The GlobeTrotr Basic Travel Kit

Dragon's Back trail in Hong Kong

I've gone over a few ways to get the most points via credit cards along with some strategies to get the cheapest flights but none of those get into what you really need to travel into the mysterious foreign lands waiting for you. Below are some quick and easy tips for beginners to get started with feeling more comfortable while traveling. Some of these may not be exactly budget friendly (like a foreign data plan) but they can help you be prepared as best as possible for most situations when you arrive.

Travel Ideas via Instagram

Asilah, Morocco via @BeautifulDestinations on Instagram

Instagram is useful for much more than scanning through millions of pictures from your friend's lunches and dinners. It is honestly one of my main sources for places to add to my list to see in life. Another great option is Reddit via r/earthporn but I'll let you investigate that one on your own. As far as Instagram goes, a few of my favorites are @worldtravelbook, @beautifuldestinations, @nakedplanet, @cbezerraphotos, @chrisburkard, @elialocardi, and @wonderful_places. Below (and above) is a collection of some of their latest posts that I personally really like and plan on investigating further.

Also, if you are looking to get into photography at all, some of these even may have tips and you can go to their personal websites to see what equipment they use and what techniques were used to get the shots in some cases. You can also purchase some of their pictures and get them framed for your apartment in some cases. Once you follow any of these guys, make sure to check out their websites to see which pictures are for sale and buy one so they can keep feeding us beautiful pictures from around the world!

Flight Deals on 4/3

Oh wow, where do I begin with these deals? If you're trying to go to Asia from basically anywhere in the US, now is the time, and I'm not joking. Ever heard of flights to Taipei for $529? Or maybe to Ho Chi Minh City for $560? There are other deals in the $700 range for most places (Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Hanoi, etc.) but clearly the two aforementioned deals are far superior, especially because connecting flights elsewhere from Taipei and HCMC are relatively easy to find. So would you rather go to California or to Asia? If you have the vacation days from work, I would highly recommend a trip to Asia as it truly is a different experience from anything you can encounter here or in Europe. These flights were found from September on but I believe they end around the first week of November. Depending on where you are going, these would normally be on United or its partners like ANA.

Back to the east but not the far east we have Europe. These flights are tougher to find and quite honestly, the majority of them are just decent deals unless you can find a legitimate stopover as I have mentioned before.  These stopovers still exist for the most part like to Iceland/Amsterdam or Iceland/Norway via Icelandair which you would have to book directly on their site for the best deal. Google Flights attempts to find these deals but normally finds a more expensive version of them (e.g. $760 found by Google, $540 found on Icelandair).