Best way to book accommodation while traveling

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After traveling to more than 40 countries over several decades thanks to my online income, here are my tips how are the best ways to book accommodation while traveling.

For the pages on this website, some tours we organize, in which case we would arrange the accommodation, while other tours and tips for travelers is just our free advice, in which case you’d have to arrange the accommodation yourselves.

For budget travelers

Traveling long term with an online job can get expensive and, after all, one needs to settle down here and there to put some work time in. But that is a big advantage in that you can take your time and really learn in depth about each jewel on this beautiful planet, instead of rushing from one place to another, click click click with the camera just so you could say you were “here” or “there” when you get back home.

In any case, there are a few services I used to get the best deals.

Couchsurfing

I first discovered couchsurfing when I was back in Cyprus and found it a wonderful way to meet like-minded world travelers and make great friends while I traveled, as locals tend to have a different mind set and one needs to stay longer in a certain area to make friends there. Couchsurfing is sort of a facebook for travelers, where either you find someone online where you can stay at their place for free, or you can offer your “couch”, whether it is an actual couch, or a room, or air mattress on the living room floor. Either way it is much better to stay with a local, not only because of the cost savings, but because they can connect you to the local scene, such as the best restaurants, parties going ons, special events, and other local secrets.

Tips how to couchsurf

Why would anyone open up their house to you if they don’t know anything about you? So you need a robust profile, with lots of pics, perhaps you could become friends on facebook so that they can check out your past posts and friends, and hopefully have lots of positive reviews. For this it is probably easiest to host couchsurfers yourself for a while. It will give you an idea of the concept and the ability to collect some good reviews.

But once you do start to travel, it is important to consider your host as much as possible. Not just show up, drop your bags off in your room and explore the area by yourself, treating your host as if s/he is some free hostel. No, the aim is to get to know the person, treat their house rules with the utmost respect, and what I like to do, is offer to cook, clean up, and pay for all the food. This will make your request more attractive and you’ll end up eating better and cheaper than going out to restaurants all the time, and give you better opportunity to collect more positive references.

Workaway

Besides workaway.info, there is also helpx.net and some others, but essentially it is sort of like couchsurfing but taken to the next level. In this case you would actually be working for your stay. Usually you work for two hours a day to get a free place to stay, or six hours for a free place to stay plus food, but this is more suitable for longer term stays. For example, as a guest of couchsurfing, generally you don’t want to stay too long. As they say in Czech, a fish and a guest start to smell after the third day.

In any case, you usually get two days off per week, and while working only six hours max a day, it still gives you plenty of time to explore an area, and once again, you get the best advice from a local. We’ve traveled around much of the world in this manner. Healthier eating, stressless travel (no time limits), and it gives you the chance to really get a feel for and experience every place you visit.

Just walk

And when nothing is available for either of the options above, I prefer to just walk. I never used to book in advance (now I do with a wife and family). This way you find those cheap little joints or even gems hidden around the corner that can’t be bothered to put anything online and prefer to just cater to customers walking off the street. And the farther you walk from the main tourist areas, perhaps along dirtier looking streets, the less expensive it will get.

Of course you can also combine this with a little bit of research in advance, either on google maps or tripadvisor, just to get an idea of the better areas, but personally I just like to walk, roam and discover.

A little tip

And one little tip I learned over the years, let’s say you plan to stay in a certain area for a while, is before I set out to explore it, I might have in my mind a list of things I need to get or achieve. Perhaps I already found a place and stayed there overnight, but hope to find a better and less expensive place. So I might stay there two nights and give myself a full day to explore, without my backpack. I might need to do my laundry, so I’ll ask the receptionist where I’m staying if she knows of a laundromat. When I get there and pay for the service, while handing over the cash, I might ask if s/he happens to know where I can get my camera fixed. By asking people for the next (single) tip at the exact moment when you hand over the cash, I find they are much more helpful and responsive. As opposed to someone on the street who would rather just get on with their day.

Booking in advance

But if you got the budget or lack the time, the best way I found is to simply use Google Maps, choose an area you want to visit, and press Hotels (later you can do the same for Restaurants). This way you get a quick overview of all that is available, the general price, lots of pictures at your finger tips, and most importantly a summation of reviews from other travelers and the option to read each review. Then, once you are ready to book, by clicking on any particular place you should see a list of ways you can book with them, be it a direct link to their booking account on booking.com or agoda etc, or a link directly to their website.

Things to do

And once you have settled comfortably in somewhere, besides local advice, tripadvisor’s Things to Do section is generally a good place to get ideas.

And if you are visiting a large city, it might be worthwhile to make your own google map, like I did for Manila below.
When logged into Google Maps, you can save your maps like shown here:

On a regular Google map, instead of clicking on Hotels like for accommodation above, you can click on Things to Do or Restaurants, for example.

You can do your research in conjunction with Tripadvisor. You can create a filter, such as minimum rating reviews:

or search for particular types of restaurants:

Once you found places or restaurants which inspire you, you can go back to your personal map, copy paste the name of the place or restaurant you want to add and add it to your map:

Once you’ve added it to your map, you can then edit it, such as the color of the balloon, change/add text, even add a pic if you like:

Once you are done saving your map, you can share it:

And finally, open the link that you shared to see what the final output is:

You can view this on your phone. If you click on a balloon it will show details of it, with a link to further information on google maps. I colored our accommodation balloon yellow, things to do in green, restaurants in blue, and red for the errands we needed to run while there.

You can even use the ruler feature to measure the distance between balloons, if you wanted to get an idea how much the taxi might cost.

In this way you get a good overview of what the city has to offer, can choose your accommodation centrally to all the places you want to see, and basically make yourself your own tour guide. Personally, I find paid tours like for herding cattle. I am not interested in taking pictures of monuments and I have my own tastes and preferences. For example, I like to walk through the open markets, to get a real feel for the local culture, but know that not far away I’ll have a good lunch at a quality Korean restaurant and not just end with poor quality street food or a familiar fast food joint.

We love to travel and give travel advice to others. If you ever decide to go to the Palawan area, we’d love to host you on one of our tours. We also plan to travel throughout the entire country to expand our services and knowledge of this beautiful travel destination.

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