#gallivantingvagabond

[ingreezy]

Catching them waves brah #extremeboogieboarding #maui #gallivantingvagabond (at Palauea Beach)

[ingreezy]

How to Last Long on a Budget: The Authoritative Guide to Budget Traveling

The most common question I get asked about my travels, is how did I travel for so long with a limited amount of money? I thought I would share some tips I’ve learned, so grab an extra pair of drawers because this is going to be juicy!

MAKE FRIENDS. Aim to make friends who live in countries that you want to travel to. As your friendship progresses and deepens, you may just get an invitation to stay with a certain someone in their country. You could make friends with people who live in countries you’re not really interested in visiting, but that is at your discretion. Making friends may also lead to free rides, travel companions, international bootay, and lifelong friendships.

WWOOFING, COUCHSURFING, AND HELP X - These 3 organizations helped me survive in New Zealand for 6 months without working.

Willing Workers On Organic Farms aka WWOOFing and Help X are more for those traveling long term. WWOOFing is a worldwide organization that is essentially a work exchange program. You work 4-5 hours a day for maybe a week or so, on mostly organic farms, in exchange for food and a place to sleep. Some countries aren’t as strict in ensuring that your host is on an organic farm. As one who tried to avoid physical labor as much as possible, I WWOOFed at the most unique and interesting non-farm places that I could in New Zealand. I WWOOFed at a sausage factory, a meditation center, a cheese factory, an eco-retreat, and a retreat centre. The number one skill needed from a WWOOFer is weeding, as this is the work you will most likely be doing at some point during your stay. So it was from WWOOFing that I mastered weeding, as well as the tender art of toilet cleaning…skills worthy of noting on my resume. WWOOFing in Australia was different, as they stuck more to what the organization is all about, offering mostly organic farm work. I tried WWOOFing at one farm (Experience the magic here) and that was the first and last time I WWOOFed in Australia. Each country has their own WWOOFing website, and for a fee, you get a one-year membership. WWOOFing may sound off-putting to some, but I had such a wonderful and rewarding experience with most of the WWOOFing that I did. I learned about alternative lifestyles, hung out with New Zealand gang-members, got into meditation, made lifelong friends, learned how to create a proper compost, and even got to milk a cow. Those are just some of the experiences I had while WWOOFing.

Help X is the same concept, except that they don’t just use hosts on organic farms. I don’t have much to say about this organization, as I only used it once. You can choose to be a free member, or become a premier member for a fee.

Couchsurfing is great for short-term traveling. The worldwide organization is free to join. Create a detailed and personality-filled profile, enter a city you plan on visiting, then contact hosts you would like to stay with. You can weed out hosts by reading reviews from couchsurfers who have previously surfed with them. When staying with a host, no payment or labor is required, but as an unspoken rule, you should provide your host with a gift, or cook your host a meal, or both. The organization is based on the idea that hosts and surfers want to participate in a cultural exchange. I enjoy couchsurfing because hosts genuinely want to show you their city and experience their culture…plus, I don’t have to fucking work for anything. Their only obligation is to provide you with a place to stay, but some hosts may offer you meals and even show you around. It varies from host to host. My trip to Fiji wouldn’t have been the same, if I didn’t stay with my host family. They lived in a village in Nadi and treated me like one of their own, even throwing me a farewell feast when I left. Again…it varies from host to host. It could be that i’m just one of those people, who people want to throw farewell feasts for.

ENJOY THE SIMPLE THINGS IN LIFE. Enjoy free and/or inexpensive activities such as hiking, sightseeing, bike-riding, swimming, and reading. However, if there is a must-do activity that requires payment, like sky-diving or hugging a koala, go for it!

WALK EVERYWHERE. This goes with enjoying the simple things in life. Walking saves you money from taking public transportation and renting/buying a car. This gives you the opportunity to observe local life and find undiscovered spots that you otherwise wouldn’t find from driving or taking a bus.

STAY IN HOSTELS. If you don’t mind sleeping in a room full of strangers…most likely in their 20’s, hostels are a less expensive option when traveling. It’s like a slumber party every night! If the party scene is not your thing, make sure to read up on a hostel before you book it. You can also opt for a private room. Hostels are a great way to meet people, and most have shared kitchens for you to cook, if you choose to. Hostel World,Trip Advisor, and Booking.com are great websites for searching and booking hostels.

COOK -This is more for those traveling for a few weeks or more. Cooking is cost effective and it’s healthier. Buy produce that is in season and on sale. When it doubt, refer to what you cooked in college. The most common foods I see backpackers eat are pasta and sandwiches. There was a time when I just ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a few days…It was a dark period in my life.

Even better…make friends with a local and cook a dish together!

If you are visiting a country where the U.S. dollar allows you to live like a royal, eat like one. Food costs in Australia were ridiculous ($20usd for a lentil burger and a smoothie?!) and the cuisine wasn’t too different from that of America’s, so I resorted to cooking my meals. When I was in Southeast Asia, cooking in a country such as Hong Kong or Thailand, just seemed wrong. After having too much ramen, soba noodles, and takoyaki in Japan, however, I did have to take a break and make myself a nice salad.

Find a good balance between your wallet, trying the local cuisine, and your health.

EAT STREET FOOD. Most street food is delicious and cheap. Choose vendors who cook the food right in front of you. I usually don’t condone this, but follow where the crowd goes. They’re in line for a reason. Don’t worry about getting sick. The vendor wouldn’t want to have their business fail by serving food that would make customers ill…they want your return business. Use common sense though, and if you feel that stick of meat that has been sitting out in the hot sun all day wouldn’t be a wise choice…you’re probably right.

GO OUT ON TUESDAYS - For some reason, I’ve noticed that many businesses, in many countries, offer discounts on Tuesdays. It’s probably due to the day’s tendency to attract the least amount of business during the week. So if you decide to eat out or watch a movie, try to do it on a Tuesday.

WORKING HOLIDAY VISAS - This visa allows you to stay longer than you would as a tourist and gives you permission to work so that you can pay for your travels. There aren’t many countries that offer the working holiday visa to U.S. citizens. The U.S. does not offer this visa to other countries, so in return many countries don’t offer it to us. Note that the oldest you can be to apply for this visa is 31 and you cannot have a criminal background or have any sort of health problem (like being pregnant!). I had this visa while traveling in New Zealand and Australia. You can say that both were lazy working holidays, since I actually didn’t work…ha ha, but that’s another story. Thank goodness for WWOOFing, Help X, and Couchsurfing!

Hope these tips help! Start saving your money and get the fuck out there!

[ingreezy]

Leaping with Hard Nipples

Rainbow Pools Swimming Hole  - I never heard of this roadside secret until last weekend when I was on a trip to Yosemite with my friend, Jeremy and my cousin, Carina.  We found a brochure in our hostel, mentioning Rainbow Pools, so we googled it and it was done. Located approximately 15 miles from Groveland on CA Highway 120, it is a nice place to stop on a hot day.

Rainbow Pools is right off the highway, and is like an oasis when you see it, complete with a waterfall for you to imitate your best Bond Girl moment. The main attraction is cliff jumping. You have the option of jumping from 15 to 30 foot high granite cliffs into freezing, ice-cold water.  

I wasn’t as brave as Jeremy and Carina, who opted for the higher cliffs, but 15 feet is still a pretty high jump.  I knew if I hesitated a little or started listening to my brain, I would have delayed the jumping process.  Either way I knew I was going to jump.  I’m 31 years-old, and it’s doing adventures like these that make me say “Fuck you!" to getting older.  So without a moment’s thought, I leapt.  The free fall was pretty damn exhilarating and I felt a tickling sensation as my stomach rose to my chest.

Then I hit the water.

Holy shit! It felt like being stabbed by a thousand knives.  I had jumped first and I waited, stupidly, in the water, for Jeremy to jump. Being in the water for just a few minutes, I immediately felt my muscles stiffen and it became difficult to keep myself afloat.This is how Rose and Jack felt in the water when the Titanic sank right?

While I was busy multi-tasking, (waiting for Jeremy to jump, taunting him, and trying not to drown) I couldn’t help but think what a sucky way this would be to die, in the middle of this pool, in front of all these people.

In what seemed like forever in the icy-cold water, Jeremy jumped and I hurriedly swam to shore, my body shaking from the cold and the adrenaline.  

And like a masochist, I jumped a second time.

I could have jumped off the higher cliff to prove to myself that I was still young and adventurous, but like I said, I’m 31 years-old, not that your age should limit you. I was cold and tired from the hike we did the day before…and maybe I just wanted to take a nap.  I’ve jumped out of a freaking plane, I could have jumped off a 20 foot cliff right? But what for?  Who would I be jumping for? As I’ve gotten older and have traveled to many places, have I become more realistic to the fragility of my own mortality? I think that had something to do with it (I want to live!), but you figure that you want to do things because you really want to and not because you feel you have to prove anything. So I was satisfied with the leaps I made.

Now and then, It’s always nice to give yourself a good push.

[ingreezy]

My First and Last Day of Work in Australia

Many backpackers tell me that getting a job in Australia has to do with being in the right place at the right time. When I got off the bus in Cairns and walked in the wrong direction to my hostel, I stumbled upon Ihaw Ihaw, a Filipino restaurant.  Filipinos in Cairns…with Australian accents!

I like Cairns…at least for those first couple of days I did.

After more than a week of job hunting rambo style - going door-to-door asking businesses if they were hiring and handing out my resume, while also emailing companies of any employment opportunities, the only call I got back was from Ihaw Ihaw. I’m glad they were hiring me because of my extensive experience of being Filipino and not because of the fact that I have no restaurant experience…but whatever.

In Australia and New Zealand, restaurants will usually give you a trial, in which you work for a few hours for them to see you in action and determine if they would like to employ you. Three days after handing my resume and showing off my limited Tagalog skills to Brian, the owner and chef of Ihaw Ihaw, he called me to come in for a trial. I show up and discover that someone from their incredibly small staff, the person who was supposed to train me, called in sick. So I am basically thrown in to run the front of the restaurant during lunch time. I was to serve lunch specials from the precooked foods in warming trays, run the cash register, take orders for those ordering off the menu, clean, and be my naturally, charming self. I played restaurant when I was a kid, and have eaten at many restaurants, so I had a good idea of what to do.  Wearing a big “Training," badge, I broke a few bowls and had to void a couple of transactions on the cash register after entering the wrong amounts, but besides that I think I did pretty well.  The restaurant wasn’t busy, but there was a steady flow of customers. I even had a few compliments on my service. Best part of all was that I got a free meal. 

After my trial, I asked Brian how I did.  He told me I got the job and explained that I was going to have an on-call position.  After hiring previous backpackers, he knew that it would be a risk hiring me, as most backpackers have commitment issues and are known to change their minds from one day to the next.  I told him I understood.  It was true.  I wasn’t planning on working there long.   

I asked him the pay rate, which was pretty shitty.  He further explained that he would pay me in cash, because doing all the paperwork to make me an actual employee was too much of a hassle for him.  So pretty much I was illegal. Cool!

It was a shit deal…but it was a job offer. The restaurant was only open 26 hours a week, and being on-call, I wasn’t guaranteed a certain amount of hours.  I would have to work all 26 hours to cover my living expenses and be able to save enough for my flight back home, which at this rate, would take a couple of years.  So, I continued my search for work. 

I pushed my pride and ego aside to try to find work on a farm.  Farm work is a popular job for backpackers as it pays well, but the work is, as you can imagine, fucking hard.  The closest farms near Cairns were banana farms.  Since harvesting bananas involves an extremely high chance of encountering spiders and snakes that option was out.  I contacted other nearby farms that were harvesting apples, avocados, and vegetables.  Out of the seven farms, six weren’t hiring.  I left one voicemail.

So ok, getting a good-paying job anytime soon didn’t seem possible and Cairns was losing its appeal. There isn’t much to do here unless you party every night or shell out a couple hundred bucks to play in the reef.

One whole week had passed after my trial without being called in to work. 

Australia is nice, but I don’t want to invest anymore time and money to work here. What’s my next move?  Bali? The flight is crazy expensive.  Thailand for massage school?  Again, the flight is too expensive.  Hong Kong? After much thought and deliberation, I decided to save my money and travel to a country I’ve never really explored…the USA.

[ingreezy]

My Birthday on the Reef

As I move ever so slowly towards death, I wanted to celebrate my 31st birthday like a P-I-M-P should.  I just completed 9 days of manual labor, so fuck it, I want to do what I really came to Australia for: the Great Barrier Reef (and Tim Tams).

So I flew to Airlie Beach. As soon as I arrived, I went to a reservation center and booked a 3-night boat cruise that would take me to the Whitsunday Islands and the outer reef.  What I should have done, but failed to do, was consult the traveler bible that is Trip Advisor, before I booked. 

For the particular company that I was sailing with, passengers were instructed not to bring any bags with zippers. WTF?! The company’s reason was due to a past bed bug infestation (eww) on the ship.  They claim that bed bug eggs can live and be transported in zippers. Uhhhhhhhh…

Then there was the issue with the ships’ water conservation policy. Due to the ships’ limitations in water storage, we were told that each passenger was only allowed a one-minute shower per day.  

One minute showers?! You’re kidding right? Is that even possible? To take a one-minute shower, we were instructed to wet ourselves for a few seconds, turn off the shower, wash the bits that need to be washed, then rinse, which should equal to about a minute’s worth of water time.  Seemed impossible, but I managed to do it…well maybe I showered for a minute and thirty seconds, but I am a bit of a rebel.  Showers became the running joke on the boat.  Myself, and other passengers would play card games and try to use seconds in the shower as currency.

The sleeping arrangements were…intimate. 

Then there was the smell that came from the toilet (It seems like I always have an issue with a toilet). It smelled like rotting water and everything bad in the world.  I don’t know if it had to do with the ship’s pipes, as one passenger theorized…but it stank. The smell was so bad at times that one couldn’t even be in the room.  A combination of the smell coming from the toilet and a rocking boat does not equal a goodtime.  I almost died going to the bathroom one morning.  The ship was heading towards the reef and sailing through huge swells on the open ocean. After being thrown around in the bathroom, I finally managed to get my ass on the toilet. But with the boat rocking like crazy, the water in the toilet did not want to stay put…so that was a nice morning surprise.  After that near death experience, I hurried to the boat’s deck, fighting the urge to hurl.  I got out of my cabin just as the boat rocked to one side. I tried to grab a wall to stabilize myself and ended up falling and bursting through the door of the cabin across from mine.  I stared at the half-asleep faces of the other passengers, quickly apologized and laughed, shutting the cabin door, and stumbled my way upstairs. 

Oh and I have to promote Dramamine.  That shit really works. 

Besides the living conditions on the boat, I got to play in the Great Barrier Reef! Freaking amazing! A free introductory dive was included, which was pretty much a crash course in diving.  Essential points and skills were taught.  After being tested and taken on a short dive, we were now allowed to dive up to 30 feet. Because I had some diving experience from my botched attempt at being a certified diver, I remembered most of what I had learned, and my experience diving this time was mostly comfortable.  So when we finally got to the reef on the second day, I went diving! 

It was like swimming in a really beautiful and colorful fish tank. I never realized how much fish shit, until I watched them constantly do it on the reef.  Parrotfish are even cooler because they shit straight sand.

Another highlight was snorkeling at the “stepping stones,” a series of large coral tables or plateaus that are separated by deep channels of water. When you look at them from the top, they look like stepping stones, hence the name. I was on the search for sharks (I was unsuccessful on this trip). Myself, along with an Israeli named Gal, and a German named Kevin, made our way to our boat, swimming from one coral table to the next. When we made it to our boat, we were greeted by giant trevally fish, who were still hanging around after one of our guides fed them some chicken earlier.  To the amusement of Kevin, I screamed underwater at the sight of them.  They were pretty huge.  One of them could probably feed our whole boat.  After a couple of minutes of us trying to touch one of them, we gave up realizing that they were too fast for us, and climbed back onto the ship.  That is when one of the other passengers informed me that one of the GT bit his hand, rather voraciously, from looking at the long and deep cuts.  So that information would have been useful before we tried to touch them…

I am glad to be off that boat and taking showers longer than one minute.  So, in conclusion…the Great Barrier Reef is cool.  I want to play in it as much as financially possible.