Added 2009 Travel   As it turns out, I will be doing more travel this year than previously announced. I had said that following all the travel last year involving three major trips, 2008 being my busiest travel year ever, the “Polynesian Triangle” trip (including QV/Polynesia/NZ) at the beginning of 2009 would be all for this year. As a matter of fact, I even cancelled (and lost a small deposit on) a cruise trip on the New England coast for this fall, not only because, given the general economic picture, it was well-advised to cut back, but also because I had decided the cruise was too pricey, and was not much different from a coastal cruise I had done in the same area in the ‘80’s. In compensation, I said I would still go to New England, but for just a week, in the form of a visit to Cape Cod and Provincetown in September, where I hadn’t been in a very long time, and never for as long as a full week. But that would be it.

In the time since my last website posting, aside from business work for Eden Bay in the Dominican Republic, I spent several weeks reviewing earlier plans for, and extending, the major trip centering on Australia starting mid-August 2010. This large trip is now all blocked out, but still without precise dates, and no hotel or rail reservations are made, with one exception. I wanted to include the Eastern & Oriental Express luxury train, which goes only once a month, taking two nights from Singapore via Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok. I had heard that, quite unusually, there were now four single compartments available, so that I wouldn’t have to pay the 50% single supplement. I now have a deposit on the trip I wanted for August 2010.

Beyond that, I booked Provincetown for a week. I waited until I could book the quieter and less expensive shoulder season starting on September 15 at the inn I’d decided on, booked round trip on Amtrak’s Acela high-speed train to Boston (2006/11), and round-trip on the Fast Ferry from Boston to Provincetown. Dexter’s Inn is walkable from the wharf, and a car rental place is walkable from the Inn. Although this is, as you see, primarily a non-driving trip, I have reserved a car for just one day to drive around the Cape to revisit areas from past visits.

And that would have seemed to have been it, all neatly tied in cozy packages. Until, as they say, I walked to my mailbox in July and was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. So I’m going to Asia in late October.

Here’s what happened. I belong, as many do, to multiple frequent-client programs. The only one that I’ve found useful is the Starwood program, which gives me free hotel stays at Sheraton, Westin, and some others. I’ve always found the airline mileage programs consummately useless, since one rarely flies on the same airline enough to gather enough points before they end up expiring anyway. I don’t remember ever getting any freebies from any airline or hotel program other than Starwood, to the point that I rarely kept track of the miles or points involved.

I do have to say that we did over time fly frequently enough to Minnesota on Northwest Airlines that both Beverly and I had collected some points there, and when she was gone, I was able to—for a fee, I might add—roll over her NW account into mine. Still there wasn’t really enough to do much with.

But Delta Airlines has merged with Northwest, and is slowly absorbing it, so that, Delta will be the largest airline in the world, and, when it starts up its upcoming route to Sydney, it will be the only airline with routes to all six inhabited continents. (But never mix quantity with quality, since Delta still remains only an average three-star airline on Skytrax.) With this absorption, Delta is merging mileage programs, and the letter that arrived in my mailbox urged me, for a small bonus, to roll over my NW miles (which include Beverly’s) into my Delta Sky Miles program, and lo and behold, I had over 68,000 miles in one single account for the first time ever.

[Now at this point I’ll say that I took a careful look at all my point programs, and have now started keeping a more careful eye on totals. I found that my Amtrak total was 10,910, and a one-way first-class trip on the Acela was just 10,000 (business class is 8,500), so the return trip on the Acela from Boston will be free, since I hadn’t bought those tickets yet. On the trip up, I also bought First Class, since that includes meals and drinks, and the price is a reasonable indulgence I enjoy, not like overpriced airline First-Class fares.]

So these Delta miles, the offer I couldn’t refuse, were burning a hole in my pocket, especially since they were all due to expire at the end of next February. I know there are tricky ways to initiate minor activity within an account to keep miles from expiring, but I didn’t want to start taking chances with the first time I had a bonanza in a mileage account, and anyway, I now live by the mantra of Carpe diem!

I didn’t want to waste the miles on places I’d recently been, or nearby ones that don’t need that many miles, so I looked to Asia. Some Asian countries would have been too big a bite to take on such short notice, and anyway, tended to require too many miles. And then there was Japan, which needed 60,000. It was of reasonable size to do the type of visit I’d wanted, and a trip was born. But there’s still more.

I decided on destinations, hotels, and a potential rail route, and started getting quite enthusiastic about the project, but found I didn’t quite fill as much time as the distance to be traveled warranted. So where else in East Asia could I go as an add-on? On the Transsiberian trip in 2005 I went to Vladivostok, so I’d been in that part of Russia, and stopped in South Korea on the way. China was MUCH to big a project for a mere add-on, and I had no interest in, or enough miles for, South-East Asia. But Taiwan is just south of Japan and I’d always been interested in going there. They also have the new high-speed rail line that just opened two years ago and that runs the length of the country in about 90 minutes. On top of it, Taiwan could act as “China Lite”, making a good combination with Japan.

I do have to commend Delta on its new website, especially the part where you can cash in your “Sky Miles”, which was eminently helpful. You could enter destinations, and it would tell you how many miles you’d need to go there, and also play around with days of the week to see what fit your needs best. I found that Sundays were far and away the best times to go, so I will be going both directions on Sundays. Then, the open-jaws concept came to mind, and that’s what worked.

You may not know the term, although you may have used the concept. Airlines give round-trip flights, say from A to B, certain financial advantages. But what if you want to fly from A to B, then get from B to C on your own (car, train, unrelated flight), and then return from C to A. Such an A-B, C-A trip is called an open-jaws connection (picture the image on a map and you’ll see why) and usually has any same advantages as a round-trip flight. So what if I flew New York to Tokyo, but then Taipei (Taiwan) back to New York? Well, the website told me that this variation would also work for the same 60,000 miles, and I was set. It would cost me just the local connection within Asia, which I shortened by getting a less expensive flight to Taipei from Fukuoka, way in southern Japan, and not from Tokyo. So I was set. But there’s still more.

I set my route according to what I wanted to see, booked all my hotels in Japan to match, and even have an idea about the occasional restaurant. I still need to get the three-week version of the Japan Rail Pass, which has to be done closer to the time (I leave the last Sunday in October for four weeks to the Sunday before Thanksgiving), and I’ll do the Taiwan rail trip round-trip in one day, purchased on the spot. But then I wanted to book a hotel in Taipei for five nights, I thought about Starwood. Starwood didn’t meet my needs in Tokyo or elsewhere in Japan, but in Taipei, it has a premier Sheraton just down the street from Taipei Central Station. Not only that, but Starwood’s program declares that every fifth night on points is actually free. So I’m paying Starpoints for only four nights of the five that I need. This particular hotel is plush enough (much more plush than anything I’ve booked in Japan) that this Taipei hotel freebie would be worth slightly more than the Delta round-trip flight. The entire trip will cost me Japan hotels, rail, and meals, plus the connecting local flight, yet I still will call this semi-freebie trip to two entire countries, both of which had been on my to-do list, an offer I couldn’t refuse, one that just fell into my lap unplanned. Fortunately, even though I like to book a trip early, I was able to make all bookings with trouble with only one hotel, but I was able to make a minor adjustment in schedule so that even that hotel in Takayama worked out. Still, under normal circumstances, earlier is better, if only for peace of mind.

Travel Parameters   I continue to differentiate between the vacationer, who has a more casual and relaxed experience, and the serious traveler, who enjoys discovering at the very least more of geography and history, as we’ve quite obviously been doing, but also a large array from the humanities and sciences. This includes language (Hawaiian), art (Gauguin), literature (Maugham), geology (Hawaiian hotspot; formation of Kilimanjaro), biology (Antarctic and African fauna), engineering (Panama canal) and so on, as well as extensive railroad information, including the vagaries of gauge. I now have a very large backlog waiting for presentation for Cape Cod (barrier islands; explorers in North America); Japan (hiragana & katakana; Shinkansen/Bullet Trains); Taiwan (foods; the skyscraper Taipei 101). And that’s just for 2009. I hope to start a new policy of presenting much of that material BEFORE the trip. In 2010, long before Thailand and Australia, we’ll start talking about the River Kwai and the Golden Triangle, as well as Waltzing Matilda and the Boy from Oz, and so very much more. Dame Edna, anyone?

I shall be a traveler on all those trips, but on the Cape Cod trip, I shall for the first time in many years also be a vacationer. I will go around Provincetown and the Cape, but much time will be spent getting ahead on early writing for Japan/Taiwan, plus maybe some reading, also dining out. This is how I vacation.

A second parameter to review is the subject of guidebooks, plus other research to adequately prepare for a trip. I always urge being an individual traveler (or travelers) fending for oneself. Always use a guidebook, well thumbed in advance of the trip, that evaluates what you want to see, hotels, restaurants, and anything else. The best is the star system (up to three) used by Michelin, and I’ve reviewed my copy of Michelin New England for Cape Cod (and also have one for Thailand, the only Asian country Michelin has written up). Where that is not available, Frommer’s guides are quite good, and also have a three-star system. This I’m using for Japan/Taiwan and also for Australia. I’ve only used other guides in desperation where nothing else was available, such as when I used Lonely Planet for the Transsiberian route. I also do not suggest being too slavish to those stars. There are three-star sights that don’t interest me and one-star sights (or even no-star listings) that do. Just make sure that a guidebook actually guides you in this manner. Also be well guided by maps. It’s some good maps, some of which I’ve downloaded from the internet (Tokyo neighborhoods; the metro), that are giving me the gumption to run around on my own in Japan and Taiwan, where the signs are written in Chinese characters (yes, in Japan, too).

The third and final parameter I’d like to discuss is hotel type. I never really sat back to decide on how I choose hotels until someone in the travel business asked me what sort of hotels liked, three-, four-, or five-star. I was taken aback by the question, which sounds like such a trivial way to look at travel, almost demeaning of the event. Still, on the spot I answered that I choose hotels based on the real estate mantra of location, location, location. Then I decided to analyze just what it is I do.

The vacationer has to make different decisions than a traveler, most likely choosing a resort hotel when in a non-urban area. Or, if in an urban area, suddenly swimming pools and gyms become important. I am not experienced enough to speak to the choices for a vacationer. But for me I pick a hotel I like closest to the center of town, near the rail station if there is one, or near a subway/metro stop, and then walkable to everything I want to do. This is also true in the cases where I have a car with me.

A location chosen, I’ll then look for a bed-and-breakfast or a boutique hotel. In San Francisco I recently stayed again at the Andrews, walkable to everything and with Avis, Hertz, and Zipcar a few steps away. This was also true in Mendocino, Eureka, and Astoria. Then in Port Townsend I stayed in the James House, a B&B. All were charming venues.

Absent a boutique hotel or B&B, I’ll then take a convenient, comfortable hotel. If I had to categorize this type of hotel, I suppose I’d say three-star, but I don’t like looking at it that way. The three hotels I stayed at in New Zealand were extremely well-located for my needs, had very comfortable rooms, and relatively small and cozy lobbies. This was also the case in Switzerland.

The reader may disagree, but I have never understood why normal, middle-class people would want to stay at plush palaces of hotels. I like to consider a hotel venue as a temporary home, and my home does not have crystal chandeliers and fountains in it. But, to each his own.

There are two necessary variations to choosing the style of hotel I’ve described. Sometimes, a well-known, historic hotel is a travel destination in itself, and I will purposely locate myself in one just for the experience. That would explain my recent stay in the Brown Palace in Denver and the Empress in Victoria. This would also explain my stay at the Adlon in Berlin.

The other variation is a result of a hotel being a freebie. Starwood hotels have served me well, and although they also include a down-market brand such as Four Points (where I have indeed stayed), more often than not it’s a Sheraton, Westin, W, or others of the lush-and-plush type. So, as long as it’s well located, I take what I get. That was the case with the W in Mexico City, the Sheraton in Tahiti, the Westin in Fiji.

On rare occasion, these two variations coincide with marvelous results. When we went back to Venice in 2002, I was surprised to see that we could stay at, of all places, the magnificent and historic Danieli, right off Piazza San Marco, free on Starpoints. Oh happy day.

So how do these parameters reflect on the upcoming 2009 trips? I’ve already said that the inn in Provincetown is walkable to everywhere. All the hotels I’ve booked in Japan are comfortable ones either at rail stations, or a short walk away, well-located for everything. The one in Kyoto is a subway ride away from the main station, and the one in Tokyo, while not on the East Side at Tokyo Station, is on the West Side, directly adjacent to Shinjuku Station, where I can make all my rail connections. Even the Narita Express coming in on my arrival from Narita Airport stops at several stations, including Tokyo Station, but ends at Shinjuku Station.

In Taipei, my freebie Sheraton will be lush-and-plush, since Sheratons are often more luxurious outside the US than they are domestically. The recently renovated Taipei Sheraton is apparently the place for locals to be, and the Taiwan President’s son had his wedding reception there.

TCC 319   The Travelers Century Club periodically updates its list of “countries” (actually, traveler destinations), since new entities form, others merge or subdivide, some even disappear. Political entities, including semi-autonomous subdivisions are the basis for inclusion, as well as major islands of a defined size (check their website for all the criteria). Periodically, a revised update is published in the TCC newsletter. One year I was able to add a new destination to my personal total while sitting at home. Apparently Prince Edward Island in Canada reached the population tipping point for TCC inclusion to be counted separately from Canada. I’d been their twice, so was able to add it to my total on the spot. The March newsletter this year told of two additions, bringing the total number of destinations up to 319, and it might be of interest what the rationale is that the TCC Board uses to make its decisions.

Up until recently in the Caribbean, the French half of Saint Martin and the much smaller nearby island of Saint Barts, a popular destination, were administered together, but since 2007, Saint Barts has been administered separately, so it became a TCC addition. I’d been to Saint Martin twice, so it was already on my own list, but wait--didn’t the Deutschland stop at Saint Barts on my Caribbean trip in 2004? I remember seeing the island from the ship. Why was my recollection so vague? Well, that’s why Beverly started our series of travel diaries years ago. I referred to my diary notes for 16 December 2004, and was reminded that we were supposed to stop in Saint Barts for a half-day, but it turned out the tides were working against us and we couldn’t dock. So we DID get to gape at Saint Barts from offshore, which doesn’t count for inclusion as a visit, and then off we went to our next scheduled stop of Saint Martin. Bummer.

The other area reviewed by the Board is Georgia, which has two breakaway regions occupied by Russia since 2008, both of which have declared their independence. Both also border Russia. The Board previously declined to recognize them as separate entities because of the uncertainty of their outcome, but felt it was able to make a decision now, since it feels that neither of them will be returning to Georgia. As it turns out, the Board treated the two of them differently, since their situations are not the same, and the rationale makes sense.

Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, dislikes the Georgians, but also dislikes the occupying Russians. It appears they will be a separate entity in the future, so Abkhazia joins Saint Barts for the two additions for this year.

However, South Ossetia has close ethnic and historical ties with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia, and it is likely that South Ossetia could become a part of Russia as well. In other words, while Abkhazia appears to want to be truly independent, that is, of both Georgia and Russia, South Ossetia appears to only wish to be independent of Georgia, so it is not being counted. This logic makes sense. (I have not been to the Caucasus at all.)

Well, it seemed that I wasn’t going to gain anything beyond my total of 121 reached in French Polynesia, when I decided to review the entire list carefully, and sure enough, I must have missed an update sometime since I joined TCC at the beginning of 2005. What I found involves the so-called Netherlands Antilles “ABC islands” of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. I’ve visited all three when they were a single entity called Netherlands Antilles, but Aruba had broken away, leaving the remaining two islands in that entity, and that was how I had counted them, (1) Aruba and (2) Netherlands Antilles. But I now learn that, as of 2007, Bonaire and Curaçao are also separately administered. So I dropped Netherlands Antilles, but then added Bonaire and Curaçao, for a net gain of one, bringing my new TCC total to 122, once again, just while sitting at home.