One of the most important and time-consuming parts of planning independent travel is figuring out who to\u00a0travel with.\u00a0After all, these\u00a0are the people that you’ll be around for almost a week straight! First off, if you\u2019re thinking about traveling alone, instead think more thoroughly about going with someone else. Not only is it safer (which always makes the parents happy-shout out to Mom & Papa) it\u2019s more fun, memorable and oftentimes cheaper if you go with someone else. You can be one other\u2019s restaurant buddies (I personally do not like going to restaurants by myself) and<\/p>\n photographers! Traveling gives the opportunity to create strong bonds with other people; why not take advantage of it? You too\u00a0could soon be taking fun “glamour” shots on the Great Wall of China! That being said, go with your gut on who you\u2019d like to travel with. I was worried I wouldn\u2019t find people who have similar hobbies, trip goals and interests as I do but I luckily found two great friends who do; and if I can do it as timid as I am, anyone can! Just don\u2019t wait too long to decide or else you might be stuck somewhere you\u2019d rather not be.<\/p>\n After you have your group, the next step is to decide where to go. Chances are, you and everyone else in your program have been thinking about independent travel plans since you set eyes on the study abroad flier a year ago. It\u2019s fairly easy to agree on ideas, especially if you\u2019ve found people who are on the same wavelength as you are. But before finalizing plans, look at your home country\u2019s national holiday calendar to scope out the busy seasons so you’re aware of what you’re getting into\u00a0and make the best of the free time that you have.\u00a0Our large\u00a0independent travel time\u00a0largely overlaps\u00a0China’s October 1st Victory Day Golden Week Holiday, which is an extremely busy tourist holiday, especially in Beijing, where we wanted to travel. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that going to famous places often brings large crowds; it’s an unfortunate fact that goes along with travelling.\u00a0But even if you happen to\u00a0only be available during a national holiday like I was,\u00a0there are ways\u00a0to\u00a0make the crowds less obvious but still see the sights: online research. If you familiarize yourself enough with the place and habits, you can easily side-step many\u00a0crowds. I also decided that\u00a0it’s okay to be labeled a\u00a0tourist for a week!\u00a0Sometimes we treat tourists like\u00a0they’re flies buzzing around a huge, thousand year-old, ornate\u00a0Russian lamppost.\u00a0But as soon as you travel\u00a0to see sights, you become some sort of tourist, even if it’s self-tourism like ours. Besides, tourists often get discounts-especially student tourists! Own it!<\/p>\n With\u00a0tourist discounts as an example,\u00a0everybody loves saving money while traveling. To save money in booking, knowledge is power! It’s amazing how much you can save on booking transportation and lodging if you take time and look at all of the options. A local’s insight is also invaluable; one of our\u00a0native-Chinese\u00a0Alliance staff workers\u00a0graciously sat down with me for\u00a0almost 3 hours to sort out\u00a02 train rides,\u00a01 flight and\u00a07 nights\u00a0at two different hotels for our Beijing-Xi’an trip. Being in China, we used the popular, user-friendly\u00a0ctrip<\/u><\/a>. She\u00a0looked at hotel reviews and locations, deciphered which rates were the best and advised the best times to arrive and depart. She even taught me some travel Chinese and helped me\u00a0use a coupon (they exist-use them!) that<\/p>\n brought the already low grand total\u00a0for transportation and hotels to about $410 (\u00a52,600) per person!\u00a0I can’t remember how many times I rechecked the total, but it always came out to that\u00a0insanely low number. I know she worked her magic for\u00a0other students as well.\u00a0I made careful calculations to prove to myself and others that my math\u00a0skills aren’t\u00a0as horrible as I think\u00a0they are.\u00a0Don’t think that you have to have a magical native to find low prices, though; it just might take an extra hour or two\u00a0for you to track them down. The more time you spend on booking, the better your knowledge and experience will be!<\/p>\n After settling the booking budget, look back at where you’re traveling to and figure out what sights you’d like to see. You’ll likely have a mental list of big attractions, but\u00a0you’ll\u00a0probably miss out on a lot if you don’t look into the smaller, lesser-known\u00a0ones. I started out, of course,\u00a0asking what the other two girls would want to see. Because of that we’re now scheduled to relax at a hot springs in Xi’an on the last day! Three brains are certainly\u00a0more creative than one!\u00a0Looking at tripadvisor.com<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0travelguidechina.com<\/u><\/a>, lonelyplanet.org<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and other sites like them<\/u><\/a>\u00a0can\u00a0provide a lot of great overview and\u00a0important information. But\u00a0I always\u00a0trust people who’ve visited there\u00a0before first before\u00a0any online travel\u00a0site.\u00a0Asking friends, locals, program\u00a0directors and roommates can\u00a0bring great, non-tourist additions to your\u00a0travels.\u00a0Back in the\u00a0States\u00a0I had a\u00a0Chinese roommate who is from Beijing, and so I asked her opinion about what we should see and asked for any tricks on avoiding tourist traps.\u00a0Before she\u00a0told me her favorite places in the city,\u00a0she chuckled and joked that I should avoid Beijing if I want to avoid tourists! I asked my\u00a0Chinese roommate\u00a0from this semester and she happily sat down with me and helped me sort through Chinese opinion\u00a0sites that I couldn’t understand otherwise. She and her bubbly, excitable personality\u00a0helped me get even more excited about seeing all of the different places! Another source I’ve\u00a0recently begun to appreciate is travel bloggers-much like our own blog here! Blogs are full of\u00a0honest opinions, suggestions\u00a0and warnings, many of which can be as recent as last month. Each of these\u00a0gave me tips about the best places to eat at, what to carry,\u00a0the prime time of day to go and\u00a0how long we’d be staying there; vital information if I wanted our trip to flow smoothly. I ended up typing a flexible, floating itinerary for us that we could pick sights and activities from at our leisure (see photo).<\/p>\n I\u00a0split up\u00a0the Beijing section\u00a0up into\u00a04 section: Indoor, Gardens, Walking Streets and Big Highlights. Under each sight\u00a0I added basic information such as location, price, hours of operation, about how long it would take to complete it. Since most of the site names were in Chinese, I also had to add\u00a0a short description to remind us of what the sight actually was! I ended up referencing it at least 5 times a day and it saved a lot of time and uncertainty.<\/p>\n Independent travel is a unique and special\u00a0opportunity. I speak from experience when I advise that you should do your best to not sqander the moment; find what will make it shine and take hold of it. Bond with friends and natives, practice your host country’s language, fulfill a few bucket-list items and embrace the culture that’s around you. And take lots of photos (selfies definately count)! I always remind myself that I can always delete a photo but I can never take another one once I’ve left. And if I’m not in any of the photos then I might as well scroll through Google Images! That doesn’t mean you should forget to witness it all with your own two eyes, though. You came to see it in person; soak it in. So the best of luck to anyone who is doing independent travel, student or otherwise! There’s no trip too hard to plan if you take it step by step and look around you for advice, and keep in mind that each trip planning gets better\u00a0and easier.\u00a0Have fun dreaming up a trip for the ages!<\/p>\n Chinese word of the week:<\/p>\n \u72ec\u7acb\u8def\u884c \u00a0 d\u00fal\u00ec l\u00fc3x\u00edng\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 independent travel<\/p>\n \u8def\u7a0b\u8868\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 l\u00fc3ch\u00e9ngbiao3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 itinerary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Independent traveling is one of the best aspects of studying abroad, without a doubt! It\u2019s both a time to explore\u00a0your host country\u2019s culture and enjoy a wonderful break from schoolwork! But you should be careful to not\u00a0underestimate the time it takes to properly plan a trip and make the most of your holiday. Thinking and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":2761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[96,191,199,265],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shanghai","tag-booking","tag-independent-travel","tag-itinerary","tag-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17289,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions\/17289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_0209.jpg\")
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