{"id":129442,"date":"2019-02-19T19:24:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T03:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=129442"},"modified":"2019-02-19T19:24:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T03:24:46","slug":"barbell-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/barbell-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbell Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A simple idea:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To have a more fun, enjoyable, and interesting travel experience, embrace the extremes (barbell) between super “scrappy” (cheap) and “bougie” (expensive\/fancy) experiences. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Avoid the middle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fancy dessert in Mexico City<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When traveling, avoid going to “mid tier” ($$) restaurants. Better to embrace the extremes. For example in Mexico city:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For lunch eat street tacos (50 cents a piece), and for dinner eat a super fancy meal ($20 a plate). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The reason why: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The price difference is generally not that much between a “mid tier” and a “fancy” restaurant (20% difference in price), but the experience of a fancy restaurant is usually 200% more interesting (in terms of food options, ambiance, interior decor, service, presentation). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Traveling like a baller on a budget<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Street meat in Mexico City<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For example even when Cindy and I were broke and starving college students, we embraced a similar barbell travel strategy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

99% of the time eat super super cheap street food, but 1% of the time have the fanciest and most expensive meal. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For example in France, most of our meals were from the grocery store, rotisserie chickens, bread\/cheese\/salami. But for at least one meal, we would go to the fanciest restaurant in town (not ordering much food, enough not to be kicked out).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This way we remember vividly the super expensive\/fancy experience, and yet we still kept in our budget by eating cheap meals 99% of the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbell living<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Cochinita pibil taco in Mexico City<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we can also take a barbell approach (embracing the extremes) with living:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Live extremely frugally (ascetic lifestyle), but for the few things you do purchase or own, make them the highest quality. For example feeding yourself on $2 a day on eggs while wearing $100 Merino wool t shirts (owning 2x).<\/li>
  2. Cook home most of the time to save money, but when you do go out to eat dinner, dress up and go to a fancy place. Or if you’re going to eat out to a restaurant, avoid $$ Yelp restaurants and instead go very cheap (buy Groupons for dinners, what Cindy and I do). <\/li>
  3. Better to travel to a developing country (Vietnam, Mexico) and have a more luxury experience, than to go to an expensive place like Paris and not really be able to afford anything. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    More turbo thoughts on travel to come!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    ERIC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A simple idea: To have a more fun, enjoyable, and interesting travel experience, embrace the extremes (barbell) between super “scrappy” (cheap) and “bougie” (expensive\/fancy) experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/eric-kim-photography-lumix-g9-JPEG-Mexico-City-v0-51.jpg?fit=3712%2C2784&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129443,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129442\/revisions\/129443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}