800 British Pub Grub; Travel on $75 a Day; Holland

19:45And then if you're camping in a van, if you're taking a van and you're doing RV life, definitely look up a local app for parking. So whether you're doing RV life in New Zealand, Australia, U.S., Canada, there is an app that will tell you where you can park your camper van for free for pretty much every country in the world.

20:08Rick Steves:Matt Kapniss has taken a break from his travels to join us from his home in New York and tell us what's in the updated fourth edition of his book, How to Travel the World on$75 a Day. We talked with Matt on Travel with Rick Steves about 10 years ago when he wrote his backpacking memoir, Ten Years a Nomad, A Traveler's Journey Home. You can hear that again from a link with this week's show at ricksteves.com slash radio. So, Matt, if you think about traveling the world, and your book is explicitly the world, in the last decade or so, have different regions and continents changed in their accessibility and the ease and the rewardingness of traveling there?

20:48Rick Steves:Or are they all just in the same sort of, if you knew the world 10 years ago, is it the same world for travelers today? Yeah, I think the big destinations are still the big destinations. You know, the backpackers and the budget travelers, they flock to Europe, Australia, New Zealand. Southeast Asia is an incredible region of the world to travel around. But that region has changed too. You know, Laos didn't have a train system before. Now it does. Cambodia is reviving their train system. And I think one region of the world that has gotten more popular, especially post-pandemic, is Mexico and Central America.

21:24That has become a lot more accessible as you have direct flights coming over from Australia and New Zealand and more flights from Europe. It used to be if you went 10 years ago, the travelers that really traveled there, especially on the budget, would be older Americans, maybe 40 plus. And I know 40 is not old. I'm over 40. But just in terms of like the backpacker age bracket. And nowadays, you just see more younger people go over there as I think what has really changed is they're seeing social media and they're seeing blogs and they're seeing people there showcasing that it's not dangerous. It's not as unsafe as their parents are telling them, like, oh, you're going to go over there and be kidnapped by the cartels.

22:09They see present-day real-world examples that that information is wrong.

22:14Rick Steves:So what is your take on that, Matt? Because that is interesting for a risk-averse older, wealthier American. You dream of the days when you were in India or, you know, backpacking across Indonesia. and you wonder, is the world a harsher place now with a bigger gap between rich and poor and more high-tech dangers or just more pitfalls? I mean, if you think about sub-Saharan Africa, if you think about South America, if you think about Pacific Rim, Indian subcontinent, the stands, these kind of places. We all know New Zealand, Australia, Europe. That's pretty simple. Are there places in the world that are becoming less comfortable Or would you say it's still a welcoming world across the board if you just got a little bit of street savvy?

23:03I would say it's still a welcoming world across the board. You know, we all are carrying very expensive electronics in our pocket, and we should be cognizant of that. You know, you wouldn't want to keep your iPhone out or have flashy jewelry around sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and other places around the world. But people are people and they are welcoming and friendly and they want to show you the best their country has to offer. And my mom, she's in her late 70s and she's – being a mother – always worries about me. And I remind her that here in the States, we have a level of gun violence that's not found elsewhere in the world.

23:47And so like that can happen here. And I also remind her that news travels at the speed of light these days, right? So she's heard about that earthquake in Thailand. She's like, oh, there's so many earthquakes around. I go, well, it's not that there's more earthquakes. We're just hearing about it more often.

24:05Rick Steves:This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Matt Kepnes, also known as Nomadic Matt. His book is Travel the World on$75 a Day. Travel cheaper, longer, and smarter. So Matt, how does that$75 a day break down? What does that actually mean? So the$75 a day is what it would cost to travel the world in a long trip. So that sort of breaks down into transportation, accommodation, food over a long period of time, assuming that you're going to go to affordable destinations like, say, Thailand or India, and then go to expensive destinations like, say, France or the UK. It kind of averages out. But what I really wanted to get across to people is that there are many ways to travel the world on a budget.

24:51I like to say travel like you live, right? The people in destinations you're going to don't spend a ton of money a day living their local life. And so if you kind of emulate your local habit, going to the supermarket, going to local food markets, taking public transportation, walking into the tourist office and saying, hey, what museums are free this week or what festivals are going on? You're going to find the affordable activities that will fill up your day and inexpensive meals and all the things that you do at home that other people are doing the destinations you're going to but are not costing an arm and a leg.

25:29Rick Steves:So the big item in that$75 a day, I would think, is accommodations. I understand that even a youth hostel bed in Europe costs$40 now. What's your take on rock-bottom budget accommodations for adult travelers? Accommodation is sort of the immovable object of it all, right? It is very hard in some destinations to cut costs. If you're going to Paris, you're going to find hostile dorm rooms, 50 bucks a night. And so if you're really looking for deals, you can try these couch surfing apps that we've talked about, these home swapping apps. There's a website called Trusted House Sitters where you can watch someone's apartment or house while they're away.

26:09You can use a website like Home Exchange, which, you know, you can go to someone's home and they could go to your home. And then you can also use credit card points for hotels. And then there's lots of sort of online coupon websites. There's one called Rakuten, R-A-K-U-T-E-N. And they often offer 10 % off hotels.com, booking.com. So that can sort of give you an extra savings.

26:35Rick Steves:You know, in your book, you talk about booking a hotel smartly, assuming you're going to be booking it through a booking site. What's your advice in that regard? Because, you know, hotels pay 20 % to have you book it through booking.com. If you're going to give them$200 when you book it, they get$160 and booking.com gets$40, roughly. Do you have any way around that where you can pay the net price by going directly to the hotel, or what's your advice? Yeah, you know, I'm a former hostel owner. So I know all about the booking fees of these large websites. So I would say if you find a place, see if you can find their website and try to book directly with them.

27:15For large global chains like Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, they will match any price you find. And some of these really rock bottom deals you find, they're usually like travel agent deals. And so you might not be able to get that price. You might have to book on a third party website. But if you can, go direct because accommodation owners, they don't want to pay the extra 20%.

27:38Rick Steves:It's still a lot of money, but you might as well get a direct price instead of the padded price because you wanted the convenience of going to a booking agency. You just put in a needless middleman, in other words. Yeah. Another big element of your$75 a day is transportation. And, of course, renting a car or taking the train is going to cost you. In Europe, they've got this amazing bus network. What is it? Flixbus. And they've also got ride-sharing options. Do you know Flixbus? Yeah, I love Flixbus. We talk about it a lot in the book. I use them all the time. They're sort of the Greyhound of Europe.

28:13They're in many, many countries, and they offer really comfortable buses. They're actually nicer than Greyhound. They're comfy. There's free Wi-Fi. And they're cheap.

28:24Rick Steves:It's like$20 to go all the way across Germany or something. Yeah, they're super affordable. for like a three to four hour ride, I will take the bus over the train. I mean, I love train travel around Europe, but you just can't beat Flixbus on price. Right. And is there still ride share options that are almost like just sharing a ride and helping pay for the gas? Yeah, yeah. So the big one in Europe is called Blah Blah Car, B-L-A, B-L-A, C-A-R. And that's all over Europe. And then there's other ones in Australia. There's ones in New Zealand. And there's not really many in the U.S. or Canada. You know, when we're talking about traveling the world on$75 a day, some people are like ready to retire.

29:04Rick Steves:And they're thinking, doing the arithmetic, can I do this? You talk about the FIRE movement, financial independence, retire early. What's the latest on that? The FIRE movement is young people trying to work and retire by like 40 and then never have to work again. And so they move to inexpensive countries. They work all the time and they sort of live miserly to get as much money as possible. I'm not a huge fan of the movement. I think, you know, they're sacrificing short term. Oh, so they're just tying. They're just I'm in a rich country. I'm going to earn everything I can, pedal to the middle all the time, be totally out of balance.

29:46Rick Steves:And then when I'm 40 years old or whatever, I can then take that, the fruits of all that ridiculous labor and go to a cheap country and live out my life comfortably without working, retiring early. Yeah. And then they travel and such. But, you know, I mean, you're trading your good years for maybe future good years. And you can also, you're maybe discounting, if you're that aggressive, you're discounting the fact that you could have a first world job with first world pay living in a developing world environment and live quite well and save a lot of money just by being a digital nomad. Yeah, you know, the rise of remote work and digital nomadism post-COVID really just makes it easier to travel and keep your job, you know.

30:31And many countries around the world now offer digital nomad visas.

30:35Rick Steves:And the downside I hear is you just got to accommodate the fact that you're in a different time zone. So your 9 to 5 might be 3 to midnight. Exactly, yeah. Or it might be 9 to 7 a.m. This is so interesting, Matt. Thanks so much for joining us. Again, if people want to learn more about what you're doing, your website's nomadicmat.com. The book is How to Travel the World in$75 a Day. You know, in this business that you and I are both in, I hear a lot of people throwing around different quotes, and I like traveler's quotes. What's your favorite traveler's quote? You know, I know this is so basic, but I do love the quote attributed to St.

31:13Augustine that the world is a book and he who doesn't travel only reads one page. because for me, the world is not a book, it's a puzzle. And the more you travel, the more you put together all the pieces of it, the more you understand the world.

31:27Rick Steves:Bravo. That's very good. You're building on St. Augustine. Not many people can't. Not many people can't. Well, that's Nomadic Matt. Thanks a lot, Matt, and happy travels. Thanks for having me. Matt Kepnes lists his favorite places to visit at nomadicmat.com. An Insider's View of Holland. That's next on Travel with Rick Steves. It's impressive how much the Dutch have been able to do with a small amount of land and with so much of it below sea level. And as Europe's most densely populated nation, I sometimes think that the thrifty and efficient people of the Netherlands don't always know quite what to do with the proud individualism displayed by some Americans.

32:08Rick Steves:So to help us get a taste of how their own society is organized, I've invited two Dutch tour guides to join us today on Travel with Rick Steves to better understand their country from the inside out. We'll focus on the country's two most influential provinces of North and South Holland. They're where the biggest cities are. It also tends to dominate our view of the Netherlands ever since their golden age in the 17th century. We're joined now by Jody van Engelstorp from Harlem near the sea, and Ellen Janzig, who guides tours from Amsterdam and lives in Denbosch in the south of the country. Dank u wel for joining us today.

32:43Thank you for having us.

32:44Rick Steves:Great to be here. So good to be able to straighten some things out for our traveling listeners. And Ellen, a lot of Americans, when they say Holland and they say the Netherlands, they don't really understand what's the difference. You know, Holland's not the same, is it? What is the story? I'm so glad you're starting with this, Rick, because I'm from the Netherlands, but I'm not from Holland because I'm from the south of the Netherlands, which is the nation state, and it consists of 11 different provinces. And in the West, you have two provinces named North Holland and South Holland. It's always been the most important region with the most important towns and cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague.

33:27But it's not the state. It's not the nation. So I am from the Netherlands, but not from Holland. Whereas Jody is from Holland and from the Netherlands.

33:36Rick Steves:Okay, so if we say Holland, you're probably talking about what most Americans think the fairytale image of Holland is, of the Netherlands is. But technically, the country is three or four times as big, and that includes lots more, and that would be called the Netherlands. Yeah, exactly. For instance, the typical Holland landscape of the polar land is in the west. But when you go further east or further south, you even get some hills. Oh, you got some, not mountains, but hills. Well, things we call hills, but it's no more than like 60 feet. But the famous below sea level Netherlands is really Holland.

34:12Rick Steves:Exactly. Now, Jodi, the fairytale image of a little guy with his finger in the dike and wooden shoes and all of the stuff that you probably get very tired of as a person who lives there. But if you're thinking about everything that is so quintessentially Dutch, how would you relate that to Holland compared to Brabant, for instance, where Ellen lives? I think a lot of people, when they think of typical Dutch stereotypes, a lot of it is from Holland, actually. Like what Ellen was saying, the polar landscapes, the dikes, the windmills. The cheese. The cheese. That's right. All of that. If you want to see windmills, you go to Holland.

34:50Rick Steves:If you want to go to a cheese market town, you go to Holland. Actually, we call people living in North Holland cheeseheads. Cheeseheads. Yes. I have a cheese hat myself. I don't fit any hat. That's what it is. And our king has a cheese head. Now, the Netherlands, and Ellen, how many provinces are in the Netherlands? Twelve, actually. I just said eleven, but there's a new one added. A new one added, okay. And is that Flaveland? Yes. Ah, Flaveland. That was not just added, that's created. I know it's created, but when I was growing up at school, it was eleven. Eleven. So Flaveland is a created land.

35:26Rick Steves:And I've seen it over the years from the Zyder Sea to cordoned off to bailed out to unusable land to fertile land to fertile land with roads and communities. And it's all modern. People live in Flaevo land who are older than the land they live on. Yes, that's true. That's a fascinating idea, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. And that's totally modern. Yeah, lots of people live there. Flaevo land, okay. Now, I'm still wrestling with this Holland-Netherland stuff. Holland is, there's two provinces, north and south. Can we refer to the area as Holland, like north and south together? Yes. Okay, so that's what I want to do is just refer to Holland and the rest.

36:03Rick Steves:Ellen, you're down close to Belgium. How are the people different from Brabant, where you live, and way up in Holland? The main difference is the heritage that we have in the south is mainly Catholic. And in the north, it's Protestant. For instance, an interesting thing to mention here is the town where I live, Den Bosch, in the south, in the 80-year war when Protestants were fighting the Catholics in the south. They took the town of Den Bosch. The Protestants took the town. When you get to Amsterdam and you're taught this event, they say it was the liberation of Den Bosch. But we in the south, we call it the fall of Den Bosch.

36:42Rick Steves:Depending on who's winning and who's losing. Okay, so the south is more likely to be Catholic. The north is more likely to be Protestant. that has some sort of, apart from religious characteristics, you know, you've got different personalities. If you think of a Catholic country and a Protestant country, Jodi, how would you describe the, granted it's going to be stereotypes and so on, but how would you characterize the Protestant personality compared to the Catholic personality between the North and the South of the Netherlands? So we are very stingy. Stingy? So we say frugal. Frugal, I'm sorry.

37:18We are very frugal.

37:20Rick Steves:So that's Protestant. So the Protestants are the cheapskates and the Catholics would have the fancy... The Burgundian way of living. Burgundian way, the French way of living. Yeah. The good food. What's a joke that people in Holland tell about each other about being cheapskates? Okay. For instance, how was copper threat invented? I know. Yeah. Two little boys fighting over a penny. Very good. And they stretched and stretched. There you go. Yeah. Ellen, can you tell me a joke about people who are very frugal in the north of Holland? Oh, yeah. There are loads of them. But for instance, two taxis collided, 22 casualties.

37:58So everybody's sharing a cap because it's cheaper to do. There you go. Things like that.

38:05Rick Steves:Two taxis collided, newsflash. 22 casualties. 22 casualties. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking about frugality in the north and extravagance in the south, the Protestant in the Catholic heritage of the Netherlands, and we're joined by two wonderful Dutch guides, Ellen Jansing and Jodi van Engelstorp. So how about the language? Is there a dialect in the north and the south, or is everybody speaking the same? No, yeah, we do have dialects. We have, in the north, like a harder sound, like I speak the ch really hard, like that throat, and in the south they're way softer. and it also goes, I think, to go back to the cultural differences.

38:48In the north, we're very direct and in the south, they're softer. So we're hard, old.

38:56Rick Steves:I think of Dutch people as frank. We say frank. They don't fiddle around. They say it like it is. And they assume you would like to be talked to straight. And I've had friends in the north of Holland talk to me very frankly. And I just think, well, in some countries that would not be very polite, but I appreciate that. That's direct. Yes. That's Dutch. That's the north and in Brabant in the south. Yeah, it would be different. Although we are properly Dutch, we're not Belgian. It's different again. Because that is gradients, isn't it? You go from Holland to Brabant to Flanders and then to the Walloon.

39:32Rick Steves:Yeah, that's different again. But we are properly Dutch, so we tend to be frank and direct as well, but in a different way than they are in Holland. we take a bit more of a roundabout way of telling something. Or we do not tell something directly sometimes. Now, I had a guide in Holland, and I was stuck with him for two days because I would rent a car and I needed a guide for two days. And the conversation was not very easy between us. And I was awkward, so I kept trying to make conversation. And after a while, he said, Rick, it's okay. You don't need to make conversation. He said silence is okay, so just stop struggling with this.

40:12Rick Steves:I thought that was very frank. I kind of liked it. It's often mistaken for rudeness. Yeah, it can be. People can think of Dutch people as being rude, whereas there's no rudeness intended, or sometimes there is, but usually there isn't. And this is a reminder to Americans not to judge it because it's a different culture, different norms, and it's most likely a misunderstanding on your part culturally because people, I assume, positive intent. Yodi, you mentioned that the dialect in the north is a little more guttural. I'd like to just have a sound experiment. There's a famous tongue twister, I think, in Dutch in your language.

40:45Rick Steves:I'd like to hear you say the tongue twister, and then we'll listen to Ellen say it. First of all, tell me what it means in English, and then say it in Dutch, and then we'll hear Ellen say it with a southern accent. Okay, so the tongue twister is 88 amazingly beautiful canals in Den Haag. Okay, so wait a minute. 88 amazingly beautiful canals in Den Haag. that's a city in Holland. Yes. Okay. And I think I'll go with Ellen first because, do you know the tongue twisters? Yes. Okay. So I want to hear it in the softer southern dialect and then we'll go to the north. Okay. I'll put on my softest soft G.

41:18Okay. Okay. 88 allemachtig prachtige grachten in Den Haag.

41:24Rick Steves:Oh baby, that was soft. Yeah, that was soft. Okay, let's hear it in the north dialect. 88 allemachtig prachtige grachten in Den Haag. You know, the funny thing about traveling in the Netherlands, everybody speaks English. I think it's almost fair to say everybody speaks English. So the tourist can get by without ever learning a word of Dutch. Exactly, yeah. And that's kind of a pity. Okay, well now I want to talk about the landscape in Holland because, Jodi, I would like to imagine it before the people came because when you're out on the dunes, you can feel this wild nature. Yes. Tell us about how we can find that and what it feels like or what it might have been like before there was people there.

42:02Well, you can go to the dunes. You could rent a bike, for instance, and cycle through the dunes. The dunes is the higher landscape, though, and just experience the nature. Or you can go to the Wadden Eilanden, further north, and one of the islands is Texel.

42:21Rick Steves:Oh, Texel. Texel, yeah. Okay, that's T-E-X-E-L. Yes. Okay, this has always intrigued me, the island of Texel. What's that like? It's the biggest island we have. And you can take a ferry there. It's just like a half an hour ferry from Den Horn. And then there, it's all dikes. Basically, the whole island has dikes around it. And you can cycle over the dikes. And then they have all these tiny, cute little villages where you can really feel the old fishermen feel and lots of birds. A lot of people come there for watching birds because it's a nature preserve that stretches to Denmark, actually. Because I've heard of the Waden, W-A-D-D-E-N, the Waden Sea.

43:10Yeah.

43:11Rick Steves:That's a similar area with high biological diversity. Exactly. So if you're a birder, you need to go there. But mostly it's just to feel they still have these cute little towns with markets. I love that. Yeah, it's cute. Cute little towns that had a fishing heritage and a salty heritage from a long time ago. And now a lot of the land has been reclaimed. Yeah. Do you know the town called Shokland? Yes, yes. Tell me, Ellen, about Shokland. It's actually now, it's an island on dry land. Yeah. It used to be an island in the Southern Sea, which was an inlet from the North Sea. But it's been closed off by a big dike.

43:54and now it's created a freshwater lake, a big freshwater lake. And Shockland was a little island in the Southern Sea, but now they've sort of created the flavorland around it and the island's still there. You can see it.

44:08Rick Steves:You can see the seawall around this little remote island and today the sea is long gone. The seabed has turned into fertile farmland. They've dragged away the old airplanes that crashed in the war that were just rusted heaps there when they drained out the land. Yeah, yeah. And you've got yourself this time capsule island that's no longer an island. And you can actually see on the landscape that it's old land as opposed to the new land. And everything we're talking about is within a couple hours at the most from Amsterdam or Harlem. Our guides to North and South Holland are Ellen Jansing and Jodi Engelstorp.

44:45Rick Steves:Ellen majored in English literature, so in addition to tour guiding in the Netherlands, She also leads custom tours in Britain and Ireland and works as a translator and Dutch language teacher. Jodi is based in Harlem and has a presence on Instagram. You'll find links to our guests at ricksteves.com slash radio. A lot of people are inspired to learn more about the Dutch battle with the sea when they travel around and they see these dikes and they see the windmills and the modern windmills and the polder land. The polder land, that just means land reclaimed from the sea, right? Well, actually, it's drained land.

45:19Rick Steves:Drained land. Yeah, it used to be peaty swamps. Yeah. And then actually what a polder is, is a piece of land surrounded by a dike, a levee, where the water level is maintained artificially. So it's swamp land where the moisture has been drained out of it to create dry land. The thing about it is, as soon as you drain peaty swamps and it's dry, because you take the moisture out of it, it sinks. And then it floods again. So you have to have... perpetually pump and regulate the water. If you have a house sitting below a water table, you'll have a pump in your basement to keep it dry, and it's the same sort of thing.

45:56So the pumps are pumping 24-7, and the land is still sinking. So not only is the sea there next to it rising, but the land is actually sinking.

46:06Rick Steves:If you want to learn more about that, there are great centers where we can learn about the dikes. There's one in the Waden area, I think. Do you know which one that is? About the offload dike, you mean? That's it, yeah. That's the big dike that was closing off the Southern Sea. Explain to us the technology there and what we could, if we're a curious tourist that's interested in engineering and so on, what could we see? There's so much because every situation in the Netherlands has a sort of unique quality to it. So you cannot have one solution that you just roll out for the whole country. You have to have a different solution at every spot.

46:40So there are in the Southwest, there are different solutions to keep out the sea, which is called the Delta Works. You have huge engineering constructions there, but the closure dike, the Uffslau dike is another one. And that is a proper dike, like a dam, that really is an obstruction to the sea. But nowadays they move more with the ecosystem and they have flexible ways of keeping the sea out. So not like the Uffslau dike was anymore.

47:08Rick Steves:Because is there discussion in the Netherlands about the threat of rising sea level? Oh, yes, yes. It must be on everybody's mind. And you're very frugal in the north. It's expensive to deal with this, but you're investing in your own safety in the future. Tell me about, because I saw a ship out at sea, outside of a dike in the north, and there was a big geyser of mud, and it was moving mud. And then I saw tractors on the beach next to the dike, moving sand, mountains of sand. And I thought, this is really expensive, and the Dutch will not waste millions and millions of euros unless there's a reason for it.

47:44But that's a good example. It's called the sand engine. And it's a good example of trying to keep us safe from the sea by working with the sea, no longer against the sea, but working with it. So what they do is deposit lots of sand onto the beaches to make the beaches wider so that the sea has actually more space before it comes to the land. And it will grow organically, naturally as well. So it's a very natural solution to create another structure to keep it safe.

48:15Rick Steves:And are the Dutch people confident that you'll still have a country in 50 years? Yeah, I think we are one of the safer countries. That may be, I don't know. Because you're investing in it and you recognize it. And you've done it for centuries already. Yeah, and we did a calculation that we wouldn't flood again in the next 10 ,000 years. And now, of course, we have to adjust because of all of the environmental changes. But they're very creative. And, yeah, we always used to see ourselves as kind of enemies of the sea. But now, like what Ellen was saying, we're really trying to work with the water now.

48:50So now we call it water management. When the water comes inland, so if we have a risk of flooding, old farmland, we make it available for flooding.

49:00Rick Steves:I see. A lot of American communities, they flood and they're upset, but what they did was they cheated nature. They took land that was supposed to be there for absorbing the extra water. And your society is realistic or savvy enough to know that the best way to control nature is to obey it. But we're the only country in the world where we pay water tax. So we pay separate taxes for the water management in the country. Oh, you know, when you go to the Netherlands, you can learn a lot more about this. Well, what a delight to be able to get a good dose of what's going on in Holland and the Netherlands.

49:36Rick Steves:And now we know the difference. Ellen Jansing and Jodi van Engelsdorp, dank u wel. Alsjeblieft.

50:12Travel with Rick Steves is produced by Tim Tatton, Kaz Murrahall, and Donna Bardsley at Rick Steves Europe in Edmonds, Washington. Affiliate relations are by Sheila Gerzoff. Website uploads are by Andrew Wakeling and Sherry Court. Our theme music is by Jerry Frank When you're on a road trip you can listen to Travel with Rick Steves on one of more than 500 other radio stations You'll find a list of where and when at ricksteves.com slash radio And we'll look for you again next week with more Travel with Rick Steves

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