Scaredy Cat Travels

In a nutshell, it’s not easy. Or quick. 

It is nerve-wracking, tedious and slower than Rowan getting in the car to go to a restaurant he doesn’t like.  

Spoiler alert – he doesn’t like any of them. 

I estimate I have spent approximately one million hours planning this version of the trip. That is really only a slight exaggeration.

I admit that I make it much longer than it should be. I plan travel like I shop. In any store, I must walk the entire store (or at least the relevant section and one or two that are not relevant as well) and look at every rack before deciding what to even try on. I am driven, in everything, to find the most perfect version of whatever it is. I live in constant fear that a better dress was on the one rack I didn’t look at. When my sister went to one bridal shop, tried on just four dresses and then bought the first one for her wedding, I was mortified. I visited seven shops and tried on almost 100 dresses – for my second wedding. (Partly because I really, really like wearing wedding dresses.) So my sister will also find a hotel that seems suitable and book it. Or better yet, travel with me and let me book everything. I shudder at the thought. Normal people are somewhere in between. 

But if you’ve started reading this in the first place and certainly if you’ve made it through multiple paragraphs of rambling about my process of planning travel, you’re either terribly bored, terribly desperate or also an obsessive planner, perhaps all three by now. 

My one redeeming quality in this regard is that once the dress is chosen; the hotel is booked, I do not look back and I do not regret. Once I finally make a decision, I own it. 

I am aware (because multiple people have pointed it out) that I could have booked tours through a travel service, but where’s the fun in that? For me, I’d rather risk making mistakes while having more freedom within our schedule to do what we want. I admit it isn’t for everyone. 

For my trips, planning starts with the idea followed up by lots of research. I read guide books (yes, even now) and read blogs. For the trip to Asia, I added watching YouTube travel vlogs to the rotation. 

Fun Fact – YouTube travel vlogs about trains are oddly entertaining. 

Another Fun Fact – The Apple Wine from Buccee’s is as terrible as you would imagine. And yet I continue to drink it. Do not ask me why I have it. 

My travel dreams often start with the hotel. When I can’t sleep, I scroll through hotel reviews and keep a mental list of the ones I want to visit. One night I stumbled across the Hoshinoya resort in Kyoto. I was hooked.

Spoiler alert – we aren’t staying there. The hotels I dream about are not usually within my budget. 

Next, I really do get a pretty notebook. For Asia, I started with a nice hardbound spiral notebook then switched to a BT21 notepad. Once I decimated the BT21 notepad with scribbles, I returned to the original. 

Once we are serious about going, I start checking flight fares and hotel rates sometimes months before we are ready to book anything. But this gives me an idea of what’s a good deal so when I am ready to buy, I am confident about the price I pay. 

For timing, when the kids were smaller, we took advantage of Ryan’s odd musician schedule, pulled the kids out of school and traveled when crowds, prices and weather were more cooperative. These days, we have to travel when we can all get away, which ends up being the worst time of year.  

I knew we had to go in early June because of Rowan’s camp schedule later in the summer. But the dates ended up being defined by a special on American Airlines. One sleepless, scrolling night I stumbled across a one-way flight direct from Incheon Airport in Seoul to Dallas. Nothing super unusual about that except that this flight was half the cost of the usual rates. To cap it off, there were only three seats left at that price. The negative was it was earlier than I had planned, and it was on my birthday. I didn’t really want to spend my birthday on a plane. I don’t like planes. But I knew the price was worth it so grabbed it and backed out the rest of the trip from there. 

Our departure date was also dictated by airfares. Once the return trip was confirmed, I backed up the days, planning to spend just over two weeks away. But the flights were not cooperating. I was looking into flying to Calgary and then flying to Tokyo. I looked at dozens of bizarre schedules without much luck. I knew a priority was being able to fly Comfort Plus or Economy Plus. Rowan’s 6’2” legs would not fare well for 13 hours in coach. 

I kept turning the Rubik’s Cube and finally found a reasonable option from LA on Delta in Comfort Plus. But we had to leave four days earlier and needed to fly to LA the day before. So that’s how we ended up at 23 days. I am not complaining. 

Once the flights were booked, I started mapping out the when and where. I originally planned to do the Disney parks first. I thought it would ease us into the culture shock and help maneuver through jetlag if we were busy. With the flight change though, we are arriving on the weekend when the parks are busiest, so I flipped it. Now we tour Tokyo first then head to Disney. 

When I can, I look at the best times to visit the most popular sites and try to arrange the schedule around that. It works about half of the time.

While mapping out the schedule, I started looking into hotels. I start with Marriott because I have the highest status there and then expand if nothing looks suitable. Especially when traveling overseas, I don’t want to spend the entire trip in hotels that don’t reflect the local culture so I won’t always follow my brand loyalty. Figuring out the best areas to stay in each city was challenging. This is where the YouTubers really helped. There are many videos about the different neighborhoods in each city listing pros and cons of each. There are also video reviews of most hotels which was helpful in combination with the usual TripAdvisor reviews. 

I also started reviewing my old notes about activities and noting where they were located, looking for a common theme. I watched even more vlogs. 

And finally, I started test mapping routes between hotels and key attractions on Google Maps for Japan and Naver for Korea. Of course, I watched vlogs about this too. Are you beginning to understand the one million hours? 

Even with all of this, I made a pretty big mistake by planning to visit the Fuji area one day and Hakone the next. They look close on the map but I failed to take the giant mountain range between them into account. There isn’t a good way (especially for a scaredy cat and especially with luggage) to get from one to the other. I should have scrapped Hakone completely and stayed two nights at Fuji but I had become too attached to the idea of Hakone to cancel it. Even now, I am not sure how we are getting between them. I just know it’s possible and our schedule will be tight.

In addition to planning the trip, I also needed to figure out travel documents, COVID regulations, advisories, etc. And you guessed it, the travel vlogs were the best source of information for this too. I found that the vlogs were more likely to have up-to-date information which has been important because Japan has changed entry requirements three times since we booked the trip. Recently the primary Japanese rail company made major changes to the cost of a tourist pass. The travel vloggers were all over it, posting dozens of videos explaining the changes within hours of the announcement. YouTube just might be your new best friend when planning a trip. 

The icing on my obsessive cake is my affinity for an excel spreadsheet. The friends and family that have traveled with me to Disney before all just shuddered with a collective flashback. I have a complex multi-worksheet spreadsheet that I use to organize the itinerary, activities and hotels. It also helps me keep on track with budgets and deadlines. To make it even more horrifying, before we leave, I channel my inner boomer and print it out. On that paper stuff. Along with copies of my hotel, flight and car reservations.  

Now Dear Reader, I’m not saying this is what everyone should do if they want to go to Asia or anywhere for that matter. But this is what I do. And I like it. Most of the time. Ignore that recent ranting post about passports and Klook.  

Fun Fact – I still print my boarding pass too. Insert Gen Z horror here. 

Niki