solo female travel

Solo Female Travel

In many western societies, there are a lot of things that are sometimes thought of as strange when they are done by yourself. Going out to a restaurant, seeing a movie, and taking a trip all fit that bill. For women, there is sometimes a stigma around traveling alone in particular. There are a huge number of barriers to solo female travel, from societal norms to safety concerns to cultures that don’t quite approve of women doing things alone. My guest today is Dr. Keri Schwab. Keri is a professor at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo. Keri has recently conducted a series of studies about solo female travelers on social media networks, and she has found that although many more women  

Woman working

Gender Discrimination in the Tourism Workplace

The tourism workplace is fast paced and always on. During holiday periods when most people are taking their vacations, people who work in the tourism industry are at their busiest. There has recently been a movement toward understanding and promoting equality in the workplace, and tourism is no different. Researchers are constantly trying to understand how the tourism workplace can be more equitable for people of all genders, races, and sexualities, just to name a few. My guest today is Dr. Inês Carvalho. Inês is an Assistant Professor at Universidade Europeia in Lisbon, Portugal. Her research interests include areas such as tourism and gender, languages and tourism, and literary tourism. She has recently devoted her time to understanding gender in hospitality and tourism management and has found that hidden discrimination toward women in the workplace is largely connected to societal norms that linger from the past.

LGBTQI+ Travel

A variety of places in the world have recently moved towards equality for LGBTQI+ people – from the legalization of gay marriage to the focus on equality from many major corporate entities, things seem to be slowly getting better. But what about the travel world? Has social progress led to better travel conditions for LGBTQI+ travelers? My guests today are Dr. Clifford Lewis from Charles Sturt University and Dr. Faith Ong from the University of Queensland. Clifford and Faith have been studying LGBTQI+ travel in Australia and Singapore for the past several years. I caught up with them at the TTRA international conference in Melbourne this summer to talk about the issues that LGBTQI+ travelers face, including being lumped together as if they are one homogeneous group. They also discuss what you can do as a traveler to be an ally on the road.

xenophobic tourist

The Xenophobic Tourist

One of the main motivations for travel is to experience the unknown. Some people travel to learn about new cultures, others travel to eat new food, still others travel to meet new people. You might think that people who have a dislike or prejudice against people from other places, also known as xenophobes, then wouldn’t be interested in traveling to other countries. However, my guest on the podcast today, Dr. Florian Kock from the Copenhagen Business School, has done a series of studies that says otherwise. He says historically that xenophobia is rooted in evolutionary biology, and that in the past, a fear of the ‘other’ was actually a healthy response because people who were different could potentially be a threat. These days having a little bit of xenophobia is normal, but being aware of how you feel and reflecting on it can help you overcome your fears, and there are certain types of travel, like group tours, that can help you experience different cultures in a less risky way.

Travel Agent 2.0

Travel agent 2.0

With the incredible popularity of online travel booking websites like Expedia, AirBnB, and Kayak, you’d be justified in thinking that travel agents are a thing of the past. While the traditional travel agent who simply books your tickets for you has essentially disappeared, many have changed gears to provide products or services that go above and beyond what you could get if you booked a trip by yourself. From credit at the spa to upgraded rooms or seats to private wine tastings in some of the most exclusive cellars in the world, travel advisors are creating customized itineraries that fit you and your travel party like a glove. My guest today is Caitlin Hoffmann, Owner and operator of Wandering Eye Co and Travel Advisor. She’s been creating specialized itineraries for her clients over the last several years, and is here to shed light on how travel advisors can bring you experiences and value above and beyond what you’d normally expect on a trip. For her, the process all starts with getting to know your traveler personality better.

It’s About More Than Getting Naked at the Beach

Nudist travel is about pushing back against the societal norms which those of us in the textiled world face every day. Norms that tell us about our social status and gender. Norms that tell us what is cool and what isn’t. Norms that tell us we need to look a certain way or be uncomfortable with the way our bodies look. My guest on this podcast episode is Dr. Carlos Monterrubio, a professor at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico. He’s been conducting research on the nudist travel movement over the past several years, and has discovered that it is about so much more than just getting naked on the beach.

Don’t be a Barbie Savior

In this episode of The Trip Doctor Podcast, I talk with University of Hawaii at Manoa professor Mary Mostafanezhad about the do’s and don’ts of volunteer tourism. Hint: there are plenty of great ways you can help out in all sorts of travel destinations, but taking pictures with impoverished children in less developed countries doesn’t really help anyone.

The cheapest way to use your phone when traveling abroad

Unless the goal of your trip is to unplug, you’re probably going to want to stay connected via your smartphone when traveling abroad. Whether you want to FaceTime your cat, Skype your grandma, or upload pictures of every meal to Instagram, there are a lot of options for getting talk, text, and data while you’re away from home. Figuring out the best choice for you depends on a lot of variables, but there are essentially three main options:

  1. Pay the international fee on your regular plan so it will work (usually) as soon as you get off the plane
  2. Forego using the phone part of your smartphone and just use Wifi to connect
  3. Buy a SIM card when you arrive at your destination

The short answer is that there is no single best way to go. For some travelers, having access for every minute of every day during your trip is important – how else will your many followers see a Snap of your midnight snack? For others, all you need is to call someone to let them know you’ve made it to your destination safely. For others, you’d prefer nobody to know you’re traveling anyways.

Important notes about data use and communication apps while traveling

Before we get into calculating the costs for each option, I’d like to note that the average traveler tends to use MORE data while they are abroad than when they are home. There are several important reasons why:

  1. Think about what you normally do to pass the time while you’re in transit somewhere (unless you’re driving)? More than likely you check social media, read the news, message your friends, etc. Normally, people don’t have THAT much travel time in our every day lives, so when you are abroad and taking planes, trains, and automobiles to and fro from your hotel, restaurants, attractions, etc. you burn more data that you normally would.
  2. It is also likely that your phone connects to Wifi when you are at home or at work, so you generally are NOT using data during those times either. Depending on your hotel, you may have free Wifi available – but generally hotel Wifi will boot you off the network as soon as it senses you’re no longer using it, and it can be a pain to reconnect all the time.
  3. When you are traveling, you probably like to stay connected by messaging, video calling, and uploading gobs of pictures to social media.
  4. It is important to remember that if you use an iPhone and are text messaging other people with iPhones – you are using DATA rather than text messages, because that is the way Apple iMessage works.

These factors add up to you generally using much more data than you do in your normal every day existence.

It is also important to note that you can often get by on ONLY data, as there are a ton of services out there these days that let you text, call, and video call using only your data. Examples of these services are as follows:

  • iMessage and FaceTime – Allow you to message, voice call, and video call from Apple phones to Apple phones
  • Whatsapp – Allows you to message, voice call, and video call any phone with the app and data access. Whatsapp is now owned by Facebook, and there are rumors it will be integrated with Facebook messenger sometime in the future.
  • WeChat – By far the most popular communication app in China and several other Asian countries. Allows you to message, voice call, and video call any phone with the app and data access.
  • Skype – Used to be the ONLY option for messaging, voice, and video calling using data, but has been eclipsed in almost every way by many competitors. Allows you to message, voice call, and video call any phone with the app and data access.
  • There are many others out there, those four are just the most popular.
There are a ton of apps out there that let you communicate effectively using only data

Option #1: Pay the international fee on your regular plan so it will work (usually) as soon as you get off the plane.

The easiest option for most travelers is to add an ‘international plan’ to the phone plan you already pay for. Most carriers have partners in countries across the globe that will connect you as soon as you arrive. While this is the most convenient option, it is also almost always the most expensive, by a wide margin. I’ll use two recent trips of mine as examples so you can get a feel for what this sort of thing costs. I’ll also compare these costs to your other options as I discuss them later!

These examples are from my personal Verizon Wireless account, where my wife and I share 8gb of data per month. We both have the iPhone 7. Verizon is admittedly pricier than some other carriers, so your costs may vary depending on your provider and plan. My plan gives me basically three options.

  1. A ‘Travel Pass’ that utilizes my talk, text and data allowances (again, 8GB). This costs $10/day per line.
  2. A monthly travel plan that includes 100 minutes of talk, 100 text messages, and .5 GB of data). This costs $56/month per line.
  3. A monthly travel plan that includes 250 minutes of talk, 1,000 text messages, and 2 GB of data. This costs $104/month per line.

Overages on the last two plan cost .35/minute, .05/text, and $25/.5 GB.

Trip #1 – One week in Portugal.

  1. Assuming I use the travel pass every day, this option would cost me $70. If my wife is traveling with me it will costs us double that. But remember, I’m probably using more data than we do at home, so chance are I’ll burn through a big portion of our 8 GB lickity-split and have to pay for extra that month when we return home. Let’s say a grand total of around $90 for the one week trip.
  2. If I’m realistic, I can get away with 100 minutes of talk and 100 sms messages, because I’m using an iPhone and most of the people I am texting are using iPhones, so that is data rather than texts. But I’m guessing I’ll use around 1 GB of data for a week rather than the .5 GB that comes with the plan, which will cost me an extra $25. The grand total for this option will be about $80 – but my precious data from my regular plan will be preserved.
  3. This plan is probably unnecessary here as the 2 GB is overkill for a one week trip unless I’m streaming movies before bed, and I’ll likely be able to connect to my hotel Wifi for that. Grand total $104 for the week.

As you can see, for one person these plans will each cost me about $80-$900 and for two people it will go up to anywhere from $160-$210. That amount of money can buy you an extra night or two in a decent hotel!

Trip #2 – Two months in China

  1. Assuming I use TravelPass every day, this price becomes truly outrageous. $10/day for 60 days would cost me $600 for the two month trip…and that is on top of the monthly fee that I’m already paying for my regular phone service. Add on any extra data that I use while I’m traveling and it just becomes absurd.
  2. For this option, there is no way I’m getting away with using .5 GB of data per month in China – my FaceTime calls to my son alone are gonna burn at least twice that. So let’s say I use a higher than average 5gb of data per month. I can probably get away with 100 minutes and 100 text messages if I’m careful, so we won’t add on any fees for that. That puts us at a grand total of $56/month x 2 ($112) + $25/every .5 GB x 2 ($425) over for a grand total of $537 for two months. This plan preserves all of my regular data so my wife can Facetime me from wherever she pleases and not worry about using all of our data.
  3. Using the same calculations as the previous plan (although with this option I don’t have to be as stingy with my calls and text messages!) – I would pay around $508 for two months.

These plans range from $540 to $600 for service in China for two months – think about what else you could do on your vacation with that money…especially considering the alternatives I’ll cover next.

Option #2: Don’t pay anything extra and just use Wifi in your destination.

This option has become increasingly less attractive as mobile travel apps have developed to a point where they are becoming essential to many travel activities. From checking in for your flight to getting a ride in a taxi or rideshare (like Uber) to opening your favorite maps app to figure out where you are – using data while on the go is a must for the tech savvy traveler. However – for those of you who prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, you can absolutely get by with only using Wifi hotspots to connect during your travels.

Searching for internet cafes is a thing of the past (and probably something only people over 30 can remember doing on their travels). In today’s globalized society, you can generally find free Wifi at your hotel, in cafe’s and even in places you wouldn’t normally consider like public libraries. Some cities are even starting to create a public Wifi system that provides free Wifi everywhere. Those of you who are security conscious might be concerned about connecting to hotspots that are generally not password protected (or if they are, everyone has the password), which does increase your risk of encountering someone using port scanners, etc. to try and steal your information.

This option is FREE unless you want to pay for a service like Boingo, which provides access to more than 1 million Wifi hotspots across the globe for a fee of around $15/month.

Internet cafes: Where we used to pay $10 for 20 mins of internet access @ 28.8kpbs

Option #3: Buy a SIM card from a local carrier when you arrive

In any mobile phone, the hardware of the phone is pretty much the same. You have a touch screen, a processor, some memory, the antenna that talks to the mobile phone network towers, the antenna that talks to Wifi hotspots, and a SIM card. The SIM card is a key piece of hardware because it tells your phone which mobile phone network to connect to, and how to do so. The vast majority of phones these days come ‘unlocked’ (meaning you can replace your SIM card at any point without a password or code), but its worth checking with your mobile provider to make sure before you travel if you’re planning to get a new SIM card.

Getting a new SIM card is fairly simple, but may require a little bit of research and/or local help once you arrive. You can purchase a SIM card from most local mobile phone carriers upon arrival at your destination, and some even have kiosks at the airport to make your life really easy (although be sure to check if they charge more for service there as sometimes there is a convenience fee added on). Depending on the country you are visiting, the employees at the mobile phone store may or may not speak your language, so it is sometimes useful to have your hotel concierge or B&B host call ahead for you (some will even go with you to the store to translate!) to check. You will also likely need to bring your passport along, as they’ll take your info to sign you up for temporary service.

Most countries have at least a few options for mobile carriers, so doing a quick internet search before you go to identify which one is right for you is probably your best bet. There are dozens of internet forums out there where locals answer questions about the best local mobile phone service. From my perspective, the most fascinating thing about mobile phone service in other countries is that it is SO. MUCH. CHEAPER. than what I pay for my phone service in the United States. I’ll continue the examples of Portugal and China to show the differences in price.

Trip #1: One week in Portugal

For my trip to Portugal, I decided to go with only data access, as my wife and the rest of my family have iPhones and I am happy to iMessage/FaceTime them all. I went with a very popular European provider, Vodafone, based on a recommendation from a local colleague. In a transaction that lasted a grand total of 10 minutes, I provided my passport and phone, and the person at the Vodafone store had a lovely chat in perfect English in which I purchased 50 GB of data (YES, FIFTY!) for a total of 20 euros. The plan was good for one month, so for my one week trip I paid a total of approximately $22 USD and was completely connected to all of my websites, social media, news apps, etc. and family at home.

Trip #2: Two months in China

In China, I had the luxury of student assistants to help me – which is good because the people at the mobile phone stores did not speak any English (nor do I speak Chinese at a level even resembling enough to navigate purchasing mobile phone service). However, with my students’ help, I was able to purchase a plan with unlimited everything, including, talk, text, and data for 99 RMB per month, which converts to approximately $14. Let that sink in. Unlimited. Everything. $14/month! And we’re not talking about slow service, we’re talking blazing fast 4G that does everything pretty much as fast as my home internet connection, and I haven’t found a dead zone yet.

Although this option involves the most work, it is also likely to provide you with the best service for the least amount of money.

Never underestimate the power of a local SIM card

The Bottom Line

In almost every travel scenario, getting a local SIM card is your best bet for service and price when you want to use your phone when traveling abroad. Comparatively, my data only service for a one week in Portugal cost me $25 with a local SIM card rather than more than $150 if I had gone with my provider’s international plan. In China, the difference is even greater, as I paid $28 for unlimited everything compared to the more than $540 I would have spent with my provider’s international plan. Maybe on a really short trip the convenience of your provider’s international plan might make sense, but the cost adds up very quickly if you use it for more than a few days. Of course, you can always get away with only using Wifi at your destination, but your connectivity is likely going to suffer as a result.

Getting to the roots of what makes wine so good

From Napa and Sonoma to Bordeaux, Champagne, and Chianti, the wine tasting experience is pretty similar. You go to the tasting room, see their decorations, taste their wines, and maybe see some of the vineyards out the window. Many of us have had this experience before. But the winemaking process is about so much more than just the final product. How many of us have talked to the family who owns the winery? The farmer who grew the grapes? The winemaker who decided on the blend? How many of us have held the soil in our hands? My guest today is Dr. Byron Marlowe from Washington State University Tri-Cities. He has recently worked toward understanding and creating tourism experiences that go beyond what is in the wine glass to get to know the story behind the wine. All of the elements of the terroir, he argues, will tell you a lot more about how what is in your glass came to be, and create a more authentic and memorable experience.