201200440 Kim Minji/Minimum amount of money to travel/Thursday1-3pm

Minimum amount of money to travel

 

What are the benefits of traveling? It gives you experience and you could learn how cultures are different with each other. It also widens one's mental vision. The vacation is the great chance to travel aboard for students. However, here is the practical problem. Do you think the overseas trips take a lot of money? Many people think it is true. I visited Australia(Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns), France(Paris and Nice), Cambodia(Siem Reap), Japan(Osaka), Guam, Belgium(Brussels and Brugge), Netherlands(Dan Haag and Amsterdam), China(Beijing), Macau and Hong Kong. However, I'm not richer than my friends and I didn't spend more money than the other travelers. Here, I'm going to talk about how to minimize your travel costs and it will help your travel plan.

 

The first step is booking a flight ticket. I paid $560 for the round ticket to Netherlands. Also, I had a chance to buy the round ticket to New York for $480. I think these prices are wonderfully fair costs for students who have not sufficient money. Many airplane companies have events with cheap price ticket. If you search their web pages or price comparison sites like Skyscanner or Kayak, you would easily find the tickets with low price. I recommend that searching at least four month earlier than your expected departure day. Also, if you are hard to click the all types of options like day, time, destination, nonstop, etc. than joining the internet café or community sites is better. There are many people who are interesting in overseas travels so they share the information about the cheap price tickets. If you join the famous Korean community sites like PPOMPPU, a lot of useful information is uploaded.

 

Second, you should book the rooms to stay. There are many types of lodging. The most common way to reserve the room is by Agoda or Hotels.com. You can compare the hotels prices by Tripadviser. Recently, Airbnb and CouchSurfing are popular. Airbnb introduces you to the house of native. I used Airbnb when I visited Nice. The owner Clement left me a key and let me use any of his house's utility. The location of house was great and I could cook in his house. The advantage of Airbnb is cheap price compared with the hotels with same location. Also there are unique house like yacht and camping car so Airbnb will give you the different experience.

Using CouchSurfing is the best way to minimize your cost. Because it's free! The native owner chooses the people to stay, and if you are selected, then you can stay with the owner in his or her house. You and the owner both can learn each culture.  

 

     Lastly, using Tripadviser and Google map application are recommended. These applications contain a lot of information by the traveler around the world. They review almost every restaurants, tourist attractions, historic sites, hotels, etc. If you don't any walk-through plan, don't worry about. By using these two app, you could earn time and money on the actual location. For using the mobile data, buying USIM chip is cheaper than registering Korean mobile company's product. Therefore, buying USIM chip for data is the first thing you should do when you arrive at the local airport.

 

     Paulo Coelho said that "Travel is never a matter of money but of courage." However, money is the matter for students who don't make any money. I admired the traveler since I was elementary school children. I read many travel reviews and always thought that they are rich people. However, I learned that there are many ways to reduce your costs while traveling. Here are the three steps you could easily follow. Booking the ticket earlier, reserving the rooms by new types of sites, and using the applications. I'm sure that these will make your trip more comfortable.