Hahndorf

So a bit of a quick update:

I finally made it to the nightclub I used to work at last weekend.  It was actually really fun!  I found it a bit hilarious I only saw one person I recognized from when I worked there because of their incredibly high turnover rate.  It was a great night.

A few days later after watching the newest Game of Thrones, Liam and I headed down to Hahndorf, a small, German influenced town in the Adelaide Hills.  Although not nearly as extreme as Leavenworth in Washington, it had a bit of the same feel.  We got some "German" food and walked around the main road a bit before going on a drive through the hills.  We stopped at one of the many wineries in the area but the tasting room had already closed.

In the Hills

Good news/bad news my work schedule changed a bit but it's allowed me to see two of Vlad's footy games which are always fun to watch.  I should be able to go to most of them now which is exciting.

In other news, it's been raining buckets lately.  I love rain (except when I have to leave the house).  Just thought you should know.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Stupid Travel Questions?

Whoever came up with the saying "there's no such thing as a stupid question" probably asked a lot of dumb questions.  Over the past couple of months I've been collecting some of my favorite questions asked on the Travel portion of Reddit.  

In no particular order, here are my top 10:

Ireland and England, the new Middle East?

What is this person planning on doing?

At least they know it's a dumb question.

This isn't really that stupid but it made me laugh uncontrollably.

You have to be very aware of all the passport checks for domestic travel.

Thailand is one of the most popular backpacking destinations in the world.  Also his wife's parents are forbidding them to do something? 

There are no words.

Has this person seen any movie/TV show ever?

"Ah no passport? No worries! Come on in!" 

I wish I could time travel.  And $500 isn't going to happen.

And here's a bonus 11th one I found today:

This may have came across as a little mean but it's all in good fun.  Hope you had a laugh or two.  I sure did.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Half Way Done

As of Friday, I have been in Australia for 6 months now which means I am half way done with this crazy, wonderful experience.   Actually, I'm a little more than half way because I'll need to leave earlier than my visa expiry date since I'll be doing standby flights again (just in case I can't get on a flight right away).  How it's already been 6 months, I have no idea.  Time has gone so fast since being over here and I really hope it starts to slow down a bit because I am nowhere near wanting to leave. 

I realize I've taken hardly any pictures while I've been here.  A big reason is me still having my ancient phone with a horrible camera and it's not worth taking photos that end up looking like the vision of a person who wears bifocals.  The good news is I'll be able to use my actual US phone in less than a month which is incredibly exciting for multiple reasons, one of which being more pictures.  I was going to walk around today and take pictures but had to cover someone at work so instead I'm posting pictures of Hannah, Maggie, and Lexee from Portland because we chatted this week and I can.

Nose bleed in 3...2...1...

I've been doing more research into going to the Great Barrier Reef.  I think I've picked a company to go swimming with so now need to figure out flights/accommodation.  I was originally going to stay in Cairns but might be headed down to Port Douglas instead.  It's looking like I might make it over there at the end of July.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Cheap Airfare "Hack"

I've said it numerous times on this blog: Airfare is one of the most expensive things about travelling.  Because of this, people are always trying to figure out a way to score cheaper airplane tickets.  

Some of the most common money saving tips people give are to book tickets: 

• at a certain time of day
• on certain days of the week 
• buying 2 one way flights instead of a return
• after clearing your browser history/cookies/cache
• after masking your IP address to make it seem like you live in another country

To put it short and simple, all of these aren't true/worth the hassle.

I decided to do a little bit of...let's call it a scientific inquiry...about the last airfare "hack" on the above list. In case you aren't familiar with it, there is a theory that if you can change the IP address of your computer so it shows you're from a different country than you actually are, you'll get cheaper airfare.  The reasoning behind this is that it's believed people who live in wealthier countries are charged more since they could hypothetically afford it.  For example, if you make your computer show you're from Malawi, the poorest country in the world, the airline won't charge you as much even if you're sitting in your mansion in Luxembourg.

I've been thinking a little more recently about heading to Cairns in Queensland to go swimming at the Great Barrier Reef.  For fun, I wanted to see if I could actually get cheaper flights by changing my location.  Before I did the search, I cleared my history, cache, cookies, and everything else you can delete on an internet browser. I also went into Chrome's "incognito" mode to help even more.

I then did the control search using Skyscanner, hypothetically flying from Adelaide to Cairns on some random dates in July.

The cheapest return flights were for $431 AUD.

I then repeated the whole process of clearing everything on my browser and going incognito.  This time I used an extension on Chrome to mask my IP address which would trick any website into thinking I was from a different country.  I first chose the USA.

After changing the currency back to AUD, identical results came up.  Return flights for $431 on the same dates as the original search.

Next up I did the same process yet again but changed my location to the United Kingdom.

Once again, $431 AUD.

Repeated again with Singapore.

Same result. 

And finally with the Netherlands.

Yet again, the same thing.

Now if I really wanted to look into this more, I would have paid for the more advanced version of the Chrome extension to appear to be from some much poorer places but I'm trying to save money to buy a flight, not spend it. Based on this short little experiment, it's pretty clear that changing your location doesn't make a difference.  Because I had nothing to do last night, I tried this a few more times using different locations and got the same results.

That said, there is some truth to this myth.  There are stories about people pulling this off, mainly using Chile as their home location.  However, when they go to check in at the airport, there is a red flag on their ticket saying they paid much less than they should have.  Meaning while this trick will occasionally work if you get really lucky, it will have been a waste of time when you get to the airport and have to make up the fare difference (which would likely cost you more than if you had bought the ticket normally at the time of purchase).

Myth busted.

That's all for now.  Bye.