I noticed something recently on an American TV show called ‘Pawn Stars’ and that is the fact that Americans have no idea how to bargain. You’ll see the same thing on ‘American Pickers’ and other History or Discovery Channel shows. It is a common tale, you take something into the pawn shop and they talk you down from your original asking price and in the end they get the upper hand. Since we’ve been traveling quite a bit, I think we could take on the folks of ‘Pawn Stars’ and the ‘American Pickers’ with the bargaining skills we acquired traveling through Asia. But, in case you are new to the concept here are a few tips in the event you are traveling to Asia or are about to pawn an item.

As a Seller:
• Find a realistic and well researched asking price for your item by doing your homework. Look online for other items in similar shape and of similar age. Get a number from an expert, if possible.
• Now head to the market or pawn shop and ask for literally three times the number you are willing to settle for.
• Do not hesitate to turn a buyer away. You are one person with one product, and there are millions of people who are potential buyers, you don’t have to land the first one.
• Stick to your bottom-line price and do not go lower than that. Always attempt to go higher.

As a Buyer:
• Remember all the techniques you used as a seller and try to preempt their game by cutting their original asking price into 1/3rd of what they asked. This is a safe maneuver.
• Don’t be uncomfortable bargaining. In the bargaining game the goal is to end up with a number you are happy with as a buyer. Don’t worry about the seller’s feelings.
• Arrive at a price in your head that you are happy with and take one of two roads: 1) if you really want the product buy it at any price, or; 2) separate yourself from your desire to have the product and only buy it when the price is right. Don’t say your final bottom line price out loud until you get towards the end of your bargaining spiel.
• Try the walk away method. If the price was right, the seller will stop you from walking away. Naturally they are trying to get as much out of you as possible so don’t be the weak link. Hold your ground. Sometimes you will lose and your walk away bluff will result in you losing the item. Most of the time, however, the negotiations will reopen as soon as you take your first steps.

It is supremely important to stick to a deal once you make it. You don’t want to be responsible for making your whole country look bad by going back on a deal. Despite what anyone tells you, you are somewhat of an ambassador for your homeland. While some sellers overseas may change a deal once it is made, it is important to always uphold your end and take the high road. It is not at all uncommon in Central Asia and other nearby regions for a deal to be reached and then, as the product is being delivered the deal will change. Keep a level head and don’t ever give in to someone who breaks a deal. For example, we set a price for a cab ride in advance across a section of desert in Uzbekistan, as is the custom. Mid way across the desert, to no one’s real surprise, the driver pulled over and demanded more money to finish crossing the desert. When something like this happens, even if it makes your life a bit more difficult, you have to hold your ground. If they really won’t honor the original deal, get out of the car with all of your belongings. Someone else will pick you up. If you do pay someone extortion like that you make it worse down the road for the next guy, and make the scam artist a life-long fan of continuing this practice. We forced a driver to pull over and got out with all of our gear, leaving him with nothing for driving us half way. He could either stick to the original deal or get nothing. Naturally, he got us back into the car and we paid the original price. He tried the entire drive to get more money out of us, which is always annoying, but sticking to something you shake hands on is important as a person, and as a representative.

Okay folks, this visa process is a bit more in depth than any of the other visa applications for any other country we have visited. Since we’re in the process of applying for several visas for the Mongol Rally, we’ll walk you through the steps to getting a Russian visa and invitation letter, and what to expect throughout the process.

1. Make sure your passport is valid for 6 more months, at the least.
2. Get two passport pictures in color, against a white background, and have them cropped to the exact 2’x2’ size.
3. Download visa application form. Now, it may seem pedantic, but the form MUST be printed on both sides of one piece of paper. You cannot have two pages. Fill the form out in black or blue ink only, no pencil or crayon or marker or anything else. If you don’t know the answer to a question on the form, you may need to call a visa agent to ask for clarification, but don’t leave anything blank. You’ll need your work history, school history and information from your passport and travel plans (see step #6).An invitation letter is required for a tourist visa. In order to get this letter you’ll need to talk to your inviting institution (like a University, or friend, etc). If you don’t have anyone inviting you to Russia you may need to purchase an invitation letter from a visa company. The letter usually costs about $15 – $30 dollars.
4. Travel vouchers. In many cases, vouchers will be needed for your hotels, etc. If you go through a visa company they will usually take care of the vouchers for you.
5. You’ll need to know your exact entry and exit dates for Russia, as well as your itinerary. You’ll deliver some of this information on the visa form itself, and the rest in the application form for the invitation letter. The more specific you are, the better as this helps with the travel vouchers (or so we hear).
6. Finally, mail all of this into the visa company (highly recommended over doing the process yourself, which results in more rejections) along with your money order for the consulate and a separate money order to pay the visa company.
7. Most visa companies specify the duration or return time as anywhere from 10 to 20 days. If you want to expedite your visa, the consulate will charge you an added fee, as will the visa company. Plan ahead with this and have at least a month planned for this single visa.
8. Once you get to Russia you have three business days to register your visa with the hotel or with the visa agency you used to get your visa. Don’t miss this, or you could be fined when you try to leave the country.

Good luck!

And now the age old question of how to get from A to B. We’re headed from the USA to Europe, and one would think with our strong historical and economic ties that finding a way over the pond would not be such a hassle. Nevertheless, we’re finding it a bit of a pain to get from the East Coast of America to the West Coast of Europe without stepping foot in an airplane.

Booking Websites: There are literally hundreds of websites dedicated to helping you find amazing cruise deals, but they would not be in business if they were not making money off of the bookings. In general, we found the services to be almost useless. You could use your generic expedia or orbitz, but they rarely return any real deals, and pretty much just summarize what you’d find by doing the looking yourself.

It is amazing how the internet, which simply has not been around that long, has replaced an entire occupation– travel agents. I would adore calling someone on the phone and giving them my desired departure dates and a budget and seeing what they come up with. Essentially, websites like travelocity make their occupation futile and redundant and I find that sad because travel agents were such amazing people with their own personal experiences backing up their advice and bookings. I guess travel blogging and booking online are somewhat similar.

Cruises: Usually repositioning cruises take place in the spring or fall, when ships need to move between warm water in winter and active tourism ports in summer. That means taking a transatlantic in the middle of the summer will not leave a whole lot of options. For cruise companies, the money is in the Bahamas and Mediterranean. You can find more info on this amazing blog post about the top ten cruise blogs. You can also find some help on My Cruise News.

Airlines: So, if cruises cost too much, should we fly? Flying across the Atlantic isn’t exactly affordable either! Flights are running a mere $100 to $200 less than a 7 night, all inclusive cruise. That seems like a no brainer to me, considering the available R&R on the ship versus the tedium and stress of flying. Airlines are quickly making themselves an unaffordable product, lets hope alternatives like ship travel are increased to take up the slack! A quick tip- you can often find cheaper airfare if you book through a European website rather than an American one.

Freighters: One of the innovative areas in travel that has taken up some of the slack is freighter travel. We’ve looked into this pretty extensively. You can go through several sites like the following: www.freighter-travel.com; www.freighterworld.com; and www.freighter-travel-review.com or try to find a freighter leaving by contacting your departure port. Most freighters can only take between 2-12 passengers and have age and health restrictions. The average cost is about $100 a day, and transatlantic crossings take a minimum of 9 days in most cases (making the cost nearly equivalent to cruising).  However, if you have the money and lots of time, you can see some exotic ports and have a relaxing and casual cruising experience.

So, thats the skinny on our options of getting from America to Europe. I’m still hoping Cunard will call me and offer me a free cruise for saying how wonderful they are. They are so wonderful, utterly delightful and fantastic. . . . . I’ll be waiting by the phone.

Abandon the Cube has been around since 2008. While we’re not into celebrating a massive birthday party for the website or the concept, we’re excited about reaffirming our travel philosophy and taking stock of where we are, where we’re going and what we’ve seen.

By Ground Travel. By now you’ve all learned that we like to travel primarily by ground transport. Any flight across open land or water leaves the earth beneath you undiscovered, which we find goes against the spirit of how we enjoy experiencing the world’s most unexpected places. Over the past two years we’ve formed this website of travel tips, destination guides, humorous pictures, influential travelers who have inspired us and more so that we could share what we see and hopefully encourage other people to abandon their cubicles and see some of the world’s least trodden paths.

Time as the ONLY vital factor. To date we have inspired no one to quit their job. People look at us with raised eyebrows and wonder why any sane person would throw away security and comfort in exchange for several meals a day made out of rice. To us, time is the one thing that can really be stolen from you while you are on this planet. Nevertheless, people still think that if you work hard now by the time you are 45 you’ll be able to retire. In reality, who has ever retired at 45? The plan simply doesn’t work. Meanwhile, you throw away the best time in your life working, stressing and acquiring status, money, security, etc… but you can’t get that time back. Its a trade off and an unfair one in our opinions. I’m personally willing to work longer in life rather than abusing the time I have now. They say youth is wasted on the young, but I’m hoping they won’t say that about us. The reality of the situation is that society is designed to ensnare people. Right out of High School you have either college loans to pay, or else housing so you are independent. Now you have a car payment, insurance, health costs, food, your cell phone and internet….. even if you wanted to quit your job you can’t because you have bills coming in. That’s the way it is designed, and to an extent that’s why the machine of our economy works. However, if you take away all the things that require you to have a job then you no longer are in need of one. I do some writing for money here and there and make enough to cover my college loans. Outside of that, traveling full time costs us less than any apartment would, and we pay for that with money we saved while working in Shanghai for a year. We were able to save so much because we did not have a car, cell phones are pay-as-you-go rather than a 2-year-death-contract and we choose an apartment that was extremely affordable (if not minuscule). We figured out a way to Abandon our Cubicles and still meet our obligations, and that makes me confident that you could figure that out as well.

Experiences are Everything. I suppose it goes without saying that we weigh experiences very highly. We signed up for the 2010 Mongol Rally, as you know, because we saw the experience as an amazing opportunity to meet new people, have a great and daring adventure and travel 1/3 of the earth’s surface by land. Planning is still underway and we launch July 26th from London. Experiences and relationships are so important, and we hope to have an amazing adventure meeting amazing people on the Rally. Likewise, we’re excited about the new experiences coming our way after the Rally when we backpack through South East Asia and hopefully land in Thailand for a while as a place to kind of rest for a while, look for a part time job and save up so we can have more adventures down the road.

Reflections on an Amazing Year. Its is easy for us to say that 2009 was one of the best years of our lives. We left Shanghai on May 1st, 2009 and traveled by land all the way to Seattle, USA by December. In that half a year we saw and did so many amazing things that we’re likely to always look back on 2009 with a whimsical smile. From visiting Kashgar in summer, to driving across Uzbekistan with a giant; from standing near a burning crater in Turkmenistan, to living in a tent in Turkey during Ramadan; from roughing it in a cheap Bulgarian hostel, to riding a luxury cruise ship through the Virgin Islands. We nearly circumnavigated the globe (minus only the Pacific Ocean aspect of returning to Shanghai). That is why 2009 was a rich, and beautiful year. We’re hoping that the 2010 Mongol Rally that takes us from Seattle (where we are now) to Thailand via land and sea is as enriching, enchanting and captivating as the adventures of ’09.

On the road last year I read several travel books. Below are a few reviews of some of the amazing adventure tales I’ve enjoyed reading, I hope you’ll find something you enjoy from this list as well:

Road Fever, by Tim Cahill. It is a rare thing that I read a book in one sitting, but that is exactly what happened once I started reading Road Fever. Cahill and long-distance driver Garry Sowerby race to set a new world record from the furthest southern point in South America, Tierra del Fuego, to the furthest northern point of Prudhoe Bay Alaska. They did this amazing feat in 32 1/2 days, a Guinness World Record. It isn’t just the feat that is amazing, it is the fun series of adventures Cahill and Sowerby find themselves enjoying while setting new records. I left this book in Turkmenistan.

COVER

Riding the Iron Rooster
& Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, by Paul Theroux. While it is no secret that I dislike Theroux’s writings for their stuck up, holier-than-thou feel, I did enjoy reading these two books in so far as they provided insight into the areas we would be traveling through by rail. Theroux is notorious for his use of ground transportation, an idea we can fully support. Nevertheless, his constant complaints about food and sanitation become pestering the more pages you turn. In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux retraces a route he took as a young man, and notes the changes. This had real potential, but fell short because he brought along a cell phone, laptop, and an older man’s need for amenities. I left one of these in Shanghai, and the more recent book in Uzbekistan.

Chasing the Sea, by Tom Bissell. Another former Peace Corps volunteer becomes a writer. Bissell became deathly ill while serving in Uzbekistan, and was sent home before completing his two years of service. Once healed, the more-healthy and mature Bissell returns to Uzbekistan to finish what he started– a trip to the Aral Sea. Filled with historical insight and a bit snobbish critic of the area and its people, Bissell is no doubt an expert on the country’s water waste and the diminishing Aral Sea. Nevertheless, it is a bit long-winded and egotistical, focusing on his own return to Central Asia and his misadventures more than the people or region. Ironically, I left this book in Central Asia when I departed.

Flightless, by Lonely Planet Publications. This compilation of tales focuses on people who have chosen to travel without leaving the ground, proving that getting there is more than half the adventure. Some of these amazing folks are featured on our Famous Adventurers page but since the book details the by-ground trips of some 26 adventurers, we could not feature them all. Traditional ground travel includes trains and automobiles, but some of these adventurers travel by camel, Vespas, canoes and bikes, some even crossing the oceans in man-powered vessels for charity. This book will really make you rethink your next flight, and consider how much you are missing by flying over the adventure instead of going through it. This book is in my collection in the USA.

Oracle Bones
& River Town, by Peter Hessler. Like many great travel writers, Hessler got his taste for travel in the Peace Corps while assigned to a small town on the Yangtze River teaching English. He studied Mandarin Chinese daily, and slowly became fluent in the world’s most difficult language to master. Meanwhile, he spent his time trying to understand the people he worked with and around, and to delve into the culture without holding back. As a result, Hessler’s books offer genuine commentary on the Chinese and their massive country, as well as an un-egotistical vantage point from which readers can enjoy a foreign country. River Town, his first book, is the tale of his Peace Corps assignment while Oracle Bones is a montage of information Hessler gleaned while living in Beijing, interviewing locals and learning more about Chinese history and language. I lent a friend one of these books never to see it again, and the other is in my collection in the USA.

Race to Dakar, by Charley Boorman. Charley Boorman and longtime travel partner Ewen McGregor have set off around the world together on their motorcycles and then composed Long Way Round.  In Race to Dakar, Boorman sets off on his own. While the writing is not 100%, the adventure is, and Boorman details his planning, launch and then start in the Dakar Rally. While he was injured and did not finish the rally, Boorman healed up and continued on several other adventures, including another trip with Ewen McGregor called Long Way Down. We were excited to read about these rally adventurers because of our own upcoming Mongol Rally adventure. This book is soon to be shipped to a friend in Central Asia, which I think Charley Boorman would appreciate.

Cover

If you have ever entertained the idea of long-term travel, or ‘Vagabonding’ as Rolf Potts terms it, then this book is an invaluable guide on how to get started with planning and logistics. It is a whimsical yet no-nonsense guide on how to take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years off to travel, and do so successfully.

Potts offers not only a philosophical journey through his decision to abandon his cube and travel, but pertinent information, like that on our resources page, about travel insurance, teaching English, and language software, etc. He makes the world of long-term travel see manageable ad available to anyone willing to try, and this is an amazing thing to achieve in around a hundred pages.

If you are already a life-long lover of travel than Potts witty and Buddhist-like rants about the necessity to experience the larger world will reassure you that the vagabond lifestyle you’ve chosen is not only zen-like, but largely practical and applicable in the ‘real world’ should you ever decide to return to it. Moreover, your blood pressure will rise and a smile will spread across your face as you eagerly turn the pages to devour more of Potts reassuring and inspiring rhetoric.

Not many people make backtracks like we do! To make my point, our trips inside America in the last several months

Route map?

have been hectic, repetitive and somewhat ridiculous. Just look at that map! We landed on the east coast, managed to make it to Illinois, only to jump to New Hampshire and Washington, back to Illinois, then to Texas, back to Illinois, then to Washington again. make any sense to you? Yeah, us neither. And we did it ALL by land only, no air travel. If you ever want to hear our opinion of Amtrak or the Great American Road System, pleas ask. We’d be happy to monologue for you, and since Mike plays the guitar, he can even do it to song, if that’s your preference.

I have to confess, a huge portion of America has been neglected in our ridiculous travels, and that area is boring– which is why we didn’t go there (California, Oregon and parts of Nevada exempted). I’d love to see the Grand Canyon, but they located it in the middle of nowhere, so until they get some interesting side attractions out there we’ll be sticking to the more densely populated areas.

One of the amazing things about ground travel in the USA is the gas prices. It can be high in, say, Seattle and low in DC. Explain this to me, someone please? Why do the people along the coasts, where oil is delivered, often pay more?  Isn’t Canada our biggest oil supplier? Why do northern states pay more than southern ones? Check out this map of gas prices in the USA– see a trend?

Another thing that surprised me was the tax rates in various states we traveled through. Texas, for example, had an 8% sales tax rate while Arkansas was 9% and Missouri was 7%.  Property taxes is not taxed, but everything else is. Washington has a $9.00 minimum wage while Wyoming gets a mere $5.15 an hour. Some states don’t even have minimum wage standards. Emma Goldman would be sad.

Nevertheless, the trip was amazing. I’ve never seen so many MAC trucks! Ya know, America, a railway system might solve the over-congestion of the roads. I’ve also never seen so many fast food restaurants. You see a lot of interesting folks in sweat pants at the McDonald’s, or rummaging in the trash at various rest stops. We even saw one man get out of the driver’s seat of his RAM truck and finish his beer then toss it in the trash before peeing in the grass NEXT TO the bathrooms. Also, at any given interstate gas station you’ll find a plethora of items for sale that no one would, or has ever bought. Like neon pink mud flaps with a naked woman outline on them. And the gas station check-out guy is always eating or spitting sunflower seeds while you try to check out.

So, the cross-country ridiculousness went well, and we’re in Washington now. believe it or not we’ll be heading back to the Midwest soon enough– enhancing the backtrack.

Cover Art

If you have ever been to China, then Lost on Planet China will be full of inside jokes only you and other China travelers will understand. His insight into the psyche of the Chinese was amusing and comical, but hardly deep. It would be fair to say that more than half of the book was taken with Troost’s comical musings on the Chinese way of life, with the remaining bit concerned with telling where and what he was up to while romping around the Middle Kingdom.

Troost, who is perhaps most well known for his forays on lost islands, isolated from humanity. Now he has traveled from serenity to the world’s most populated country, and at times his frustration with the density of human life is apparent. While many may feel this is a drawback to the book, anyone who has been to China can laugh along with him as he remains frustrated at people pushing him in line, cutting him on the subway and spitting all over ever piece of bare land.

He considers briefly bringing his family to China with him, but decides against it due to the excessive amount of pollution he encounters during his travels, and that’s not to say he didn’t try to find a breath of fresh air while in Asia. Having lived in China for several years, Troost was apt in his assessment of the state of air in China, but he is also a bit jaded since he spent such a large amount of time on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean—aka the epitome of a fresh air location.

Troost has a very unique writing style. At first it was hard to get into, but after a chapter or two his cheeky textual habits become cute in a quirky way. Having read another book of his, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, which describes his time in Kiribati, I feel that not only has his writing improved, but his sense of humor has expanded a great deal, making his new book a pleasure to read.

Texan Rose

Texas! The only state in the union that considers becoming its own country on a daily basis and was an independent nation from 1836 to 1845. Texas! Known for the highest number of executions per year. A place so exciting and fast paced it took the armadillo as its state animal. Texas! The lone star state, a word that means “friendship” but a people at odds with both the north and the south. Ah, Texas. There is no other place in the union where history is so alive, so fierce that ‘death by cowboy’ is still considered a legitimate fear. The politics are ripe and raw, the people are hardy and tough, and the sun beats down upon more people in Houston and San Antonio than in 31 other states. So, what did we northerners think of our 6 week stay in the Lone Star State? — I’m glad you asked:

Texans are a tough breed. The ones we met were rough and ready to deliver their political, religious and musical opinions without instigation, and we’re about as willing to listed to the northern view as a child is willing to listen to the news. But, despite their hotheadedness, they were a friendly and approachable people- despite the truck bed gun racks and camouflage clothing. Although we have games like “Big Buck Hunter” in the bars up north, there was nothing of that sort down in Texas. Instead, bar goes serenade each other with karaoke or play a charming game of shuffle board. No, they are not big hunters, they raise cattle instead, proving that brains outdo brawn any day. While the northerner is off hunting in the snow, the southerner is playing shuffle board at the bar while his steers make him millions. And if cattle isn’t the occupation of choice, then oil is. More readily available than water, in places, oil is the Lone Star’s liquid of choice.

Color!

What about the wildlife, the countryside, the great outdoors? Glad you asked. There is more than enough land in Texas to go around. Don’t ever worry that America will become to congested– it wont. There is land in Texas even the Texans don’t know what to do with.  Things are so spread out, that without a car (or horse) it is nearly impossible to get around. Even in the cities there is a certain amount of space between structures that says, “hey, this here is my land, buddy. Get your own!” And, if you wanted your own land, it is available for sale in Texas and teaming with wildlife like hawks, lizards, strange pig-gazelle looking creatures and more. None of which us northerners have seen in the wild before and consider strangely comical when seen from a car window.

Having visited much of the USA, it is fair to say that Texas does indeed have something special. For the independent hermit or outspoken don Quixote, this is the place to be. Austin has great live music and cosmopolitan flare, Houston has NASA (and Billy Bob Thorton) and San Antonio has the Alamo- possibly America’s most famous underdog story.

Book Cover

Steve and Vali made a deal with each other. The first one to circumnavigate the globe by land would win a bottle of the most expensive scotch they could find in California. So, they purchased a bottle of scotch, poured two glasses and set them dramatically on the dining room table. Then they said their goodbyes (an event that left one in handcuffs and other excessively grumpy) and took off on a no-airplanes circling of the globe.

While the premise sounds amazing, and the concept of circumnavigating the globe by land enticing, the actual adventures Vali had were somewhat diminished by the fact that he chose to cheat and fly around the world, thus breaking the deal and cheating himself and his friend out of a true challenge. Meanwhile, Steve sits on a boring freighter for a large portion of his travels, participating in the challenge full on, but thus having less time to see the world.

This raises an important question for us at Abandon the Cube. Since we gave up flying, and have been traveling by land only for the past year, we’re wondering what we are possibly missing by scooting across the oceans and plains by land. While I sometimes think we could experience and see a lot more if we simply flew from place to place, for us most of the adventure lies in the “getting there” aspect of traveling. We recently traveled from Shanghai to Seattle by land, going through Central Asia, the Caucus, Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and finally across the Atlantic by boat to the east coast of the USA where we took a series of trains and cars to the west coast. Basically, we did the same trip that Steve did, minus one trip across the Pacific Ocean by freighter. We would not have done it any other way. Instead of flying from Xinjiang to Uzbekistan, we took a train through Kazakhstan. While we were extorted and robbed in Kazakhstan, and chased across the border in Uzbekistan, we would not lose those experiences for anything, including a cushy airplane chair complete with free drinks and pre-packaged food.

On the up shot, Steve and Vali are both comedians. One writes for American Dad and the other for My Name is Earl, along with many other accomplishments. Their sense of humor permeates The Ridiculous Race, making it a fast and delightful read. While their insight into the places they visit is minimal, the funny commentary along the route is amusing and delightful.