Tag Archives: Travel Tips
Travel Tip: In Hawai’i, Save Big by Renting a House Instead of a Hotel Room
Most folks traveling to Hawai’i plan on staying at one of those posh beach-front resorts. But not us. For one thing: snorathon! For another, with eight adults and a toddler traveling, our hotel costs would add up super-fast.
That’s why I decided to research renting houses instead of multiple squishy hotel rooms. I’d first looked into this when trying to find a place on the beach for us this summer in San Diego, checking out sites like TripAdvisor.com and VRBO.com. Alas, everything was booked up then because we ended up traveling during Comic Con (but not actually going to the crazy event). But with a good six months lead time on our Hawai’i adventure, I figured it might just work out for us there. And it did.
The rationale was simple.
-First, this is supposed to be a family trip. If everyone traipses off to his or her respective hotel room after our daily outings, it really takes the family time out of the whole experience. Renting a house offers you that shared common space, a living room or maybe a lanai (that’s Hawaiian for deck or terrace), a place that everyone can chill out together.
-Secondly, a house or multiple rooms in a home rental mean a cheaper deal over all, especially when you divide it eight ways! Plus, people owning these homes are frequently paying a mortgage, so they need the rental income — and will make it worth your while.
-Thirdly, renting a house or apartment means you get access to a kitchen. With a big, fussy bunch like ours, that will no doubt be a life saver. We can cut costs by making some meals at home — breakfast at the least, but likely some lunches and dinners here and there, too — and everyone can eat what they like when they like. It just makes mealtimes easier all around.
So keeping these things in mind, I set about house-hunting in Hawai’i. (And anyone who knows me knows just how much I LOVE house-hunting.) While we’re staying in a two-bedroom suite at the Wyndham resort in Waikiki (which comes complete with a kitchen), I found a fabulous house with a huge terrace (with peekaboo ocean views!) in a little town called Pai’a, off the beaten path in Maui. And I found an equally fabulous house with fireplace and back-deck jacuzzi in Volcano on the Big Island.
It remains to be seen how the Charaipotra-Dhillon clan reacts to my master plan, but for now, I’m really excited to hit the hay in our second home(s) in Hawai’i.
Photo Courtesy Ohia Plantation House
Travel Tips: Five Travel Tips To Get The Best Prices on Airline Tickets
One of the most annoying things about travel is exactly that: traveling. I’ll admit that taking rickshaws in India, or riding on sleeper buses in China is bloody good fun. Flying, however, is the most boring form of transportation, but in most cases it has to be done before the fun travel begins. Even more boring than flying is looking up plane tickets to so you can fly to your destination. Flying is an efficient form of travel, but it’s also the most boring, and the most expensive part of the trip. And waiting at the airport is just plane boring. No, that wasn’t a typo. It was a deliberate attempt at being clever.
Before we had Kavya, the initial flights were the only things we would book. Everything else, we winged. We didn’t pre-book hotel rooms, or train tickets. We just showed up and hoped for the best. In most cases everything worked out. The one place we had a spot of trouble was in the city of Bhubaneshwar, where every room had been booked because of some conference. So, we picked up our Lonely Planet and headed off to the coastal town of Puri, a few miles down the road, and got a lovely room right on the beach.
Flights really are the one thing we labor over though because the money we save simply by booking a day or two ahead or behind is pretty significant, particularly when you go to a country where street food costs under $1.
Our upcoming trip to Hawaii this winter is going to be an interesting one because we’re in charge of planning a family trip involving my parents, Sona’s parents and sister, and of course our 1 year old, Kavya. Winter in Hawaii is the high season, a period we usually go out of our way to avoid because it involves much more planning. And in a place like Hawaii, not only do hotels get booked up, so do rental cars. Even inter-island flights. And unfortunately, while me and Sona are down with vagabonding in Hawaii, everyone else has responsibilities, so a lot of it has to be pre-booked.
Anyway, here some travel tips we’ve learned over the years for getting good deals on air fare. Some of it is common sense, while some of it is just knowing how to play the game!
Tip #1:
Travel Tip: Four Airports with Free Wifi
Stuck at Newark Airport
I was pretty ambivalent about the Continental and United merger that took place in 2010. Even when we couldn’t check in online to the first leg of our flight from Newark, New Jersey to Fresno, California because Continental claimed that flight was on United, and United claimed it was on Continental. I figured we’d sort it out over the phone, or worse case, in person. When we finally managed to get through to agents at both United and Continental via telephone, the best either of them could say was, “We can’t access the flight information because that flight is on Continental/United. But I do see you have seats. So I wouldn’t worry about it.” Guess what happened the next morning when we tried checking in at 5:40 a.m. for our 7a.m. flight?
Instead of playing the daft game on the phone, we ended up playing it in person shuffling back and forth from tweedle-dee at the Continental counter and tweedle-dum on the United counter. End result: we were stuck at Newark International until a flight at 10am and then had an eight hour layover in Los Angeles which is loads of fun with a ten month old. We weren’t offered meal coupons, or even a “sorry.” But aside from the flight situation, I was also annoyed that neither LAX or Newark had free wifi (they cost $8 for the daily rate, and I didn’t bother looking to see how much the monthly service was).So, I decided to do one of the few things I could do without my internet: compile a list of airports we had been to that had free wifi on Microsoft Word. Here they are:
Neither of us are strangers to travel, but we are very different travelers. Navdeep can brush aside a cockroach from his food and continue eating. Sona flies into hysterics at any creepy-crawlies (real or imagined) within a ten mile radius. 
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