Category Archives: Travel-Budget

Lounging Through A Layover in Kuala Lumpur

Starbucks is my friend — at least in Kuala Lumpur! I haven’t really paid much attention to this particular chain of coffeehouses since I moved away from Washington State over a decade and a half ago. But here I am, paying two visits in one day because they have free wifi and we are spending almost a full day in layover mode. We leave for Amsterdam in several hours and I’m trying to catch up on some work without paying $7.50 an hour at our hotel. Those are NOT budget friendly ‘extras’ when you are trying to travel in a frugal manner — and those extras add up.

Starbucks Kuala Lumpur International Airport

I have a perfectly serviceable area to use as an office on the road in our hotel room, but I was astonished at how fast I burned through that one hour purchase. So back I trekked to Starbucks. And we are sitting here sipping tea in the lounge behind the facade that you can see in this shot above and both of us are happily working online.

Office On The Road

Big blue plane outside the hotel window in Kuala Lumpur

We took a nap this afternoon and when I opened the curtains afterward, the first words out of my mouth were, “Whoa! Big blue plane!” And that’s exactly what was right beneath my window. Our hotel is actually inside the terminal and we never had to exit through customs or passport control, so we are right next to all of the airline traffic outside. Interestingly, we can’t hear any of that though and the windows are at least double-glazed, possibly triple-glazed. It is completely silent inside while you eat or shop or, most importantly, sleep.

Luxury shopping in KL International Airport

There is a full sized mall area inside the Kuala Lumpur International Airport — but trust me, this isn’t budget shopping! This is definitely aimed at the upmarket traveller with lots of disposable dollars, euros, pounds, or whatever other currency. And interestingly, the shops and restaurants allow you to make your purchases in whatever foreign currency you have with you. But you do need to be aware that the change you receive back will be in Malaysian currency. We learned that lesson at breakfast and have made sure to use a credit card or debit card for everything ever since.

Need to go repack my carry-on bag. My next post will be from Amsterdam!

Living Like A Local at Coogee Beach in Sydney Australia

Intense glare, stunning heat, sunburnt bodies sprawled on every inch of sand, men in swimming trunks wearing Santa hats, and the unmistakable fragrance of coconut-scented suntan lotion — it all conspired to give me a serious flashback moment to childhood Christmas holidays spent on Florida beaches. But then the smell of beer and sizzling sausages combined with the overlapping Aussie or British or Irish or Scottish or German or French or whatever other accents and it jolted me back to the 21st century. I looked around and knew that I was in Australia for Christmas at the beach.

I didn’t try to take an expensive professional camera with me on Christmas Day because we would have gotten jostled in the thick crowds. The picture below was taken on Boxing Day — the very next day after Christmas — and the crowds were back to a manageable size. But this gives you a glimpse of this little piece of heaven.
 

Boxing Day at Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia


 
Even the ‘Mums and Bubs Pool’ (aka Mothers and Babies Paddle Pool to you non-OZ folks) was thinned out compared to the previous day. But as you can see by the clock on the Surf Life Saving Club building, it was late in the day and rather a lot of people had already packed up and gone home.
 

Beachside Mums and Bubs Pool at Coogee Beach in Sydney Australia


 
We are currently enjoying our final week in Australia and the beachside Christmas which is quintessentially Aussie. We were able to have this final holiday in Australia because we were quite generously given the keys to a friend’s apartment which sits just up the hill from these scenes — a less than ten minute walk away. She lives in such an idyllic spot and we feel very blessed to be living in her gorgeous apartment while she is out of town.

Sometimes it’s the little things that allow you to relax into your holiday a bit more thoroughly — and having a full sized kitchen, a big deep bath tub, a spacious living room, and a view of a beautiful beachside neighbourhood has certainly contributed to our sense of well-being. I’m not a loving-the-sand kind of person but Mark certainly is. There are days when he goes down for a swim three times in one day. And watching the stress of our former lives just melt off of his face is quite joyous.

I do enjoy the beach scene as a spectator and observer. And as you can see, there is always something worth taking pictures of!
 

Gateway to the Baths — a natural pool set in the rocks.


 
Coogee Beach is around the bend from the well known surfing spot, Bondi Beach, but Coogee is definitely more laid back and family oriented.

Back down the hill from the apartment where we are “living like a local” is a very convenient street that contains well over a dozen cafes and restaurants along with pharmacies, gift shops, numerous banks, doctors and dentists, and a full-sized grocery store. Just like our previous stay in North Sydney, the proximity of all of these stores allowed us to shop for food and supplies every few days and cut our daily expense budget in half or less.

I’ll be sorry to see this end tomorrow, but we are off on an evening flight to Kuala Lumpur, a one day layover, and then it’s on to cold and wintery Amsterdam for a week before we travel to England. What a shock to the body that change of temperature is going to be!

We will be arriving in Amsterdam on the morning of New Year’s Eve. After a bit of sleep to recover from the jet lag, we will be ushering in a New Year AND a new life in the Northern hemisphere. And yes, we will be “living like a local” there, too.

Stay tuned for more travel adventures and a wrap-up of our temporary life in Sydney!

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Living Like A Local in North Sydney

Travel writers and savvy individuals have known for years that the best way to fully appreciate a place was to settle in for awhile. Instead of paying a ‘flying visit’ or staying in a hotel, more and more people now choose to live in a short-term apartment or house rental so that they can shop in the local stores, cook in their temporary kitchen, and get a feel for the neighbourhood in a way that they never would have if they had been cossetted behind the walls of a hotel with room service and daily housekeeping services.

When you remove the bag carrying, room cleaning, food cooking, concierge, and front desk services of a hotel, you will frequently discover that apartment or house rentals can save you a substantial amount of money over the cost of a very average hotel. And if you value your privacy the way we do or you enjoy the opportunity to sleep late occasionally, you’ll appreciate the fact that no one will knock on the door in the morning to ask if you want your room cleaned.

We had an extraordinary opportunity recently when, instead of renting them out, two dear friends lovingly offered their two apartments to us at no cost for our 16 day stay in Sydney. We had just sold our house in Australia and had a 16 day period to fill prior to flying on to Amsterdam at the end of December. We would be staying in Sydney during the weeks before and after Christmas and any available rental apartments would have already been scooped up. The offer of these two apartments was both a wonderful surprise and a huge blessing!

Sydney is a very accessible metropolis with a comprehensive train and bus system, City Rail and Sydney Buses, linking the various neighbourhoods. The Sydney CBD (Central Business District) is a short distance from the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, but we were headed for the opposite side of that same bridge and the neighbourhood of North Sydney which is served by two different train stops at Milson’s Point and the North Sydney station.

A ten minute walk from either of the railway stations took us to the apartment, but I hadn’t expected it to be eight stories up in the air with views over the rooftops in that incredibly hilly neighbourhood. If you click on the photo and then look about 3/4 of the way over on the right, you will see a flag flying. That is atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge and we had the most wonderful view of the pre-Christmas fireworks over the bridge by simply standing on the balcony.

View of North Sydney rooftops from 8th floor balcony

I have to admit, I certainly got more of a work-out than I had expected every time we went out to shop or sightsee and I was huffing and puffing quite dramatically on the first few days there! But we found everything that we needed within a fifteen to twenty-five minute walk and the variety of shops and restaurant choices made our stay in North Sydney quite enjoyable. And I began to get fitter in the process of taking those daily walks!

One afternoon whilst on a trip to the bank, our curiosity got the best of us and we followed a stream of people who were descending on an escalator that dropped down beneath the pavement that we had been walking on. It became obvious as soon as we reached the bottom that we had arrived in the middle of a mall.

Greenwood Plaza in North Sydney-full sized underground shopping centre

The initial narrow hallway led into a bright and open two-level full-sized mall that was operating beneath the office buildings, cafes, shops, and streets above. Greenwood Plaza was a pleasant surprise, especially when we found a rather nice organic butcher, a lovely fruit market around the corner from a full-sized grocery store, a health food shop, and dozens of other beautiful shops. This well-stocked shopping centre was the perfect discovery to help us stay on track with our budget travel and healthy lifestyle concept of cooking our meals from fresh ingredients.

Narrow lane in North Sydney

North Sydney was certainly a delightful place to “live like a local” for a week. Old stone cottages on narrow and hilly lanes co-exist with looming high-rise commercial buildings on busy hilly streets and then give way to glorious hilly parkland that sweeps down to the water’s edge beneath the bridge at the Sydney Harbour. You may have noted the “hilly” theme of North Sydney, but it is gloriously green and leafy and relatively quiet compared to many other parts of this hustle-bustle city.

North Sydney park at base of Harbour Bridge--taken by Mark Harmes

Unless indicated, all photography by Deborah Harmes.

Catching Up and Moving On

Whew! It has been a race to the finish-line for the last few months — but we made it!

Any of you who read my other blog, Multiversal Musing, will know that we have been in prep mode for leaving Australia. We listed the beautiful little house that we had built the year before in June and then it took at least 4-6 weeks longer to sell than we had anticipated. So we ended up with our settlement and moving day being 2 weeks before Christmas. NOT exactly a good time of year to launch off from this country and still be able to find reasonable airfare!

Finding any ticket to Europe was getting to be quite a challenge and the costs were more than double what we would normally expect to pay for flights from Melbourne or Sydney to London. So I completely gave up, kept packing and organizing, and calmed the heck down about it all. Somehow I could feel in my bones that things were going to work out beautifully, even if we had to stay in Australia until mid-January to accomplish that.

Besides, there was SO MUCH to do. We decided to sell off all of our furniture and both cars as well as the lawn tractor and lots of miscellaneous ‘stuff’ so that we could get down to a teeny-tiny storage room that was smaller than our bedroom. And did we do it? Yes!!! We were still selling things a mere few days before departure, but we accomplished our goal and the sum total of our possessions is now approximately 12-13 cubic metres of boxes and bikes. And that is less than half of a shipping container.

I was sound asleep one night, dreaming of snowdrifts while actually trying to stay cool on a hot and sticky Australian night, when I had a physical sensation like someone knocking on a door in my head. My feet hit the floor, I opened my laptop, and I went back online for an airline search on Kayak and the solution presented itself. I had been reading the European newspapers and there were rumblings of rail strikes in France, Belgium, and England. And the weather was predicted to be as harsh and snowy as the winter of 2009-2010.

I changed my search field to flights to Amsterdam and there, on the ONE less expensive day between early December and early January, was our flight to Amsterdam on the Wednesday between Christmas and New Year. BOOKED — and I didn’t hesitate. But ooops! I had no place for us to stay — and we would be arriving on New Year’s Eve!

I quickly discovered that the hotels were fully booked except for the (yowsa!) €300 and up rooms and that is definitely not a part of our frugal travel mentality and weren’t really keen on staying at a noisy hostel.

Our favourite type of accommodation is a short term apartment or house rental because we enjoy cooking for ourselves and not eating in restaurants. We also appreciate having the option of sleeping late and not being awakened by a housekeeper trying to clean the hotel room. So off I went in search of a short term apartment and even those were almost fully booked. Persistence paid off when I heard back from one host at Roomarama who had a very reasonably priced apartment available for the full week. Again — BOOKED!

For our transportation from the Netherlands to England at the end of our one week Amsterdam visit, I chose to stay away from the airlines in case there was a repeat of the massive snowfalls that Europe had last winter. If you’ve watched the blizzard-conditions weather news for the last week, you’ll understand why I was overjoyed with that decision after-the-fact. The final elements clicked into place easily when I booked an overnight sailing on a Steena Sealink ship from Hook of Holland to the English coast in a darling little cabin.

There will be a stream of articles from this point forward covering everything from living-like-a-local ideas to transportation tips, reviews of hotels, restaurants, and suggestions for must-see places around the world.

And remember — frugal travel ideas will be our primary emphasis!

Frugal Travel in Expensive Melbourne – Part 3

What to do — what to see. You have arrived in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, so how can you make the best decisions about where to spend your energy and your dollars?

First, wrap your head around the idea that you are going to nibble at the edges of a very LARGE cake full of delights. That will give you some perspective as you begin to realize that you will be coming back to Melbourne again and again before you can begin to say that you ‘know’ the place.

Consider planning your to-do list by going to either of these websites for information prior to your arrival. The first one is the That’s Melbourne site where you can click on the various categories in the left-side column to find out what art, music, festival, sports, or other events in your own particular areas of interest are available during your visit. The second site to check is the What’s On Melbourne Guide which lets you search by DATE or by TOPIC.

You can learn a lot about a city and its ‘vibe’ by people-watching and often this proves to be a highly amusing free activity.

Lunch hour tap dancer on Bourke Street, Melbourne, Australia

Lunch hour tap dancer, Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne, Australia

A few days ago as I walked down Bourke Street, I saw a young red-haired man with a backpack and a bright yellow milk crate suddenly stop and plonk a portable tape player down on the pavement. Next a flowerpot appeared. Finally, he carefully placed a square of timber halfway between the tram stop and the steps in front of the GPO building. Without saying a word, he began to tap dance vigorously (and well!) for the lunchtime crowd that was milling around, his flowerpot began to fill with coins, and the silent tap dancer smiled sweetly at everyone. It was a tiny bit of magic on a cold and gloomy day.

Having walked a mere few metres further down the street, I began to chuckle quietly when I saw a faux-concrete mime who had removed his hat, thus revealing part of his un-made-up face and hair beneath. As he stood next to his upturned hat, his hand resting on his cart full of props, he dropped all pretense being in character as he made a phone call. As surreptitiously as I could, I raised my camera and began to take pictures of this unguarded and funny moment.

Mime Making Phone Call

If fine arts and culture are as much ‘your thing’ as they are mine, you will be happy to read that Melbourne is quite blessed to have three art museums that charge absolutely NO admission price. The only exception to that statement is for those blockbuster travelling exhibits from overseas that arrive once a year or so.

The permanent collection at the beautifully proportioned bluestone building housing the NGV International – National Gallery of Victoria on St. Kilda Road is quite comprehensive and covers several floors of exhibits that range from the ancient through to the contemporary. You can easily allow yourself a half of a day or more to see it all. And as an added bonus, there are wonderful cafes on both the ground floor and the first floor that serve quite good food. Seating areas are tucked around on every level and are much appreciated by those who wish to enjoy the various galleries at a more leisurely pace. The large gift shop on the ground floor, just before you exit next to the wall of water, is a joy for art lovers, book lovers, or anyone who appreciates finely crafted jewelry, stationary, art objects, and educational toys.

Another entirely free (except for those previously mentioned special exhibitions) museum is the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square (corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Street). This smaller museum is dedicated to Australian art. Although it is part of the National Gallery of Victoria, it is housed up the street from the main NGV in a light, airy, and very contemporary glass and steel building set amidst the ultra-modern Federation Square complex.

Finally, there is the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art — ACCA (111 Sturt Street in the Southbank area) and it too is completely free of entry charges. The stated goal of this particular institution is as follows. “It is the only major public art gallery in Australia focused on commissioning rather than collecting.” For that reason, there is a non-stop stream of cutting edge exhibitions to entice those interested in contemporary art.

This three-part article on frugal travel in Melbourne has barely scratched the surface of your options for places to stay, places to eat, sights to see, or walks to enjoy. My intention was to allow the reader to fine-tune their trip according to their interests and needs. I also hoped to let you understand that absorbing the media’s ongoing statement that Melbourne is one of the world’s most expensive cities comes at a cost. It closes people’s minds to the alternatives to big-price-ticket travel — alternatives called frugal travel, budget travel, manageable travel that keep those dollars in your pocket to spend as you choose, not as you must if you are booked into 5 star hotels and are only eating at 5 star restaurants. Frugal travel makes the world a better place for all of us because it gives us freedom and choice.

Frugal Travel in Expensive Melbourne – Part 2

Now that we have the where-to-sleep question handled, let’s move on to how to get around Melbourne quickly and easily without hailing a taxi and paying heart-stopping fares for that ‘privilege.’ The cost of parking in Melbourne can also be prohibitively high, so it’s best to avoid driving your rental car or personal car in the city and being forced to pay $10 or more per hour in parking fees.

Visitor Information Booth on Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne, Australia

Start your trip off right by getting a good map of the inner city since most of the sights and museums are within that area. Consider printing out a map of the CBD prior to arrival and an easy to read version is found online at the only Melbourne website. The map is downloadable in pdf and prints out beautifully.

For a comprehensive range of tourism maps and brochures, the two easiest to find Visitor Information Centres are (1) located inside their own building on Federation Square – corner of Swanston St. & Flinders St. – and (2) in a booth right on the main shopping street, the Bourke Street Mall.

Yellow Yarra Tram on Bourke Street, Melbourne, Australia

For the ultimate in ease and convenience, the extensive tram network in Melbourne is hard to beat. The trams themselves range in ‘vintage’ and size from the lovely and modern ones such as the yellow tram pictured to the right to the last of the old “Red Rattlers” which run on the City Circle route around the fringes of the CBD (Central Business District).

City Circle Tram in Melbourne, Australia

You will need to purchase a METCARD to use any of the trams other than the City Circle which is seen on the left. That one tram route is completely free and is offered as a tourism incentive. For that reason, it is always quite crowded — so just be aware of that.

For all other trams, you will need a valid ticket and signs for the METCARD are found everywhere from the trains stations to the local convenience stores such as 7-11. Although they can be purchased at the coin-operated machines on some of the trams, it is always safer to have a METCARD in hand before you board.

There are quite a variety of fares depending on the time of day that you travel, your age, and several other classifications. The full range of fares are listed online at Metlink’s METCARD page.

An easy to read map of the tram network can be found online at Metlink Melbourne

Now let’s discuss what to eat while you are in the city. Even if you have chosen a budget friendly option like the Cube Serviced Apartment that was mentioned in yesterday’s post, no one arrives in Melbourne with the idea of eating all of their meals in their apartment-hotel, so finding reasonably priced food choices for lunches is the next challenge.

Yes, fast food is available everywhere in Melbourne, but it is almost never a healthy option. For a mere few dollars more you can eat at places like Basic Bites at 26-28 Hardware Lane between Bourke Street and Little Bourke Street. The “Crazed Hen” salad that I had there was actually the most enjoyable lunch that I ate on this trip. And there was so much premium quality chicken breast squeezed into that bowl with all of the salad greens that I couldn’t finish it! Cafe lunches in Melbourne can cost as much as dinners in some other Australian cities, so this small but lovely little cafe is a perfect example of finding good value for money when you do choose to eat out.

Basic Bites cafe on Hardware Lane, Melbourne, Australia

Other budget options for healthy eating include the large Riverside Food Court at Southgate where you can eat inside on gloomy days or outside facing the river and the Melbourne skyline on pleasant days.

If a delicious and filling curry at a rock-bottom price and served with a smile is what you are craving, then head up Bourke Street past the retail district to Funky Curry at 164 Bourke Street. The decor is basic and plastic — but oh — the food. I have eaten there many times and never, ever been disappointed by any of the options which can be fine-tuned to your own idea of how-hot-is-enough.

In our next segment we will look at the visual delights of Melbourne and sources for finding out prior to arrival what’s happening in the arts and entertainment world, sports, special events, and more.

***NOTE*** The author received no compensation during the research for this article from any of the sources which are cited.

Frugal Travel in Expensive Melbourne

Magical Melbourne — one of the jewels in Australia’s crown — a world class city with price tags for hotels and food to match Paris and London. So how then is it possible to travel to Melbourne if you are inclined towards a frugal and healthy approach and inclined away from backpacker style accommodations and ingesting fast food?

The first step in finding an inexpensive place to stay is to register with an online site such as HotelClub which, according to their website, represents “60,000 Hotels in Over 134 Countries.” By registering and selecting the specific countries or cities that you are interested in, you will receive weekly alerts on deeply discounted accommodations.

I was curious about the quoted fee-free price compared to the hotel’s own stated per-room cost, so I selected several hotels for comparison and in every case the HotelClub discount rate beat any specials that were being offered by the hotels on their own websites, sometimes by 50% or more.

How can you make a $99 rate better? By making that the discount rate on an apartment right in the heart of Melbourne! An alert came into my box on a Monday that 33%-50%-off rates were available for the weekend we had chosen.

Astute travellers know that one of the key ways to stretch your travel dollars is to rent an apartment and do some of your own cooking. Why pay $25 for a breakfast for two when you can cook your own and drink the tea or coffee that the hotel has on hand in each apartment. Having a major grocery store like Woolworths inside the huge new shopping and dining centre QV Melbourne a mere few blocks away means that you can bring home the ingredients for a dinner that totals a fraction of what most Melbourne restaurants must charge with their high overhead and staffing costs.

We were pleasantly surprised when we disembarked from the tram on LaTrobe Street, walked half a block to the Cube Serviced Apartments at 19 Exploration Lane, and discovered that we were staying right in the heart of the theater district. Our studio apartment was quite spacious for two people and was spotlessly clean.

The king-size bed was quite comfortable and the nearby writing desk had enough room to spread out my laptop and various pieces of camera gear.

Cube Serviced Apartment King Studio - Melbourne, Australia

Cabinet Wall at Cube Serviced Apartment in Melbourne, Australia

An entire wall of cabinetry has been divided up to house coats, linens, pantry, dishes and pans, an inset niche for the kitchen functions and an area for the flat screen television and dvd player. The kitchen area has a 2 burner cook-top, dishwasher, and a refrigerator and microwave are neatly hidden behind some of those cabinet doors.

Melbourne is easy to maneuver and the urban heart, the CBD (Central Business District) contains most of the art museums, theatre venues, and a vast array of upmarket and discount shopping. Between the on-foot accessibility of almost all major sites in the city and the splendid network of trams, you’ll soon discover that Melbourne is a joy to travel through.

In tomorrow’s post I will discuss the Metlink network of trains, trams, and buses and the daily or weekly cost of getting around Melbourne. I will also offer examples of wonderful places to eat healthy food at a reasonable price and fun activities that are free or practically-free. Check back for more!

***NOTE*** The author received no compensation or free accommodation during the research for this article.