in Tanzania. Now most international airports have runways larger than 3000m, so have a look at each of their pages in Wikipedia. 

We're looking now at the main airport in Dar Es Salaam, Mwanza, Kilimanjaro & Zanzibar.

Look for a section titled "Airlines & Destinations" - almost any airport Wikipedia page will have it and have a look at the airlines that fly there and their destinations. We're looking for budget airlines & larger airlines (cheaper than small regional airlines) and destinations that could serve as a stopover point to Sydney. 

Kilimanjaro Airport

Ethiopian Air - Addis Ababa

Kenya Airways - Nairobi

Condor - Frankfurt

Turkish Airlines - Istanbul

Dar Es Salaam Airport

Egypt Air - Cairo

Kenya Air - Nairobi

Oman Air - Muscat

Turkish - Istanbul

Mwanza Airport

None of Interest

Zanzibar Airport

Ethiopian - Addis Ababa

Oman Air - Muscat

Now that we have a good idea of who flies there and how they fly there, we can now think about how to leave Sydney. It's often a lot cheaper when flying west to grab a cheap fare with Air Asia/Fly Scoot/Tiger Air to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore first, then find a full-service carrier to your destination. As they are separate tickets, it's best to leave a decent amount of time between flights to avoid any delays - but they're both great cities and it's easy to get out of the airport and explore them.

A quick search of Air Asia & Scoot shows we can get a return flight to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore for about $420.

Now, let's head to Kayak and use their hidden multiple routing feature. In the from box, type KUL, SIN (that's Kuala Lumpur & Singapore). In the to box, type JRO, ZNZ, DAR (the three airports in Tanzania). Kayak will search any combination of those airports.

It's here we're looking for what is the cheapest routes, airlines & destinations. It's clear that the cheapest route is Kuala Lumpur - Bangkok - Nairobi - Dar Es Salaam - Zanzibar - Nairobi - Bangkok - Kuala Lumpur for $1119 USD. 

But we should also consider the Ethiopian Airlines option which happens to include a nice stopportunity in Dubai for $1203 USD.

So we're now looking at a price of $420 AUD + $1119 USD = $1609 AUD - So saving around $600AUD at the moment. 

Optimisation

We know now the airlines, the routes & the destinations. We just need to find the cheapest price now. 

The first step is to search our two routes on lots of different sites such as Expedia, Orbitz & Hipmunk.

Hipmunk already showed cheaper prices such as our first option for just $1051USD via Cheapoair.com. 

I checked booking directly with Ethiopian Air for the second option and the price was cheaper than Kayak at $1066USD. 

Conclusion

So we have now found fares to Tanzania from Sydney, Australia for about $1550AUD -- saving over $700AUD from Flight Centre's website. 

If you can't be bothered to do all this, and want to find an even cheaper fare, I highly recommend Flightfox. They have a team of super-pro flight hackers who know a hundred more tricks than me at finding the cheapest fares to anywhere. The only catch is that it will cost you $49 for their service, but I guarantee you that you will save much more than that $49 fee! 

So the only question is now ...  where do you want to go?

Update 31st March 2014

The key to a great fare in flexibility - and in this case, if we could fly to Kenya instead of Tanzania, we can save even more. Nairobi Airport is quite a hub in East Africa, so there are many airlines (so lots of competition) on the air routes. 

We can fly to Singapore with Scoot for $418 AUD, fly to Dubai with Malaysia Air for an incredible $349USD and then onwards to Nairobi, Kenya for $328 USD (via Kigali). 

That's return flights to Africa for $1150.

[andrewvarvel-blog]

Travel Tips: The Decoy Wallet

Are you travelling to a country where pickpocketing is likely? If so, you'll need to think of ways to minimise the risk of losing your money, cards and identity documents to a pickpocket.

Personally, I think money belts are a little awkward, obvious and inconvenient - especially if you're diving into your pants every time you want to make a purchase. Simply, just ensure no one can simply grab your wallet - whatever shape or form it takes without you noticing. Conceal it in inner pockets, keep your hands in your pockets, place it in a secure bag and whatever you do - have some cash and an extra credit card/bank card back at the hotel nice and safe!

It's also a good idea to photocopy any cards in your real wallet and the 24 hour phone numbers for the associated banks and credit companies.

A decoy wallet is a wallet that looks real - it has a (small) amount of cash, some (expired) bank cards, (irrelevant) receipts and (unused) loyalty cards. It's a wallet you don't mind losing. You should place this wallet in your pocket or the front-facing pocket of your bag.

The idea behind this wallet is that if a pickpocket intends to steal from you, they'll go for the decoy wallet in the expected locations of a jeans pocket or front of a backpack, rather than the real wallet stashed somewhere a bit more secure.

If you the decoy wallet know you have been pickpocketed, it's best to quickly move away from the area, as it won't take the thief long to realise he has a wallet full of expired credit cards.

[andrewvarvel-blog]

Why I Switched from Gmail to Fastmail

I've been a passionate user of Gmail since it first revolutionised the free consumer email market in 2004 The 1GB storage size that Gmail offered on launch seemed mind-boggling compared to the inbox limits of 2-4MB most of its competitors had at the time. It's the same move that Flickr pulled this year when they announced users would now have access to 1TB of photo storage. I'd been a happy Gmail user for a long time until in 2012, my account suddenly stopped working on my iPhone. I discovered that my account, along with numerous others was a small group of users that could not access imap.gmail.com. It was a 'known issue'. A few months had passed and this "known issue" had not been resolved. There were numerous discussion threads of frustrated users - some of whom had paid for the Google Apps for Business service but were receiving no customer support. After almost four months without native email on my iPhone, I decided to look to alternatives; paid alternatives where I would be a 'customer', not a 'user'. I soon signed up with Fastmail; a paid email provider (based in Melbourne) now owned by Opera Software. They had recently redesigned their web email client - which whilst annoyed some of their existing power users, was refreshing as their old design was straight from the 1990s. Since signing up with Fastmail, I've never had any issues or noticeable service interruptions and I could grab a very short and easy to remember email address. One unexpected benefit of using a smaller email provider such as Fastmail is that they are not such a 'large target' so it often works well in countries that from time to time will slow/block email services offered by the larger tech companies. It's interface is also much faster than Gmail and offers many of the keyboard shortcuts as well. Oh, and there's no ads ;)

[andrewvarvel-blog]

Air Koryo: The One Star Airline

This is the second in a series of posts on my recent trip to North Korea. You can find my first post, "Planning for a trip to North Korea" here.

I travelled with Young Pioneer Tours in August 2013 on the Liberation Day Tour departing from Kuala Lumpur. 

Air Koryo is the North Korean state-owned airline. It's known as the "worst airline in the world" as it is the only airline rated just one-star by airline rating company Skytrax.

Luckily, we were travelling on one of their newer Russian planes that's allowed to operate within European airspace. Unfortunately though, this wasn't a quick flight from Beijing - it was a seven and a half hour flight!

The interior of the plane looked really just like any other plane. It was clean, tidy and the air-conditioning seemed to work well. As the cabin staff we directing us to our seats, it was soon obvious that the seat number printed on our ticket would bear no relation to the seat we were asked to sit in by cabin staff. We soon realised that we were all being seated in the front half of the plane so the cabin crew could sleep across the seats in the rear section of the plane.

As we were seated, we were treated to the latest propaganda from the country including the English-language weekly newspaper "The Pyongyang Times" and the larger "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" magazine. We had heard horror stories of foreigners inadvertently folding newspapers that had a photograph of Kim Jong Il/Un in the wrong place - so we were careful to fold the newspaper in such a way that did not fold the Dear Leader's face in half. And no we didn't use it to dispose of chewing gum either ;)

The flight never seemed to stay at a constant speed and altitude - it constantly moved up, down and from side to side even though there appeared to be clear skies and no warning of turbulence. I've never felt sick on a flight before, but I was sick for the majority of this flight feeling dizzy, high temperature and uneasy in the stomach. I'm not sure if it was the shitty food, cabin pressure or the bumpiness but I am glad I wasn't sick on the return flight from Pyongyang. Luckily, some new friends from the tour group made sure I was alright for the rest of the flight!

There was no in-seat entertainment in the plane and use of electronic devices throughout the entire flight was not allowed. The entertainment on the flight was non-stop, full-volume North Korean children's cartoons (with no subtitles) playing from the screens hanging from the overhead bins. Whilst they were super annoying, there was a theme to the cartoons - that only when everyone works together that something is solved for the 'prosperity' of the community. It's interesting for the first half hour of the flight, irritating for the next seven hours. 

Even though the safety video, cabin lighting and signage indicated this was a 'non-smoking flight' we were sure the pilots smoked at the back of the plane throughout the flight as we would see them walk down the aisle with a pack of cigarettes in their front pocket, walk to the back of the plane and then the smell of cigarettes would slowly waft through the cabin's air conditioning system.

So if you do plan to fly with Air Koryo, just remember to eat well before you fly and bring a good book to read. 

I’ll post more of my experiences of travelling in North Korea shortly.

[andrewvarvel-blog]

Planning a trip to North Korea

This is the first in a series of posts on my recent trip to North Korea.

I travelled with Young Pioneer Tours in August 2013 on the Liberation Day Tour departing from Kuala Lumpur. 

Planning a trip to one of the world's most closed countries is surprisingly easy. In fact, it's the easiest trip I've ever planned.

It's near impossible to 'independently' travel in North Korea, so unless you're prepared to fork out for a custom tour to your liking, the only way to travel in North Korea is part of a tour group. As such, all you have to do is get yourself to Beijing or Kuala Lumpur and pay for the tour! 

The first question is "Should I go to North Korea?" and the answer is "absolutely"! It's fascinating, wonderful, weird, amazing, wacky & fun. I love to travel to places where I can experience everything in life as if it was for the first time - and North Korea is no different. I'll have more posts shortly about travelling in North Korea later in the week. 

Booking the Trip

Booking the trip was super easy with Young Pioneer Tours and their staff respond very quickly through email & social media. 

I paid for my trip's deposit and balance payment via Paypal which was easy - but just remember to check Paypal's foreign currency conversion rate vs. your own bank's - as using my own credit card's currency conversion rate saved me over $100.

Visa

The visa application & processing is all handled by the tour company - it's a simple one page form and was one of the easiest visas I have applied for! 

Immigration staff will take the visa when you leave the country (unless you get a visa from the Embassy in Singapore) and if you arrive & exit via Pyongyang, there's no stamp in the passport. 

Itinerary

Basically all tours, regardless of tour company are operated by Korea International Tour Company (KITC) who will provide English-speaking guides and a driver for the entirety of your trip.

Our guides had a great relationship with our guide at Young Pioneer Tours, so we enjoyed a surprising amount of freedom whilst we were in the country.

The itinerary often changes on a daily basis and whilst you'll make most of what is in the planned itinerary (and sometimes more!), it can be on different days and different times. If there is something in particular, you really want to see - make sure you let your tour company or Korean guides know so it has a better chance of happening!

Money

There is no way to use a credit card or receive money whilst in North Korea, so it's essential you take enough cash. You can take either Euro, Chinese Yuan or US Dollar into the country, although Euro & Chinese Yuan seemed to be preferred.

It's super safe in North Korea, so I'd recommend taking more money than you think you need, as there are no options to get anymore money. Beers & drinks are typically less than 1EUR and simple souvenirs such as books, decorations, pins, flags, t-shirts, small propaganda posters are all under 10EUR.

When you get your money changed, try and get the smallest possible change as vendors in North Korea rarely have much change in foreign currency. Often, you'll receive your change in some combination of Euro, Chinese Yuan and US dollar. 

Paying for pizza at a local restaurant

The local North Korean won currency can't be used by foreigners (we tried), but you sometimes can get some at the Yanggakdo Hotel currency exchange counter for souvenir purposes.

Photography

Officially, it is recommended that you don't take cameras into the country with a lens greater than 250mm or GPS functionality (or GPS marked on the camera). 

For my trip, cameras were not checked on arrival or departure and I certainly saw some other tourists with some serious-looking cameras and some serious zoom lenses. 

Taking photos is not a problem at all over there - just make sure you don't take any from the bus or of any military. In our tour, one guy was playing a game on his smartphone in the bus whilst we passed a military checkpoint - however the man at the checkpoint thought he was taking a photo of him ... luckily our guides were able to sort out the misunderstanding!

Communications

It's best if you just tell your friends and family that you will be out of contact for the time you are in North Korea as all contact to the outside world is costly and time-consuming.

You can make calls from the Yanggakdo International Hotel, but as you would expect the charges are generally 3-5EUR per minute. You can also send an email from the hotel's email account, but it costs 3EUR and requires filling out an "international communication" form.

Sometimes you can also get a local 3G sim card in Pyongyang - but I've heard it's quite expensive. Some on our group managed to get some roaming coverage from South Korea whilst at the DMZ - but at the DMZ you should be taking it all in for the small time you have there and not checking Facebook!

I'll post more of my experiences of travelling in North Korea shortly.

[andrewvarvel-blog]

Learning to code with Thinkful

I've been trying to learn to code as a hobby for a long time now. 

I've tried to learn myself, I've tried free online courses and I've tried template hacking with Edicy and Twitter Bootstrap. 

After reading an article in tech press about Thinkful in March of this year, I signed up in April and I am now approaching my last weeks in my front-end web development course.

Thinkful is unique in that the course is mentor-led and curates the best teaching resources from across the web. Learning with a cohort of other students and setting aside a time each week to meet with my mentor via Google Hangouts is the key differentiator that has helped my achieve my goal of learning about front-end web development.

Chatting with my mentor each week has allowed me work through those pesky coding errors or theoretical misunderstandings that have stopped my learning path in the past.

I'm grateful to Thinkful and my mentor, Frank Troglauer Jr who have helped me learn so much these past few months!

I'm now confident that I can continue learning about front-end web development and hopefully will dabble in some back-end web development sometime soon.