Lesley Carhart 
The only catastrophe of this cross hemisphere trip so far is that I bought a $100 bottle of gin at ATLAS to bring home and the paper bag disintegrated in the rain and it shattered before I could even get in a cab. I guess I’m buying gin in Australia 🤷🏻♀️🍸😢
If you want to see the utter insanity of me traversing / biking / eating across a hemisphere solo (without barely sleeping), it’s on my Instagram.
I have this mantra of whenever anyone sends me anywhere, I just basically don’t sleep for days so I can see and do everything physically possible alone.
I cannot describe the exhausted I am as usual... I still wake up to work out at the gym before work, and then walk 15-20k steps a day outside work. I have zero clue where I’ll do laundry.
My checklist to go to another country alone now basically consists of only:
where do I sleep to get to work
will my phone sorta go
what visa do I need
what language do they speak
how to not get arrested
five minutes on Viator tours page on the plane
do I need a coat
which wall wort for usb c
I don’t really bother to look up safety because everyone thinks their city or town is the most dangerous, and I would never go anywhere.
I have all the rideshare apps and mobile pay 🤷🏻♀️🍸so I don’t change money in advance or anything
This is the way.
MostlyBlindGamer@hacks4pancakes you’ve touched on a few things I love about living in the future:
* one cable does everything
* we all speak Apple, regardless of our actual languages
* money is a virtual construct
* glass rectangles are magic
* one cable does everything
* we all speak Apple, regardless of our actual languages
* money is a virtual construct
* glass rectangles are magic
@MostlyBlindGamer there’s a lot of dystopia but smartphones have made international travel so much easier, especially if your carrier does free international roaming
Ash@hacks4pancakes @MostlyBlindGamer I recently emigrated back to Australia from the US. Getting a local esim was the first thing I did, using local wifi, even if you don't have basic international roaming.
Last time I visited 6 years prior, I bought a physical micro-sim at a local supermarket.
Just keeps getting easier.
@ashteranic @hacks4pancakes there’s even an app to get eSIMs for travel.
@MostlyBlindGamer @ashteranic my carrier works in 179 countries without me doing anything. It’s insane. I remember having this buy burners
@hacks4pancakes @ashteranic “works” or “works cheaply?”
Assuming we’re mostly doing VoIP anyway, a data-only eSIM still often makes a lot of sense.
@MostlyBlindGamer @ashteranic it just works. I don’t pay any extra.
@hacks4pancakes @MostlyBlindGamer Yeah, to be clear, my US phone number worked just fine when I landed, but the data rates were a bit steep since I hadn't added any international data blocks.
But emigrating made the requirement for a local phone number a bit necessary. Pity I couldn't afford to keep my US number, there's been a handful of US service accounts that have been unable to cope with international numbers (Looking at you IRS and my HSA bank *shakes fist* )
HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot@hacks4pancakes @MostlyBlindGamer Having a thing in my pocket that I can point at a sign written in a language I don’t speak and I get a translation is magic I didn’t expect from the future and I love it.
BashStKid@rmd1023 @hacks4pancakes @MostlyBlindGamer
Anecdotally, I suppose it is now standard procedure to take a photo of your hotel name if it’s in a script you can’t pronounce.
Anecdotally, I suppose it is now standard procedure to take a photo of your hotel name if it’s in a script you can’t pronounce.
@rmd1023 @hacks4pancakes having a thing in my pocket that I can point at a sign, regardless of language, and have it read out to me is wild. (My username is very literal.)
Add to that translation and navigation… unreal.
@MostlyBlindGamer @hacks4pancakes ACCESSIBILITY HELL YES. (I figured it was literal - I've got a friend who's on social media as "BlindGuyBiking" because, well, he is.)
@hacks4pancakes yes, we may be living in the Jetson’s sky cities and not looking down… While corporations and governments are absolutely looking at us.
IBBoard@MostlyBlindGamer @hacks4pancakes Excusez-moi? Je ne parle pas "la pomme"!
What is "talking Apple"?
(Every time I've been forced to use an Apple device, it always felt convoluted and unnecessarily focused on "look at the shinies that we packed into the fewest physical widgets!" rather than "that button consistently does a thing")
@ibboard @hacks4pancakes hahaha. Oops. Guess what manufacturer device autocorrected App to Apple?
Regardless of smartphone preference (I used to be a pretty dedicated Android tinkerer), and completely sidestepping the conversation about the social impact, the fact that you can get to places, get food or almost anything else you need, pay for things, interact with your government, etc. in any language via an app on your phone is sci-fi in real life.
Stepping into that conversation with, we’re accepting isolation, rising privacy, and buying into a good economy with a social impact for the businesses and workers that’s nuanced and oftentimes very concerning.
@hacks4pancakes Indeed, it’s rare to not have the ‘everywhere else is safer than $here’ advice …
ooqaarx@hacks4pancakes shengen visa makes traveling in europe quite convenient
JimHudson@hacks4pancakes Not a bad travel book beginning.
maswan@hacks4pancakes
When I started travelling lots for work, my then boss gave the advice of: "credit card and passport, the rest you can sort out at the airport". Phone, laptop, visa (if needed) is what I'll add to that.
Sometimes it is tiring, but on the other hand it is neat to be confident that I can turn up next week in at least half of the world and expect things will work out just fine.
@maswan yea lack of visa and supporting docs can be the end to a trip very fast
rotted mood@hacks4pancakes i so know how this is.
Sam Grubb@hacks4pancakes the other day I found my copy of Lonely Planet Japan and remembered how I used that every day to figure out what to see back in 2008 before smart phones international were really a thing (at least for us college kids). Wild to think I’d just read a paragraph in the book and be like ‘whelp let’s hope it’s as described!’
David Michaels@hacks4pancakes This rules and is a lot like how I adventure in new places! I adore work trips. I'm absolutely checking out the chaos on your Instagram
Vincent Batts@hacks4pancakes Ah, so you're going to be hallucinating by the time you get to the Melbourne talk? Or is the military training kicking in so you can power-nap?
@ashteranic there were five screaming babies around me on my flight today and I slept