Where was this picture taken and what currency do they use there?
Travel Reward Card Recommendation
-
Recent Pins by World Wanderlusting
Eight Great Foods To Feed the Wanderlust
As I’ve talked about before, food is one the biggest reasons why I love to travel. Trying the local fare in each place is always a highlight for me. I’m always glad when people post pictures of the foods that they ate on their trips.
I’ve compiled a list of eight great foods that will make you want to travel. It seems like the food is never the same when you get home from your destination, but it can feed you the wanderlust.
Pho
- Pho. This is a Vietnamese staple. Even when the temperature reaches over 100degrees you will find all of the locals eating this meal. They don’t differentiate breakfast meals from lunch or dinner like we do in the US. They have this for all three meals everyday. Although it is simple, the dish is quite impressive. Almost always they load it with seafood, but sometimes you can find it made with chicken, beef, or pork. The broth is a not too complex, and is loaded with soft rice noodles. I’ve seen it in the states at Mongolian Grill Restaurants, Thai restaurants, and occasionally you can find them at a Vietnamese restaurant. They always have side plates of bean sprouts, cilantro, jalapenos, and more to put in once the soup has arrived. This is truly a local food, but I highly recommend it.
Pad Thai
- Pad Thai. This is the most common type of Thai food found in America. It is usually at the top of the menu and is pretty easy to remember. The main part of this meal is rice noodles, but they usually include some type of meat. You can order with seafood, chicken, beef, or pork. It is usually garnished with cilantro, lime juice, and crushed peanuts (Love these). It is usually pretty affordable in Thai restaurants, but highly recommended. My wife loves this the most of all Thai foods, but my favorite is up next.
Laab--My Favorite
- Laab Moo(Pork) kai (Chicken) This is a salad that is my favorite Thai food ever. I will usually buy it and also purchase a bowl of rice. This ensures that I fill up, and helps kill some of the spice. This is a blend of deliciousness. My mouth is watering as I explain how good this is. They mince the meat and blend it with sliced up red onions. They also add spice, lemon juice, rice powder, sliced shallots, and much more. I HIGHLY recommend this food for anyone who wants to try something new. I’ve never been disappointed by this food
Chicken Tikka Masala
- Tikka Masala. This is an Indian Cuisine that was first introduced to me by my good friend Trevor. He was probably the one who got me wanderlusting in the first place. He fell in love with this dish and showed it to my wife and I. We found a great recipe and we have been making it ever since. I’m actually really sad that I never hit up my old neighbor Mandeep, who was from India, to ask him to make this for me when I was in high school. It is a blend of many spices, and isn’t easy to make. The result is absolutely amazing. You must purchase the naan bread to go with this dish. It is an essential part of the Indian cuisine as well. Cilantro is a common garnish, and is laid on a bed of long grained rice. The naan bread helps you to clean your plate when you are done as well. I’ve never been to India, but this food makes me want to take a trip there.
Mark Enjoying Pikliz
- Pikliz. People tell me that this is similar to the pickled cabbage that is eaten in Korea, but I feel like this stuff is different. I went to Haiti in April of 2010 to help out after the earthquake. What an amazing experience. I’ll write more about it later, but we had someone cook all of our meals. When she asked what we wanted to each at the beginning of the day, we would always respond that we wanted pikliz as a side dish to our main course. The main ingredients are cabbage, carrots, onions, spicy peppers, vinegar, garlic, and salt. It isn’t everyday that you get the chance to eat at a Haitian restaurant, and I’ve even seen some recipes online that can be replicated, but this stuff is good.
- Mangoes and Sticky Rice- I know that you are noticing a theme that many of
Mangoes and Sticky Rice
these foods are from Southeast Asia. The main reason for this is because there is an abundance of these restaurants in every town that you might not have ever tried. Everyone is used to Chinese, Mexican, etc. It is time to branch off and find a new food that inspires you to want to travel. That is the purpose of this post. Hopefully it is inspiring someone out there. This is actually a dessert, and it is horrifically expensive in the USA. They usually want about 6-10$ and it is usually a small amount of food. This delicacy is based on a bed of sticky rice that is warm. They then place chilled mangoes on top of the bed of rice and pour warm coconut milk on top. If the location is really legit then they will also put toasted sesame seeds on top as a garnish. My wife and I fell in love with this stuff on our trip to SE Asia, and after your first bite, I’ll almost guarantee that you will too.
- Foreign Made Coca Cola. I enjoy drinking Coke in the USA from time to time, yet
my main preference is Mountain Dew. It does seem like the Coke in other countries has a sweeter taste. I’ve never been there, but supposedly in the Coke factory in Atlanta you can try different recipes of Coke from different countries all across the world. Although the main ingredients are similar, there is nothing like drinking a foreign Coca Cola. I’ve tried Pepsi, Sprite, and other types of soft drinks, but nothing is as good as Coke. I always look forward to sipping down a Coke after a delicious meal or as night falls on the beach. If you’re not a soft drink kind of person then this might not be a good recommendation. I always say that the Coke will kill any of the bad stuff that I might eat. My wife rolls her eyes, but I kinda believe it….. - Gelato- Although the word is Italian, it is used in countries all across the world.
My wife is an ice cream connoisseur and she knows when ice cream is good. She loves the Italian Gelato and it can be found in places across the USA, but you can also find it in Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and I’m sure almost everywhere else. This is usually a little bit softer than the ice cream that we have in the states. It can sometimes even be purchased on cruises. Look for this stuff and give it a try. You might still enjoy your normal ice cream, but this is worth a shot. Keep in mind that sometimes these will be laced with liquor and rum, so if it burns your mouth instead of freezing your brain then you might have gotten a flavor with some alcohol. Don’t let your kids get the wrong flavor either. Many other countries don’t have age restrictions for their children on when they can have alcohol.
I hope that I’ve inspired someone out there to give one of these new foods a try. Most of you have probably never tried any of these foods, but I encourage you to break the mold of pizza, Chinese, and Mexican. Try something new and it might inspire you to take a trip to one of these countries.
Wanderlusting for different foods can be exciting. You can always ask your server what the ingredients are for each dish. As long as it doesn’t have mushrooms then you will be fine. 🙂
All New United MileagePlus Explorer Card
Posted in Eight Great, Fun Travel Stories
Tagged laab moo, mangoes and sticky rice, pad thai, pho, travel foods
4 Comments
Miles for Magazines
Would we dare recommend that you use your precious miles and points for anything but airline travel and hotel redemption? Why yes… we just might.
Today I scooped up a copy of the most recent National Geographic Magazine – always an interesting read. I had a subscription a couple of years ago, but I didn’t renew and I’ve gotten my anthropologic fix from interesting bloggers and the occasional news article.
It got me thinking I needed another year’s worth of intriguing pieces on mapping the human genome, isolated cultures, and geologic wonders. At first glance, I couldn’t find a subscription for anything less than $15 a month (I know, see how cheap I am?). Then I remembered a little trick I pulled off a few years ago to keep alive the small balance of AA miles I had at the time. They require periodic activity – which doesn’t necessarily equate strictly to flying. I used some miles to sign up for a copy of Travel + Leisure, which, while it does contain a few nice pictures here and there, is really just a waste of paper. Unless, that is, you’re into all-inclusive resorts and Breitling watches (I’m not).
I thought I’d see what my miles would get me that would provide something deeper than airbrushed resort women and lists of hotels that I’d never cough up the money to stay in. While many, if not all, point programs have some kind of magazine program, we’ll isolate our focus to Delta and AA. It appears that they both use the same vendor, who’s probably losing money on your subscription in hopes that you’ll auto-renew. (I always set my www.google.com/calendar reminder to ensure that I don’t get burned on these kinds of things).
It’s really quite amazing just how cheaply you can score some really great magazine subscriptions. Here’s a link to the entire list, but I’ll list off my favorites:
- National Geographic Traveler 300 miles+$2
- Time (weekly) 1200 miles
- The Economist (weekly) 3200 miles
- Outside 800 miles
- Readers Digest 300 miles+$
There’s not an enormous list, but there are quite a few and chances are that you might find something you like.
The way I see it, these miles are so minimal, it’s not like you’re really inhibiting your ability to travel anywhere unless you’re inching towards one of the award ticket minimums. Also, As a general rule, I’d suggest that you use any Delta miles over AA miles, just because the redemption values are usually lower on AA.
Hopefully there are a few of you wanderlusters who were wanting a subscription to provide a monthly dose of daydreaming fodder.
We are still taking travel photo submissions for our contest. We’ll choose 10 photos to compete for a $100 Amex giftcard. We still haven’t even picked the 10, so hurry and post your photo to our Facebook page or email it to bradleyjai@hotmail.com.
We still feel like the Chase Sapphire preferred card is the best option out there at the moment for piling up a frequent flyer arsenal.
Traveling with Children
My wife and I are super excited to celebrate my son’s six month mark! He joined us in late June and we have loved having him with us in our family. Becoming a father has been WAY more exciting than I ever expected. Smiles, giggles, laughs, and babbling absolutely win me over. I enjoy laying with him on the floor, watching him roll over, and feeding him bottles or food from a spoon.
Our Little Boy
We have obviously been travelers to this point in our lives, but we are now reaching the point where we have to decide whether or not Max will be joining us on our next trip. We are considering going to Europe in the fall of 2012.
The AAdvantage miles (expired) will take good care of us so we can fly into Zurich. This means that we will only have to pay taxes on that flight. Taxes on a flight to Europe might be $200 each, resulting in $400 of unavoidable costs (I’ll definitely use my Capital One card to cover this–see below). Our Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express card will allow us to stay for free in 9 different hotels across Alpine Europe. Because my wife and I both scored the SPG card we have accumulated approximately 80,000 SPG points. When redeeming these points no taxes are paid. Yes! So we shouldn’t be paying anything for hotels. Check out our post about using credit cards to secure free travel.
We also scored on the Capital One Venture card. This card had a very short term promotion where they would “Match My Miles” (expired) the amount of frequent flier miles that you had up to 100,000. Luckily the AAdvantage card had filled my account and my wife’s account too. We were able to score this bonus which resulted in $2400 in spending. We’ve already burned through almost a thousand dollars, but it has been well worth it. This will be used the pay the taxes on our flight and our rental car or train.
Doing the math it looks pretty good. We should be spending $0 on our airfare, hotels, and car rental. That is a savings of over $4000 easily! Tell me that it’s not worth it!?
Family at the Biltmore
Max has traveled with us two times already. He went to North Carolina in September and Tennessee in November. He has been a good little traveler, but I’m going to need some advice from each of you guys. What has your experience been on traveling with children?
We are considering taking him to Europe with us in the Spring of 2012 on this trip. He will be approximately 10-11 months. I’m just not sure what his mobility would be like at that time. I’m also thinking would it be better to rent a car, or to take the train with the little guy?
Up to this point our travels with him have been excellent. In his short six months of life he has already been to six states. While Shae was pregnant we went to Costa Rica, and took a cruise to the Southern Caribbean. I’m hoping that as a result of this he has become an excellent traveler. What has been your experience at that age?
Obviously the trip involves quite a bit of traveling from place to place as we would be exploring. I wouldn’t even think twice if we were going to one location as a relaxation vacation. What advice would you give me?
Get your own Starwood Preferred Guest card and score some awesome hotels.
Posted in American Airlines, Car Rentals, Fun Travel Stories, Starwood Preferred Guest
Tagged AAdvantage, europe, SPG, Starwood, traveling with children
2 Comments
Travel Photo Contest – Win a $100 American Express Giftcard
We’ve been showing you our favorite travel photos for 8 months now. Our objective in starting a travel blog was first and foremost to have an outlet to discuss our passion for travel. We are building an army of wanderlusters. Our objective is to inspire you to hearken to the words of St. Augustine, “The world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only a page.”
We are doing our best to make it cheap for you. We’re trying our hardest to tempt you take on adventures you wouldn’t have dreamed of, but now we’re turning the tables. We want you to inspire us. We want you to show us where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. We’d like to feel jealous beyond measure.
So here’s the deal – check out our Facebook page, dig up your favorite travel photo and post it to our WorldWanderlusting wall. If there’s a little story to go along with it – all the better! If you’re not into the Facebook thing, send it to bradleyjai@hotmail.com.
We’re going to pick our ten favorite photos – but we don’t expect this to be extremely oversubscribed. If you’ve got a good pic (and I’m sure you do) I think your odds are pretty good. They’re even better if you are shameless enough to recruit your friends and family to go onto our Facebook page and “like” your photo once the contest begins.
When the contest ends, we’ll send the winner a $100 American Express Giftcard. All of our participants will also get a special WorldWanderlusting travel gift.
Thanks for wanderlusting with us!
New Better Delta Offering
Delta and American express have just upped the ante on their American Express Delta Gold card. The minimum spending requirement has also increased.
They now are offering 45,000 Skymiles as the bonus as long as you can spend $3000 within the first three months. That should be no problem for most people, but remember that it is an American Express, which some stores don’t accept.
The annual fee is waived for the first year and after that it is $95. It also comes with a free checked bag on domestic flights. This works for everyone on your itinerary too. So if you have a large family then this can be a huge money saver. They also throw in a $99 companion ticket each year, which essentially means that for $99 someone can join on the same flight as you are taking. That only works out to be a good deal if your flight is pretty expensive.
Now this is a really good offering when compared to their normal 25,000, or even their rare 30,000 offering, but it isn’t the best offer in the industry. Granted, if you are taking advantage of the free checked bags and traveling with a large family then this card can be a huge money saver. Otherwise the Delta redemption is not the most generous airliner. You can see where they fly and the Delta award chart below.
Delta Award Chart
Delta Where We Fly
Delta Partner Airlines
If I were to compare this offering to the Chase SapphireSM Preferred Card I would tell you that the Chase SapphireSM Preferred Card is much stronger of an offer. Let me explain.
- Annual Fees are the same
- Bonus is 5000 points higher
- Sapphire card allots Chase Ulitmate Rewards points. You can actually book on any airline if you would like for airfare up to $615.
- Points are transferrable to Amtrak, United, Continental, Southwest, and more
- Sapphire Preferred also gives you a 7% dividend.
On the other hand you may love Delta, and they fly where you need them to fly. If that is the case, then this is a great card for you. I grew up on Delta, and loved being a member of their Frequent Fliers club at an early age. They would mail me booklets to color. I really miss those days.
I have a friend going to Costa Rica today, so I’m rather jealous. I am hoping that I can get my vouchers booked soon so I have warm temperatures to look forward to. It is too cold in Idaho right now.
Invite your friends to wanderlust with us…Join us on Facebook
