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Old Mar 17, 2016, 11:19 am
  #8  
Jay71
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
Posts: 1,549
I only like travelling during the off-season for certain types of trips (eg. Amusement Parks, etc). What concerns us about off-season travel is inclement weather, non-lively environment (businesses and activities closed), etc.

I love eating street food but I've stopped cajoling my friends to eat with me after one travel buddy ended up losing 2 days puking in his room after eating some suspect street food.

Our favourite modes of local transport are public transit/subways and walking but I've got to say that taxi rides in some SE Asian cities are pretty cheap.

I've come across a few interesting articles that talk about the ideal time to buy your plane ticket. For international travel we usually book months in advance. However, we've come across some crazy seat sales and have incorporated our travel around these sales. Eg. KLM seat sale to VCE and BCN but our primary destination was Rome. Ended up training it from Venice to Rome but spent a few days in Venice and Florence to boot. And then hopped on a LCC from FCO to BCN.

Currency exchange is a very destination and card type dependent IMO. Eg. Nearly all ATM's in Bangkok charge a 150-200B foreign card fee. The problem with getting cash exchanged in your home country is that the spreads on the less traded currencies is typically huge. Ideally, you're travelling with a no forex fee CC. With bank/ATM cards, you need to identify what usage fees they have (ideally none) and what kind of spread they charge on top of the interbank spot rate.
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