Tag Archives: Postcrossing

Posts from Base Camp

A deeper dive into Round-the-World (RTW) tickets

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

A few weeks ago, I explained how I chose a Round-the-World (RTW) ticket for my upcoming trips to Wales and Australia. This time, I’m providing some tips on planning such a ticket.

Postcard from Carlisle Bay, Bridgetown, Barbados

1. Stick to the main hubs, where possible.

The total cost of the RTW ticket is affected by the number of cities visited. Using major international hubs (Toronto and Montreal, rather than Ottawa) will reduce the number of stopovers…and also reduce the risk of luggage trouble! And it will reduce the total travel time too: you want to spend your time in your international destinations, not airports.

Postcard of Belgrade Fortress (Belgrade, Serbia)

2. Book as early as you can.

The closer you get to your flight dates, the more likely flights will be booked up. This increases the price, reduces the likelihood of a desirable seat, and also increases the risk that you won’t have room in your preferred class (economy, premium economy, or business). That last factor is really important: if you buy a RTW ticket in a higher class, you don’t get a corresponding discount if you end up travelling in a lower class for part of the RTW journey.

Cheesy postcard from the Berner Oberland (Switzerland) – my ancestral home!

3. Think two steps ahead.

I had to fly from London (U.K.) to Melbourne (Australia), but knew I could not fly direct. Alas, this was a logistical nightmare…how many different ways are there to travel between those two cities? It looked like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) were positioned relatively well. But this got complicated quickly. Either the London segment or the Melbourne segment just wouldn’t work with those cities.

Postcard of Lake Bohinj, in the Julian Alps of Slovenia

It was time for a rethink. Rather than go through a long list of Asian cities to see if they would work for a stopover, I just asked for itineraries between London and Melbourne. It quickly became clear that the best connections were through cities that I hadn’t previously considered: New Delhi (India) and Bangkok (Thailand). But as we wanted to cover as much ground as possible with the first flight, Bangkok made more sense.

Postcard from Kyiv, Ukraine (received 2011)

4. Travel together, buy together.

It may sound obvious, but it’s worth repeating: if you are travelling with others, buy your tickets at the same time. Even 9 months ahead of departure, it is possible that a one or two day delay between buying the tickets for your companions could force you to travel separately for part of the trip (or at least in different cabin classes).

Postcard from Vietnam (“Valley at Dawn Sapa”)

5. Harvest the frequent flyer points.

This is a unique opportunity to accumulate a lot of frequent flyer points. So, it pays to understand how frequent flyer points will be awarded for each leg of the journey. At a minimum, make sure you have an account for an airline with the particular air alliance you have selected (Star Alliance, Oneworld, or SkyTeam). But seriously consider whether you should also earn even more points by using a credit card for that frequent flyer program.

Some premium frequent flyer credit cards offer a lot of useful benefits. There may be an extra fee, but it could be outweighed by the value of those benefits. Sometimes, the first year fee can be waived (as it was in my case).

Postcard of the Castle of Trenčín (Trenčín, Slovakia)

Stay tuned – the next post may not be from Canada! (Today’s photos are all postcards that I’ve received in the Postcrossing project…for reasons that will soon become clear, the one at the top shows a Swiss International Airlines plane!)

Posts from Base Camp

Getting a Round The World ticket!

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Several weeks ago, I mentioned that I would be doing a journey around the world in 2026. However, I had not yet decided exactly how the logistics would work. I now know, and have taken two big steps to make the trip happen.

Sent 2010 from Macau…an interesting duplication of Venice (including a gondolier!)

The first decision was whether to get a series of one-way tickets on various airlines…or take the plunge and get a round-the-world (RTW) ticket with one of the major airline alliances.

Maltese buses (apparently no longer used) – sent from Malta in September 2011

As I had some specific seating requirements and a very rigid itinerary, the choice quickly became clear: a RTW ticket would be less expensive (and much less risky) than buying individual one-way tickets. The question then became: which alliance would I pick? The two main contenders were Star Alliance and OneWorld. And both alliances have some very good airlines.

Flic-en-Flac, Mauritius – sent December 2012

My primary determinant was cost, although another very important factor was wishing to avoid certain countries (even just for airport stopovers). Happily, those factors aligned perfectly for me. The cheaper alliance also let me travel only through countries that I was comfortable with.

Timișoara, Romania – sent from Orsova, Romania (June 2012)

And now, even though my RTW trip is still many months away, I have a great itinerary mapped out. I can now focus on two other vital aspects: accommodation and ground transportation. Actually, I already have a head start on accommodation, as my two competitions also have “host hotels” that I will use during the competitions themselves.

Postcard from Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka – sent April 2017

The second decision was triggered by the RTW trip. Since I would be using the same airline alliance for the entire trip and spending quite a bit of money on it, I stood to accumulate a lot of loyalty (frequent flier) points. It then occurred to me that I might be able to rack up a ton of points if I had a credit card aligned with that airline alliance. So I decided to investigate credit card offers.

Naeba ski resort – sent November 2013 from Kasugai (Aichi), Japan

I found a credit card associated with my chosen alliance that would let me accumulate points at an significantly accelerated rate…and with some helpful perks (baggage privileges, various forms of insurance) that would otherwise add a lot of costs to the trip. So, I waited until I had the new card in hand before actually buying the RTW ticket. And now I can accumulate points for the next trip while I am enjoying this one!

Cossacks from Ukraine – sent June 2011

The pictures for today’s post are all postcards that I received during my participation in the Postcrossing Project. I profiled Postcrossing in last week’s post. As with that post, I tried to select postcards from countries that were less familiar to me at the time. The postcard at the very top is from Taiwan!

Posts from Base Camp

The Postcrossing Project

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

In the years leading up to my nearly year-long travel sabbatical in 2014, I found that my regular vacations weren’t quite enough to quench my growing thirst for travel. I had some great summer trips: Iceland in 2008, the Canadian Maritimes in 2009, Norway in 2010, and Sweden, Finland, and Estonia in 2012. And also some great skiing trips, to places like Zermatt, Andermatt, St. Moritz, Wengen, and Val Gardena.

January 2013 – postcard received from Armenia

To satisfy that thirst, I became part of the Postcrossing Project. It was a great way to see more of the world while still maintaining a full-time job.

April 2011 – postcard from Vitebsk, Belarus, showing the skating rink in that city

How does it work? You sign up, and then request an address. You get sent a random address of another Postcrossing member somewhere in the world. You send a postcard to that member and, when they register it upon receipt, your address then becomes the next one to be randomly given out to another member.

February 2011 – postcard of Iguazu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina border (sent from Sao Paulo, Brazil)

In 2010, I sent my first card to somebody in Czechia. The recipient registered it 6 days later, and 8 days after that I received my first postcard…from Utrecht in the Netherlands! You can have multiple postcards travelling at once, and I eventually sent (and received) about 1000 postcards by 2014.

February 2011 – postcard from Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina (sent from Tuzla). A couple of years later, I visited Mostar!

There are variations as well – I did “direct swaps” with some people, and you can also join special groups. We even met a Postcrosser once in Estonia. But it was the most fun to just do the random thing – get a random address, and then get a surprise from someone else in the world a few weeks later. Our mailman loved it – we still had mail delivered to our house, and he told us that our mail was fascinating.

May 2013 – postcard of Arenal Volcano National Park in Costa Rica (sent from San José) . Just over a year later, I visited this very place!

The project is worldwide, although the odds of getting a card from Europe, North America, and east Asia are higher because those regions have more members. When I was active (up to 2014) I received the most cards from Germany, the Netherlands, the U.S.A., Russia, Finland, Taiwan, China, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine.

August 2013 – postcard from McLeod Ganj, India – home of the Dalai Lama

I’m sure that the most active countries have changed in the intervening 10 years. But you do learn that most people (especially those in a project like this one) are usually very different from their political leaders.

November 2011 – postcard from Jakarta, Indonesia, showing a swimming pool with “whale mouth” entrances.

My 2014 year of travel made it more difficult to stay on top of my Postcrossing, and the increasingly high cost of international stamps in Canada was also a factor in scaling down my involvement. I’ve only sent a handful of cards since then. But Postcrossing is still a very active community today, and you end up learning a lot about the world and its people.

September 2011 – postcard of Trakai Island Castle, Lithuania (sent from Kėdainiai)

Today’s blog entry features postcards from some of the countries that were less familiar to me at the time (the card at the very top is from Jerusalem, Israel). Some of them I even ended up visiting! In fact, I’ve found a lot of interesting things in my Postcrossing files…maybe I’ll share some more in my next post.