Author: gringo10_wp

Many people would consider the United States passport as the world’s most valuable, given its position as the world’s greatest economy and a place where most people in the world would aspire to live due to our education and healthcare systems and the many freedoms provided by our Constitution. In reality, however, it is not the most valuable. The most common metric for valuing the world’s strongest passport is the visa free access it gives to the rest of the world’s 217 countries. When applying this, the results are as follows:

1) Germany (access to 177 countries)
2) Sweden (176)
3) a tie between France, Italy, Spain, Finland and the United Kingdom (175)
4) a tie between the United States, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands (174)

To put things in a proper perspective, Afghanistan comes in last with visa free access to only 25 countries (we can all probably guess many of them).

And just because a country doesn’t grant United States passport holders visa free access, it is not as bad as it seems. Many of these countries grant “visas on arrival ” at the airport (Dubai and the other UAE), some grant an “e-visa”, which you can pay for and obtain from your smartphone or laptop at any time before entering the country (Turkey and India).

So which countries typically require an American to go through the hassle of applying for a visa through their Consulate or Embassy? Russia, Vietnam, many African countries, China and Brazil, to name a few. But a couple of these also have silver linings as Brazil will grant a visa waiver from June -September 2016 due to the Olympic Games and China has a “72 hour visa free” policy if you stop in certain cities (Beijing) and are continuing on to certain countries (oddly Hong Kong is one).

So now you know-the United States is not the world’s strongest passport-it is tied for fourth (with three other countries) and is weaker than 7 other country passports.

There are many reasons for countries to require visas: security, revenue, political. In my opinion, many of the the weaker economies and underdeveloped countries should not require visas -after all, tourism is one of the quickest and easiest ways to generate revenue and at times people will choose to travel to a country with no visa requirement as opposed to going through the hassle, cost and time it takes to get one. What are your thoughts?

Having been actively “travel hacking” for the past few years, I have learned many things. First and foremost of these is the principle of “earn and burn” aka “your airline frequent flier miles and credit card points will not be worth more tomorrow”. I have also learned that the best way to maximize the value of your points or miles is to redeem them for first and business class international airline tickets at the “saver level”. After all, are your 150K miles more valuable when you exchange them for a $500 television set or a $12,000 first class round trip ticket from the USA to Hong Kong? Nothing against the television set for a non-traveler, just not a good value proposition!

With that in mind, I just booked the following business class itinerary:

New York to Montreal (connection) one hour flight in economy class, possibly will be upgraded
Montreal to Istanbul (business class flat bed seat), 9.5 hour flight
Istanbul to Lisbon (connection) business class seat, 5 hour flight
Lisbon to Marrakech (economy only plane) 2.5 hour flight
Barcelona to New York (business class flight) 8 hour flight

I will be responsible for filling in the blanks, i.e., getting from Marrakech to Barcelona and any other side trips but my point is this: the above award is a single award redemption, making use of a stopover in Istanbul for as long as I want and my destination as Marrakech. As a result, I am taking 3 trips instead of one, seeing Turkey, Marrakech and Barcelona (Asia, Europe and Africa). My international business class itinerary cost me 140K points plus about $50 in taxes. Compare this to a 2 hour flight in domestic (peanuts and a Coke) business class from New York to Chicago at the standard award level- 100k miles and $24.

Again-it’s all about the value proposition!

As Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, it goes to his heart.” And according to Saint Augustine, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” Languages and travel-the perfect combination. While there are plenty of blogs on either, there are hardly any which focus on both. This is the purpose of Gringo with the lingo-to teach you to travel in comfort and style in a smarter, better way while appreciating, learning some words and phrases in, or even studying, the languages of your destination. This will only make your trips much more authentic, worthwhile and rewarding! And just maybe, it will ignite a life-long desire (as it has for me) to make travel and language not only a destination, but a journey.