Why These Vacations Are the Financial Samurai's Favorites
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | I know before kids and the pandemic,
00:00:07.180 | you did a lot of traveling
00:00:08.740 | and a lot of the conversations we have are about travel.
00:00:11.820 | And I know a lot of our listeners are just now
00:00:14.500 | having built up a lot of big balance of points
00:00:16.820 | and getting past the pandemic, thinking about where to go.
00:00:19.620 | I'm curious if you have any suggestions
00:00:22.080 | from all the travels you've done
00:00:23.860 | of where people might wanna take a trip to
00:00:26.020 | or check out something that maybe is not the obvious place.
00:00:29.720 | (laughs)
00:00:31.020 | Oh man, my favorite place is Malaysia
00:00:35.300 | because I also grew up there
00:00:36.420 | in my middle school teenage years.
00:00:39.180 | And that was like exciting.
00:00:40.820 | The food is the best, top three in the world.
00:00:43.060 | It's very inexpensive.
00:00:44.580 | I love Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
00:00:46.700 | It's so hot, it's like 95 degrees and humid,
00:00:49.480 | but the temples are unbelievable.
00:00:52.260 | I love Southeast Asia.
00:00:53.700 | Southeast Asia is a great, great region.
00:00:56.980 | Friendly people, people speak English.
00:00:59.180 | Food is amazing.
00:01:00.560 | And the cost of living is low.
00:01:02.180 | So I love that.
00:01:03.780 | I went to Europe, probably 20 different countries in Europe.
00:01:08.780 | I love it as well.
00:01:09.940 | I love the lifestyle, the attitude of living not for work,
00:01:13.180 | but living for living sake.
00:01:14.600 | It's just that one of those things where
00:01:16.980 | after you see like five Gothic churches,
00:01:19.140 | they all start looking the same.
00:01:21.260 | So I enjoyed Mallorca, Spain.
00:01:23.940 | Mallorca was amazing.
00:01:25.820 | The Spanish culture, you eat tapas at 10 p.m.
00:01:29.060 | You enjoy life, the water, the beaches.
00:01:32.540 | So, and then Amsterdam.
00:01:34.060 | Amsterdam is kind of like the San Francisco of Europe,
00:01:37.580 | where people are pretty chill.
00:01:40.060 | You know, weed is available everywhere
00:01:41.940 | and there's really diverse culture.
00:01:43.780 | And I love Amsterdam as well.
00:01:45.660 | - I haven't been to Mallorca.
00:01:47.140 | Amsterdam's amazing.
00:01:48.040 | I want to come back to Malaysia
00:01:49.700 | because I think it's a country, having been there,
00:01:53.260 | I don't often hear a lot of other people go there
00:01:56.440 | that don't have some family there
00:01:58.740 | or some business reason to be there.
00:02:00.480 | So if someone's thinking right now,
00:02:02.080 | listening to this saying, "Oh, Malaysia,
00:02:03.240 | I've never really thought about going there."
00:02:05.280 | What would you tell them to think about as a trip?
00:02:07.600 | Not, you don't need to plan a whole week or two itinerary,
00:02:10.120 | but what are a few highlights of something they should do
00:02:12.240 | other than my favorite is just eat all the roti canai
00:02:15.600 | you can find on the street.
00:02:16.640 | That would be like my path.
00:02:18.880 | But what would you tell someone to think about
00:02:20.360 | as they plan a trip?
00:02:22.160 | - Well, Malaysia, it's a peninsula
00:02:25.560 | surrounded by water on three sides.
00:02:28.120 | And the beauty is the food is amazing, right?
00:02:31.680 | The mamak stalls, the roti canai,
00:02:34.060 | the milk fish, the chicken, fish, all that stuff.
00:02:37.880 | The kangkuk belacan, gotta check that out.
00:02:40.600 | You can go to Kuala Lumpur for sure.
00:02:42.360 | See the palace, see the Batu Caves,
00:02:45.000 | go on these excursions, but go to the Pulau,
00:02:49.760 | which are the islands on the east and west,
00:02:54.040 | or go to Penang and see the turquoise water
00:02:56.800 | and go scuba diving 70 feet down and still see the water
00:03:01.800 | and have nobody around you.
00:03:04.000 | My favorite trip was to this resort
00:03:07.560 | called the Tara's Resort.
00:03:09.320 | It's an island and there's an island on the east side.
00:03:11.760 | And we just had, it was kind of like,
00:03:13.800 | you know, the movie "The Beach."
00:03:15.040 | I think it was "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:03:18.180 | It was kind of like that.
00:03:19.240 | You would take a dinghy out, you'd go scuba diving,
00:03:22.080 | you'd come to this cove,
00:03:23.360 | there'd be some little sharks around, turquoise water.
00:03:26.520 | And it was just unbelievable.
00:03:28.560 | So it's the Tara's Resort.
00:03:29.840 | I would check that out.
00:03:31.240 | - Awesome.
00:03:32.060 | Yeah, I don't feel like I gave Malaysia
00:03:34.440 | its justice on our trip.
00:03:36.080 | It was part of our eight month backpacking trip
00:03:38.520 | around the world, but it was awesome.
00:03:42.600 | The only thing, I don't know if this is still the case,
00:03:44.500 | but the one thing I remember very specifically,
00:03:46.880 | because it was a big problem,
00:03:48.880 | was that the ATMs in Malaysia would not accept
00:03:52.220 | any of my two or three American bank cards.
00:03:55.720 | And so we showed up in Malaysia with probably $7 in cash
00:04:00.720 | and went to the ATM and it didn't work
00:04:03.760 | and we could not get cash.
00:04:05.960 | - So how'd you get the cash?
00:04:07.440 | - So I ended up going online
00:04:09.320 | and finding some local community in the tech community.
00:04:13.800 | So there was these events called Bar Camp,
00:04:15.660 | which are like unconferences that I'd gotten to know.
00:04:18.180 | And I just went like Kuala Lumpur Bar Camp,
00:04:20.460 | emailed the list serve and was like,
00:04:22.780 | "Can anyone here meet me in Kuala Lumpur
00:04:25.280 | and I can PayPal you money and you can bring me cash?"
00:04:28.240 | - And someone did.
00:04:29.240 | - But my new plan is never go to a country
00:04:32.160 | without at least like maybe $100 of cash.
00:04:35.620 | We literally probably had like $7,
00:04:37.960 | which could get you a lot farther in Malaysia
00:04:40.560 | than I imagined, but-
00:04:41.940 | - But not too far.
00:04:42.880 | - But not too far.
00:04:44.320 | - Wow, okay.
00:04:45.760 | - Well, yeah, so yeah, bring cash.
00:04:48.580 | And again, the Terrace Beach and Spa was on Redang Island.
00:04:52.500 | Redang Island, so.