In the summer of 2009, three young Americans went for a hike. Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd were living together in Syria, teaching and writing. Their friend Josh Fattal was visiting from the U.S. The three took a tour to a waterfall in the Kurdish highlands of Iraq, and as they hiked along a road that turned out to be the border with Iran, an armed man in uniform waved them over.

The next thing they knew, they had embarked on a two-year ordeal in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. They join NPR's Renee Montagne to talk about their new memoir, A Sliver of Light.

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Tips for Travel Savings in 2014

Break a resolution yet? If any were travel-related, here’s some good news: In 2014, you can save while staying the traveler that you are.

In other words, set your nonnegotiable standards, then minimize costs and maximize value. For example: Let’s say you refuse to sleep in the same room with a stranger. That means you won’t be staying in hostels, so concentrate on lowering costs on hotel stays or short-term rentals.

Here are four issues about which budget travelers of good faith can differ, and some tips on cutting costs no matter which side of the debate you’re on.

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Frequent Flier Changes, for Better or Worse

Change is in the air: Over the last few weeks a number of United States airlines — American, Delta, JetBlue, United — have announced new programs or modifications to existing programs that will have an impact on their frequent fliers. Some changes could be for the better (earning miles on partner airlines, converting hotel stays into airline miles, access to more lounges); others, not so much (higher award ticket fees, minimum annual spending requirements, disappearing bonuses). If you’re a member of an airline loyalty program, here’s what you need to know.
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10 Countries Where Retirees Live Large

Retirement in the United States is nice and all, until they ask you to actually pay for stuff.

When retirees' nest eggs are a finite and dwindling resource, rising local and federal taxes can put even the staunchest, flag-draped patriotism to the test. If retirees are willing to leave the states behind, the savings can be substantial.
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Personalizing Your Hotel Search

SEARCHING for a hotel online has long been limited to plugging in your travel dates and destination and then sifting through star ratings and prices. But there are other factors involved. Is the hotel in a convenient location? Is it child friendly? Will the room have a view of a brick wall or the sea?


Now, a number of Web sites are attempting to answer these questions with tools including photo-based searches and maps that show where a town’s hot spots are.
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How to Beat Roaming Fees While Traveling Abroad By

LAST week’s column suggested ways to save when calling home from abroad. This week I’ll tackle data roaming fees, which wireless providers charge when customers use their phones outside their service area. With travelers using smartphones and other wireless devices abroad in the same way as they do back home (to check e-mail, to update Facebook and Twitter and to pull up online maps), the skyrocketing fees are taking many by surprise.
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Five (And Then Some) Tech Tips for Travel

David Pogue from the NYtimes with some good travel tips: link
One that I am happy about is that airlines are now using QR codes on a smartphone for boarding passes. No need to  print a boarding pass the night before, which can be difficult in remote hotels that don't have business centers...
Uvealblues

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Staying Connected Overseas (Cheaply)

Great tips below...what I do is use skype over a WiFi connection--which will probably be present in your hotel, if you are staying in a hotel....
Uvealblues

Trust me, it’s easy to run up a thousand-dollar bill on your cellphone in a single trip if you don’t know the ins and outs. And not being in touch at all can be even more costly. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:
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Planning a Vac(cin)ation

GETTING vaccinated may be the last thing on your mind when heading off on vacation, but it’s important — whether you are traveling to an exotic destination or not.
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There was also a recent article in the Reno Gazette Journal, written by Geralda Miller, in which I had some additional travel tips at this link...
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11 Tricks to Cutting Travel Costs in 2011

Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year.

Scenes from Thailand

The last time we focused on Thailand, the government crackdown on Red Shirt protesters was taking place in Bangkok. Since then, much of the damaged part of downtown Bangkok has been repaired, and the Red Shirts continue their protests both in the streets and online. Thailand has also been hit with severe flooding, struggled with terrorist attacks, and celebrated Queen Sirikit's 78th birthday. Collected here a a handful of recent photographs from around Thailand. (31 photos total)

A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In

Anyone making a trip to Northern India, should try to get to Amritsar, to visit the stunning Golden Temple.
Uvealblues

Sikhism, which emerged in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century, strongly rejects the notion of caste, which lies at the core of Hinduism.
The Golden Temple, a giant complex of marble and glittering gold that sits at the heart of this sprawling, hectic city near the border with Pakistan, seeks to embody this principle. Nowhere is it more evident than in the community kitchen, where everyone, no matter his religion, wealth or social status, is considered equal.
Guru Amar Das created the community kitchen during his time as the third Sikh guru in the 16th century. Its purpose, he said, was to place all of humanity on the same plane. At the temple’s museum, one painting shows the wife of one of the gurus serving common people, “working day and night in the kitchen like an ordinary worker,” the caption says.

Volunteerism and community support are other central tenets of Sikhism expressed in the langar. When the Mughal emperor Akbar tried to give Guru Amar Das a platter of gold coins to support the kitchen, he refused to accept them, saying the kitchen “is always run with the blessings of the Almighty.”

IPhone apps for the traveler

The world of travel apps is expanding exponentially, covering nearly every aspect of a trip. Here are  15 apps (and cost per use) recommended in the Washington Post.

Cheap Mobile Calls, Even Overseas

What my parents did not realize was that they could have nearly eliminated those charges if they had set up their (in this case) iPhone and BlackBerry to take advantage of mobile Internet calling services: That $1.29-a-minute charge would have gone down to a much more reasonable 2.4 cents a minute (or nothing at all if they were on a Wi-Fi network).

10 Ways to Cut Your Travel Costs This Year

Here are 10 simple steps you can take to help cut your travel costs in 2010.

Organizing the Chaos of Online Travel Tips

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Then I remembered Gliider, a browser tool that saves and organizes travel research. I downloaded the free add-on for Firefox, which deposited a small arrow icon on my browser navigation bar that, when clicked, opened a sort of file box. There I created a “trip” to Panama City, and began selecting, dragging and dropping text and photos from the Web into handy folders with labels like flights, hotels, see and do.

I could share the stash with friends and e-mail myself PDF dossiers of smartly organized information, ready to print out as a bespoke travel guide. (In January, iPhone users will be able to carry their Gliider content via an app.)

Gliider, I learned, is just one of a growing number of new online tools to help travelers plan where to go and what to do when they get there.

Top 10 Travel Gadgets Under $50

Here is a list of the 10 gadgets, all under $50, that I either own or have been lusting after.

Cum Laude in Evading Bandits

Many of these tips are familiar to many international travellers--but I did like the tip of using one's backpack as an airbag--will consider this on my next trip to Kenya--in two days!
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One of the great failures of American universities is that they are far too parochial, rarely exposing students to worlds beyond our borders.

If colleges provide credit for dozing through an introductory Spanish class, why not give credit for a “gap year” in a Bolivian village? If students can learn about microfinance while sitting comatose in 9 a.m. lectures, couldn’t they learn more by volunteering with a lender in a Bangladesh slum?

In response, here are 15 tips for traveling to even the roughest of countries — and back:

There is alot more useful information in the letters to Kristof's blog here

Packing the Right Credit Card

Traveling frugally means more than just cadging free bar snacks in Bologna or hopping low-cost flights between third-tier European airports. To keep costs to a minimum, you have to plan well in advance, and that means getting your finances in order.


The first thing you’ll want to do is apply for a new credit card. See, most card issuers charge fees for overseas transactions. American Express, for example, adds 2.7 percent to every overseas transaction (up from 2 percent last summer), while Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and HSBC tack on 3 percent, according to Curtis Arnold, who runs CardRatings.com, a Web site that tracks credit card fees.

When an Upset Stomach Roils Your Trip

Up to 60 percent of travelers to developing countries suffer bouts of diarrhea, often from unsanitary food and water.

Studies have failed to show that better meal hygiene prevents stomach problems.

An antibiotic called Xifaxan has been approved to treat traveler’s diarrhea; many doctors prescribe it for prevention as well.