Ep 94: Four Lessons Learned on a Recent Short Trip

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Transcript

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welcome back to another episode of the theater dream physician travel podcast. I'm so excited. You're joining us today. So recently I went on a trip to Puerto Rico and, um, last week's episode, I talked about. Uh, for travel pervs that I got to enjoy on this trip. And that was a lot of fun. So if you missed that, make sure you queue that one up to listen to as well this week. I am talking about four lessons that I learned during our four days in Puerto Rico. I want to share these with you so that you can learn from my mistakes and travel smarter. We talked about this in the podcast before travel is all about being mentally prepared that things are not going to go according to plan and to expect the unexpected. There are things that we can do to prepare for the unexpected and to minimize the risk of things going wrong. Part of the Traveler's mindset is that we will be able to troubleshoot on the spot, you know, whatever comes our way. And stay calm and enjoy ourselves and have fun, no matter what. Um, so with that in mind, I want to share these four lessons that I learned. Lesson number one. Be aware of using most third party travel portals, like the chase travel portal, Amex travel portal, expedia travel portal. So what these are third party portals that do bookings for you. So the example I have is, with a car rental company. You could book directly with Avis. So I could have gone and booked directly on Avis as websites, or when my case, I tried booking it through the chase travel portal for an Avis car rental. And the reason why I did that was, to try to maximize my Travelport. So I actually paid cash, but, as a chase Sapphire reserve, credit card holder. If I book my car rentals through the chase portal. I get 10 points per dollar. Whereas if I booked directly through Avis, I would get three points per dollar spent. So that was the reason for me to try it, and I thought, you know, it was just a car rental, what could go wrong? So what happened was, we spend a long day of traveling about 12 hours from driving, from driving three and a half hours to the airport, waiting at the airport for a couple of hours. And then being on a flight for four and a half hours. We finally arrived at the Avis car rental counter after getting lost a little bit in the airport at San Juan airport. And I showed up and there was no line. So I just showed my email confirmation of a reservation that actually already paid for, um, because the one of the downsides, aside from what I'm going to tell you about the chase travel portal is unlike most car rental bookings. This one you've already paid for. So I think about three days or four days before my date of arrival. My credit cards already been charged for the full amount of the car rental. And if I wanted to cancel their cancellation policy is that I would lose at least one day of the car rental price. So I showed up thinking, well, if I already paid for it, that means I'm assured to get a car. Wrong. The very nice man, the counter, um, Who's probably been working most of the day when we showed up at 9:00 PM, after 9:00 PM said, Um, I'm sorry, we can't honor this reservation. For months we've been having trouble with the chase. Travel portal. Cesare knows this. Um, but yet they seem to keep sending people to us. There's no way for us to look at the reservation and honor the rates. So. We're going to have to make a new reservation for you. And we went ahead and did that. The rate that I got was almost twice, twice as expensive as what I had the car rental, form. So. That was really not what I wanted to hear at 9:00 PM with my family and the kids feeling tired and hungry. I talked to him a little bit more just to confirm I understood what was going on to see if there was anything else he could do. I showed them the email with the actual rate that we got to make sure that he couldn't give me the rates. Um, he probably could have. And I would have worked a little bit harder at that except. I had happened to have a backup plan in case this was to happen. And what I did was I had to made a separate reservation, through Costco car rental, one that basically had a free cancellation policy. It was really just a reservation. With my credit card, but they didn't charge my credit card. Which is actually the one exception when I talk about trying to avoid third party booking agents. Costco car rental I've used for years, um, and really have never run into a problem. So that might be the one exception. Um, if you had personal problems with a reservation through Costco car rental. Feel free to let us know. And I will share that in a future podcast, but in this case I whipped out my other email that showed a Costco car rental. This one was done with budget, but the cool thing is Avis and budget are just flip sides of the same company. So, the line for budget happened to be at the same place. And so the representative was able to use my Costco budget rental. Why do I not book directly with the car rental places? I usually shop around, um, with the prices and at least when, when I look. Costco car rental is consistently cheaper, than booking directly with the car rental place. Even when I try to put in promo codes that I could find on the internet. It still seems to be cheaper. So that's, that's why I do it. And it has additional Benefits. That are equivalent to probably having some status with a car rental company, where you get a free second driver. So fortunately, um, after a little bit of a scare. I was able to, get my car and funny enough, it was the same exact car that we would have gotten. Had we gotten the one with Avis. No real loss there. I didn't end up getting my 10 X points per dollar, but it was worth it to do it through Costco. And to drive out of there and not pay twice as much. This was actually the first trip that I did a backup car rental reservation. And the reason for that was because earlier this year when we were in Hawaii, I've made a mistake where I had reserved the wrong vehicle. And I had actually canceled the, the vehicle reservation that I wanted the night before. Only to show the ticket counter, and realize I could have kept both reservations and just use the one that I wanted. I ended up paying more for that trip for clicking one button to cancel a resume. Patient that I had made that that's when I learned my lesson is to, it's better to have, especially for reservations where there is no penalty. Even though at first it didn't feel right for me to have a backup reservation. Now I've learned, that in a pinch, that was very, very, helpful. Okay, so that was lesson number one. So remember, when you rent a car, try to rent a directly with the car rental company. Or if you're a Costco member, you can go through Costco car rental, which at least for me and everyone I've talked to has been very reliable. The second problem with chase was even though I didn't get my vehicle at the counter, I had already paid for this reservation. My credit card was charged and unless I make a phone call to chase, nobody was going to give me my money back because there was not even a way that Avis could talk to chase to let them know that I didn't get anything. Which is why in the future. I'm never going to use chase travel portal, because of how the system does not reliably communicate with the car rental company, it was getting too late then, and I just, we just need to get our car and get out of there, a couple nights later when we were still in Puerto Rico. I went ahead and called the, the chase travel portal number and, I clocked it. It was, at least 45 minutes because I talked to the first representative. And she was very, very nice. Must've have been from a foreign call center. Couldn't really understand what was going on. Wrote down a lot of information and put me on hold many times and eventually escalated me to a manager who took down what I said acted like she really cared about what happened. But in the end, all she could do was just give me, a full refund, which was better than not getting a full refund, but it was a lot of wasted energy. in The end, I didn't even get my 10 X points because. I didn't end up using that reservation. So lesson number one, learned. Hopefully I learned it. So you don't have to go through this. And by the way, that is also the case. I would say that also applies to anything else that's booked through a third party websites. In general, try to avoid using the chase travel portal, the Expedia, the Amex travel portal for hotels. And especially flights because we know that flights often get canceled. Often get delayed, often has problems. And when there's a problem, You do not want to be on the phone with the chase agent who doesn't know anything about the airline or the hotel, and all they can do is the best they can do is really give you your money back. There's not that much more they can do. And if you tried to call the hotel usually, or, or the airline usually. Their representatives can find a solution, but because you booked through a third party website, they're usually not willing to help you. So, just remember when you feel tempted because you might save$50 or earn an extra 1000 points, just remember it's. The trouble that you may have when things don't go right, is not worth using these third party travel portals. Um, there are some exceptions to this, which is a little bit more advanced than, what most people are doing, but. Booking the fine hotel network through the Amex platinum card. You know that that would be one exception because, when you're looking at fine concierge booking services, those are actually fine. And like I said, Costco car rental has never failed me, at least in my experience. So lesson number two. we mentioned a couple of episodes ago when I interviewed Dr. Bradley block, he talked about how, even if. Usually, you're a screen-free family are you really limit electronics when you're traveling? Especially long hours on the road and on flights. The screen and entertainment is your best friend, especially for helping keep kids. Happy. If you happen to have a child that can entertain themselves and just look out the window and daydream and be happy during a 5, 6, 7, 8 hour flight, that's more power to you. I think for, most parents, the screen is a great tool to keep everyone sane. Kids and parents, when we're traveling. So what I learned is that there's quite a bit of variability in what sort of entertainment and screens are offered in on, even if it's the same airline. And the same route. So an example of that is when we flew out on our outbound flight. So from going from Bradley airport to San Juan airport, That flight actually had screens on the back of the seats, but you couldn't actually access anything, not even the maps, you know, how they're maps that show you, how many more hours of the flight you're in, what part of the flight you're in, the very basic stuff that I remember even traveling as a kid in the 1990s, that flight had screens and had the capability to show you information like that and had the menu options to choose shows, but everything was empty. I don't know it was because they didn't want to pay for the copyright to the entertainment or whether there's a broken system, but, um, I have one kid who could just spend hours looking at the maps and the flight information on the display screen. So it was a big farmer for him to not have access to that. And I have another kid who really likes to watch the TV shows and they, they didn't have that. So we flew jet blue, even though most jet blue flights have free wifi, this one happened to not have free wifi. They said it was out of the coverage area. Which is weird because flying back you know, the same route, same coverage area. There was free wifi. So you just don't know. So, if you think that this is important for travel sanity of your family. Um, then bring your own electronics, make sure your devices are fully charged. Download some Disney shows, anything that you can download down, load some games, and prepare that ahead of time. Especially when you're traveling with kids. If you're an adult, you can, download your audio books or Kindle books. Podcast so that you can have some productive time on the flights, if you wish. So that was less than number. Two. Which, we learned because of we had some pretty disappointed kids after the outbound leg of the flight. And we hope that you can learn from my mistake. Okay. The third. Lesson is both a tip and a lesson. So Puerto Rico is the first place that we've been, with the kids where the main language was not English now, to be fair. It was a nice starter trip to be immersed in a foreign language because, most people in Puerto Rico could speak some English. And, both my husband and I took Spanish. In middle school and high school. So, for flying to a place that speaks a foreign language, this was the perfect one to start with. So I figured though, you know, whatever, I didn't remember. Now, if I had more time, I would have loved to have done more homework and, reviewed my Spanish a little bit more. So I, I didn't feel as rusty, but we're physicians, we have busy lives and we don't always have the luxury of doing that. I did listen to some Spanish podcasts. When were planning the trip to Puerto Rico. but the problem is I didn't understand a lot of what they're saying and I eventually felt like giving up on it. Though now I might be more motivated because after spending four days, um, and I'm practicing some of my Spanish. So Google translate is great. But what you should know about Google translate is when you get to a new place, you may not have reliable wifi. Or reliable cell phone data coverage. Um, Which I was really surprised, but my unlimited Verizon plan, or I supposedly get coverage in the U S and Canada. Did not give me data coverage. When I got to Puerto Rico. Um, so I could not really use Google translate to do anything. But there is an option. So if you get the Google translate app, it's a beautiful app because it allows you to type in just a word and translate or like a sentence or a paragraph. So, it's able to even translate, an entire conversation. So you can choose the language and just download the whole language pack. That way you won't have to rely on, having data coverage. So yeah, before you leave home. Or when you have known cell phone coverage, make sure you download, it's a quick click. You go into Google translate and download the language of the place where you're going. So you have that as a tool during your trip. The other big one, especially if you'll be driving, but even if you're going to be walking around. Is, Google maps, and if you didn't know this, and I didn't know this six months ago, and it was really, an awesome discovery, you can go to Google maps and download the area to have the map available offline, And I think it's good for six months because they update their data, so I think in six months you might have to download it again or do a refresh, but, it's very easy to do and you go to. It might be different whether you have an iPhone or an Android. You can Google the instructions. It's pretty straightforward. And so for Puerto Rico's really easy because I just downloaded the map to the whole island. And so then when I got there, I could drive and not use any data and just put in, the destination, the address, or, when you download it, it'll have the names of the important points in places like the hotel that we stayed in. On the first night after we got to the airport. And it just takes us there, which is really amazing. It's a really powerful tool. Basically it's like having a GPS, in your hands that doesn't rely on cell phone connectivity. Okay. So that's less than number three. Hopefully you'll learn from our mistake of not downloading it. I actually learned the Google maps trick when I was in the Virgin islands. When I also didn't have cell phone connectivity then, so I did know to download the Google maps, but I didn't download the Google translate. So now we'll know next time. And so will you, because you're learning from my mistakes, And the last one, lesson number four. Four days going on a short trip with kids, especially young kids. It is exhausting. I sort of suspected that this would be the case, but I wanted to do it anyway because, it was the time that we had these tickets. We could have canceled it and gotten, jet blue credit that would have been good for a year. But I wasn't sure when I'd be able to use it. And, we got such good prices and, my husband decided that he wanted to go with us the last minute. So. We actually put together this trip in probably two weeks, even though I got tickets for my three kids and I, like six months ago. Aside from that, what happened was we had booked this trip. And then another opportunity came up to do another trip that I'm going to go on later to this month, which is going to be a very long plane ride and, we're going to be away for two weeks. So I thought we might be a little bit too tired if we have this trip right before that trip. And so I was on the fence about whether to even do it or not. I am glad we did it. I would do it again, but it is absolutely exhausting. Um, worth it, worth it, because, and I'll talk about what we saw in Puerto Rico Next week. But this is when they talk about, I need a vacation from my vacation, that much traveling and then when you get there, of course you want to. Even though we try to keep our sightseeing manageable and, because we, we've learned to lower expectations for how much we can do in a day when we're traveling with kids. But we still want it to fit more in than what we usually do because of only having four days there. Really three days where we can sightsee. So the lesson is, you know, if you're going to go fly somewhere with kids on a short trip, like four days. Technically was five days. We left our home Wednesday morning and then we got back to our home after 11:00 PM on Sunday night. So we were away, but we really just had three full days in Puerto Rico. And then there was two days on either end for traveling. So, yes. That was the other lesson. I got home after. 11 on Sunday and Monday morning I went straight to work. That was very exhausting. What I learned from that is if you do go on a short trip for whatever reason, whether you can get that much time off from work, or those are the only days that could, work. Just realize that you're going to need some rest time. You're going to need some extra recovery time. When you get back home. That wraps up the four lessons that I learned on a recent trip to Puerto Rico. I hope you got something out of listening to these. If you can think of other lessons, please feel free to share you can DME. And even better than that, if you're a physician on Facebook and you haven't joined yet, please join my Facebook community dare to dream physician travel Facebook group. You can get the link in the show notes or just search for it. And, you have to apply and prove that you're a physician. But once you're in, this is the place where we can share travel tips, where we can inspire each other to live our best life through traveling. And, that is also a great place for you to share your lessons. Next week, I'm actually going to talk about. What we did in the four days that we were in Puerto Rico. Stay tuned for next week's episode.