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A Singaporean's guide to travelling in the US of A (part one.)
A Singaporean guide to living in/visiting the USA.After living in the USA for a year, I proclaim myself to have enough experience to pen a Singaporean Guide to living in the USA. I'm writing this out of the goodness of my heart, because I wish I had something like this 3 years ago when I was planning my holiday....
Disclaimer: This entry is for people like me, who have not been privileged enough to spend 10 out of their 24 summer breaks in the United States.
Travelling in the US:
There are limited means of transport in the USA. Unless you are extra resourceful, you really only have the choice of taking a long distance bus ride, renting a car, and/or taking a domestic flight. (Asking for rides is also an option for the adventurous. Americans are pretty helpful when it comes to giving free rides.)
Long distance bus ride: Greyhound (www.greyhound.com)
Pros
#1 Greyhound is the easiest to search and book.
#2 There are Greyhound stations in virtually every city in the US, so you don't have to worry about Greyhound not serving the area you're visiting.
#3 A myriad of people take the Greyhound, so you never know who you'll meet and befriend on your ride!
#4 The Greyhound website is also very easy to navigate, and their instructions are fairly comprehensive.
#5 You usually get half priced tickets if you book early enough (like, 7 days in advance), which makes it a lot cheaper than flying.
Cons (...oh this is going to take a while.)
#1 The ride is, more often than not, excruciatingly long and painful. If it takes 3 hours to get to your destination by plane, you can be sure that it will take at least 22 hours to get there by Greyhound. It takes at least 7x the duration of flying, to get to a place by bus.
#2 There are Greyhound stations in virtually every city in the US, so expect to make multiple stops before arriving at your destination. Also, be ready for transfers, which can be highly unpleasant when you have several suitcases.
#3 A myriad of people take the Greyhound, so you never know who you'll meet and befriend on your ride! ON THE FLIP SIDE OF THAT, 90% of the people who take the Greyhound are sketchy as fuck (pardon the expletive) (the other 10% are tourists.) 80% have very bad personal hygiene, 70% have no manners and will take up their own seat and half of YOUR seat, 50% have horrible temperament and will not hesitate to lecture you for even daring to breathe in their presence, 40% will not leave you alone, and will periodically flash you creepy smiles, 30% snore very loudly in their sleep (keep this in mind when you're booking overnight bus rides...) The bottom line is, you really never know who you'll meet on your ride. That guy diagonally across you? He could be a serial killer on the run.
#4 You cannot choose your seat prior to departure. Which basically means that if the bus is completely full and the only seat left is the one next to the severely obese guy with mucus dripping down his nostrils....Sorry, that's your seat right there. (and if you refer to #3, you will notice that the chances of this happening...is unbelievably high.)
#5 Luggage have to be checked in and placed at the bottom of the bus. If you have too much luggage you can almost be sure that the driver will throw you dirty looks and treat you like dirt.
#6 There is a constant, nagging fear that one of the 90% of sketchy people will steal from you in your asleep. Or worse yet, steal your entire luggage altogether.
I've had good, and very bad experiences on the Greyhound. I'll share the most recent one(s).
Last year we met a group of Work & Travel students from Kazakhstan at the Greyhound station where we were queuing to board the 2am bus (it was a transfer.) They had the most beautiful gray eyes and flawless complexions. They also didn't know very much English, and so we had a fairly entertaining conversation.
At 2am we were told our bus was delayed.
At 3am the line started to move. By the time S and I boarded we were told that there were only 2 seats left on the bus. The Kazakhs, who were queuing behind us, were left stranded. We never found out what happened to them. But we had bigger concerns right then.
We saw only a single available seat when we boarded the bus, and it was right at the back of the bus, beside a black man who looked so sketchy he could well be a kidnapper. He was also 7 ft tall. (7 ft = approx. 2m) and had a very young, very dirty (in the most literal sense) girlfriend by his side, whom he was canoodling with. I ended up sitting beside them.
On the bright side, he paid no attention to me whatsoever.
On the downside, his water bottle fell onto my lap mid ride, and there it remained throughout the journey, because I did not want to disturb the love making session and risk getting maimed.
Sharissa, on the other hand, was not quite as lucky. After I settled myself in the half seat (7ft man took up the other half,) S found herself having to wait for a severely overweight lady to get her legs off that one last seat on the bus so that she could get seated. The woman had her legs propped up on the empty seat beside her and tried to conceal it by covering them up with god-knows-how-many blankets to make it look like there was another person there. She made a face when S sat down, and for the rest of the journey bitched about Sharissa taking up that seat (half seat, actually) to her similarly obscenely obese friend sitting behind her.
And that was just one of many similar experiences. Of course there have been good rides, but when I say good I really mean fairly pleasant--meaning we didn't get bitched at, or bullied into taking up only half the seat...)
With all that said, I still find Greyhound to be a much cheaper alternative to flying, but only, only if you have (1)no driver's license, (2)no money, and (3)a lot of time to spare. If you do decide to take the Greyhound, here's some advice,
#1 Travel light. Very, very light. A small carry on and a purse to hold the essentials.
#2 Be competitive--start queuing at the bus lane 2 hours in advance, or as soon as you see someone forming a line. Run.
#3 Have the Singaporean spirit. (Like all the douche bag Singaporeans on the mrt who pretend to be busy when an elderly person boards the train.) If a sketchy man keeps throwing creepy looks at you, pretend to be asleep. Or texting.
#4 Have an open mind. Meet someone who looks fairly decent? Make friends, no harm in that.
#5 Don't, don't ever, I repeat, don't ever try to reason with anyone. The people who take the Greyhound are very unafraid of raising their voices and yelling you down. They aren't afraid of looking bad. Just apologize.
Train: Amtrak (www.amtrak.com)
I don't recommend taking the train because of how obscure and out of the way the train stations are. Tickets are also really expensive. Also, amtrak doesn't serve many smaller cities, which can be very difficult when you're trying to go in and out of a city like Asheville.
Travelling by air: Delta, Jetblue, US Airways etc.
Travelling by air is the most expensive, but the most convenient, and the fastest way of getting anywhere.
#1 After a year of booking domestic flights I can safely say that www.kayak.com is the best website to book domestic (I won't say the same for international) flights. You can even save your search and kayak will email you when there are better prices.
#2 If you're not pressed for time and have an abundance of time to play around with, go to Priceline.com's PriceBreaker Deals. Granted that Priceline.com is not the easiest to navigate, and is not a smart website (it doesn't even automatically fill out the airport code for you,) the prices are really unbeatable. You can get up to 40% off flight prices if you know how to do it right.
#3 You can also check out www.travelzoo.com for flash deals and good package deals.
P.S You can trust me on these websites. I've spent hours and hours sourcing for the cheapest flight deals throughout my year in the US. But if you have any better recommendations, please do share!
Oh, and before I forget, most, if not all domestic flights require you to pay a fee for checking in your luggage.
NOTE*** While international flights give you an allowance of 2 checked in baggage, domestic flights are less baggage friendly. Make sure you weigh your luggage too, strictly 50lbs or less.
What's free***
1 carry on bag (can be from the size of a small duffle, to a small trolley bag)
1 handbag (can be a really big tote bag)
So my advice for people travelling by air,
#1 Travel light. duh.
#2 Choose to put your bigger carry on bags at the bottom of the plane (they give you that option. just ask to do that before you board)
#3 You don't need your passport. Just a photo ID.
And finally, taking to the roads!
Renting a car is incredibly easy in the US.
We never had a problem with not having an international drivers license. They accepted the Singaporean license just fine. The fees were also relatively low (like, $300 for 5 days) and gas is dirt cheap compared to home. In our experience, the fees for renting a car, plus the insurance and all that jazz, is still lower than buying 2 Greyhound tickets, to wherever.
For our trip from Asheville to Baltimore, we spent 9-10 hours driving and made several stops along the way.
Cost: $150/person for the car, about $90/person for gas for 5 days, plus $25/person for a night's stay at Howard Johnson (pit stop!)
Total: $265 for round trip, plus driving around the city.
Besides, you can rent a car and return it in another city for a little bit more money. Just imagine the convenience of it all. You drive from, say, NC to NY, return the car in NY, and travel by the metro for your duration of stay! Easy and cheap!
You also get a huge space for luggage/bags, enjoy the convenience of stopping as and when you want to, to sight see, to sleep and/or to visit different cities along the way. Besides, who doesn't want to go on a ROAD TRIP!
If you're afraid of getting lost, like we did (once, because my phone/GPS died...) just always make sure that you have a charger, and an offline map at hand (in case you lost reception. The satellite still works and shows you where you are if you have your google maps pre-loaded, if you get what I mean,) even without you being online.
IN CONCLUSION, renting a car is the most convenient and wallet friendly. We've driven in the day and through the night, and it's always been relatively safe--even that one night we stopped at a random (dodgy as fuck) neighbourhood because S was having a headache.
Oh, but before I forget,
Taking to the roads...FREE RIDE! style.
There are 2 ways to go about doing it.
(1)www.craigslist.com -- from buying furniture to looking for housemates, Craigslist is the all encompassing website for Americans. You can post an entry saying that you're looking for a ride to insert your destination here and if you're lucky enough someone might respond and offer you a ride. As to how safe it is to announce over the world wide web that you're planning to travel to a certain place on a certain date.... I leave up to your discretion. But seeing as you are almost certainly a Singaporean reading this, I'd suggest you take the next option, which is to
(2)Stick your thumb up -- this may take a whole day, but someone is bound to offer you a ride. Americans are generally helpful, and very friendly. Of course I'm not saying that there is no risk of you being brought to some mad scientist's house to become part of a human centipede, but in my experience as long as you know who to ride with, you should be fine. Gas stations are a good place to stick your thumb (or placard) out. You stand a much lower chance on highways because the cars zoom pass so quickly.
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