You’re Doing Travel Wrong

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Thwarted by the weather!

Ah, travel! The exhilarating experience of upending your entire life to join insufferable crowds, destroy foreign monuments, and consume bizarre foods, all at a premium cost. Sure, you make lifelong memories of standing in long ticket lines, but you always return from your vacation in need of a…vacation.

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Sale! Normally 2,000 Won – but now only 3,900!

The fact is that you’re doing travel all wrong. You could be standing in much longer lines, wearing your own smelly clothes, and paying more money. As an expert traveler (self-certified) let me educate you. (See disclaimer at end)

The first thing you’re doing wrong is staying in a hotel. Maid service, individually wrapped soaps, and a minibar minifridge? No, that won’t do. You need to be staying in Airbnb. Sure they’re destroying the local housing market and forcing out locals, but those people were going to yell at you anyway for stopping on the sidewalk to take a photo of a vintage (“distressed”) door. With an airbnb, you have no idea whether there will be any soap, you might be in a graffiti covered building, and you could get yourself and your host evicted! Ah, memories!

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The International Package

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When things don’t go your way…

I’ve traveled enough to have low expectations for physical mail overseas. Why is it easier to get a person across the Atlantic than it is to get a Fedex envelope? So I knew that trying to receive something here would be a plan of last resort. I hoped to go the entire trip without needing anything. I made it about a week.

Short version:

  • I needed a replacement credit card
  • I can’t get packages at my Airbnb apartment
  • I tried sending it to my host’s mother’s house
  • No one understands international addresses
  • A nearby coffee shop came to the rescue

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