Money saving tips for San Francisco

Before I went to the US, I thought travelling there would be really expensive. But I realized that budget travel in San Francisco is possible after spending 8 nights in The City as a side trip of a business event.

While I’m not The Frugal Traveler, for the trip, my goal was to spend less than US$100 a day, including accommodation. I think I might have exceeded that budget because I bought tickets for some once-in-a-lifetime activities, shows and tours which easily costs about US$30 each.

In any case, I’m a frugal person to begin with so the trip was probably a budget travel success. Probably.

Save on accommodation with hostels

Instead of the usual cheap hotels I stay in when I travel in Malaysia, I had to bunk in hostels during my 8-night stay. Luckily, Pacific Tradewinds Backpacker Hostel and the San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel were both under US$30 per night.

A short summary of the hostel reviews:
-Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel wins at free breakfast and nice view
-Pacific Tradewinds wins at having a fantastic location (and a cosy group, if you are a sociable person, which I am not).

Save on transportation and museums with CityPass

The CityPass (US$69) was a good investment since I was in the city for 8 full days. It includes 7-days of transportation on MUNI buses and trams and the cable car, but not on BART, as well as 9-days admission to five different museums.

I did a spreadsheet before I headed off, taking away things like the aquarium and the one-hour cruise in the bay, but I realized that I would save money getting the pass.

Sure, it was quite expensive. But it includes cable car rides which are US$6 one way–unfortunately, taken only by tourists. Just by taking the cable car 12 times, I would get my money back, not that I actually did it.

Turns out, the aquarium was actually very lovely. The other museums were even better. Sadly, I missed out on the California Academy of Science because there was other more exciting stuff for me.

There’s also an option for an Alcatraz Island tour with CityPass but you’ll need to personally head down to Pier 33 to get the booklet.

Save on food with Yelp

I love food too much to eat only cheap fast food while in San Francisco. Luckily, I have Yelp on my iPhone to guide me to good locations.

I usually narrow down my food choices to eateries with only one dollar sign (cheap!). I also use the checkin coupons to save on drinks. Since I do not have 3G on my phone, I would redeem the coupon first then show the folks at the restaurant my coupon later.

I’ve managed to save 50% on my latte at M Cafe, grab a free coffee at Sushi Taka and 15 percent off some stuff at a shop-which-will-not-be-named.

Save on sunscreen with Walmart

save_sf-002 — 2 for $5? How can it be this cheap?

Surprisingly, sunscreen is a lot cheaper in the US than in Singapore or Malaysia.

Walmart was selling its homebranded baby sunscreen at 2 for US$5. It took all my willpower to only take four in my basket. I wanted to take 10.

The sunscreen worked very well. I didn’t get sunburnt on my cycling trip to Sausolito. (OK, maybe wrapping myself in an oversized cardigan, a scarf around my neck and tights helped.)

Save on clothes with thrift shops

K introduced me to thirft stores in San Francisco. I was in luck that day because I immediately found an oversized cardigan at the first store we stopped at. It was only $5 after I rounded to price up for donation.

save_sf-004 — The blue and white cardigan was only $5

Unlike Kota Kinabalu’s second hand clothes stalls, thirft shops in San Francisco are very organized. Instead of musty old clothes smell, their stuff are perfumed with softener.

Since I wore my clothes immediately, I felt very conscious of other people smelling the thrift store smell on me. (But it’s probably all in my head.)

I also bought two dresses from Thrift Town and a vintage belt from this other place.

Favorite store: Thrift Town
Address:
2101 Mission St
(between 17th St & Clarion Aly)
San Francisco, CA 94110
Neighborhood: Mission

Save on books with second hand bookstores

Similar to thrift shops, I love the second hand bookstore I found in San Francisco.

I picked up two books. One was the Spanish version of Bridget Jones’ Diary which is pretty much priceless in Singapore because it cannot be found.

There was also a 30 percent discount at Adobe Bookstore because it was closing down. It was rather sad that the building owner was raising the rent too high for the bookstore owner.

Address:
3166 16th St
(at Albion St)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Neighborhood: Mission

Save on once-in-a-lifetime experiences by reading local papers

save_sf-006 — This was actually in San Jose

I picked up a free SF Weekly as reading material from one of the newspaper-dispensing things. I flipped through the events listing while having breakfast and almost had a heart attack when I saw that Dita von Teese’s Strip Strip Hooray show was in town for a two-night performance.

The last time Dita was in Singapore, it was a local star-studded event! And I believe tickets weren’t even for sale. So this show was a not-to-be missed for me.

For SF, the standing-room ticket was only US$35. When I tried buying online, tickets were sold out. I decided to try my luck at the box office and tickets were still available.

While I had to stand for a full three hours and look past other people’s head to peep at the stage, the atmosphere was amazing. People cheered and I cheered myself almost hoarse. The host was funny, the audience who were asked to go on stage for a dance competition were really sporting too.

And I got to breathe the same air as Dita von Teese! OK, that might be a bit stalkerish, but it’s DITA (Warning: That video is more Fatal Frame rather than sexy.)

What’s your budget travel tips for San Francisco?

This blog post was inspired by BootsnAll’s Indie Travel Challenge weekly travel blog project.
This week’s topic: Traveling to and within the USA..

More about the USof A

#FoodFri I bet you can’t pronounce this dish @ Xi’an

While we were in Xi’an last year, we went in search of an unpronounceable noodle dish. The Chinese writing for it looks like it would take two minutes to write just one character.

We didn’t know how to say the word, but we knew how to look and point.

We found a tiny stall with quite a lot of patrons. We settled down and sheepishly asked for a bowl each, mumbling our way through the name.

Biángbiáng noodles

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a terribly fantastic dish. Maybe we weren’t used to minced meat mixed with sauce and fried egg with tomator or maybe the stall wasn’t the best around.

From Wikipedia:
Made up of 58 strokes, the Chinese character for “biáng” is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage, although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary.

Have you eaten any unpronounceable dish?

Win travel vouchers writing restaurant reviews

The Pair that Writes Together Wins Together
Restaurant review site OpenRice has a competition which you can win up a maximum of S$2,000 travel vouchers.

All you need to do is team up with someone and start writing restaurant reviews. Each review only needs to be over 300 characters (seriously) and has a photo. The team with most reviews win.

When you are writing your review, remember to tick that you want the review to be entered into the contest. It’s opt-in, sneaky!

Unfortunately, the leading team has 61 reviews now. Fortunately, the quality of their content is not very brilliant.

I’ve teamed up with my housemate because we both love to eat. Watch out for the Pointy Toed Hippo (yes, that’s our team name).

Even if you do not win the contest, they give you points for good reviews. Points can be used to redeem in real life stuff. I’m aiming for vouchers.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

[Update Jan 15, 2013: Hello readers from Hong Kong! What’s up?]

Read: The Naked Traveler

I can’t believe I forgot to mentioned bookstores in my “10 things I love about central Java, Indonesia” post.

The bookstore, along with the supermarket, was one of the unspoken “Must Visit” sites for us. On the first day, we visited the Gramedia bookstore in Malioboro Mall. It looked like a regular Popular but inside it is 50 times more awesome because there was 49 times less assessment books.

The bookstore is part of the Kompas Gramedia Group conglomerate which also has a publishing division churning out volumes of out translated works such as The Hunger Games.

I decided that I should checkout the travel section to find out what sort of travel non-fiction is popular in other countries.

At the travel section, I found a dizzying array of travel guide books and literature. Most of them were money-saving indie travel guides with strangely similar topics: “Travel XX country with YYY rupiah!” Replace XX with a country with YYY the amount of money and you have a new book. Continue reading “Read: The Naked Traveler” →

Connecting to a location through my stomach

I met another traveller, K, while I was in San Francisco. On our way to a taco place she loves, she asked what I usually do when I travel.

I thought for a short while and said: “Eat.”

I cannot imagine not trying local food in a new location. I usually detail my travel food diary in the Glutton-series and #FoodFri where I feature a yummy, or not, dish I’ve had.

Best dish I ever had

My most memorable dish has to be the noodles in my 大盘鸡(dapanji) in Luoyang, China.

I thought 大盘鸡, or roughly translated as “big plate of chicken”, was a literal big plate of steamed white chicken. Turns out, it’s chicken in soy sauce with potatoes.

The stall I went to only had portions for two people and more. I was alone but ordered the two-person set anyway.

I like chicken very much as I gobbled down the salty meat and the starchy potatoes. Just when I thought I could not eat another bite, one of the employees brought me a large plate of udon-like noodles.

I asked for half of the portion she gave me but regretted it once I bit into the noodles. It was too tasty!

It was a strange type of noodles. It was thick and white like udon but was more firm like ramen and more chewy.

Mixed with the salty soy sauce, the plain noodles transformed from boring Cinderella into the main character of the dish.

After I finished my small portion, I could not eat another bite which was a real pity.

Until this day, I dream of it… My beautiful chewy, white Chinese udon.

This blog post was inspired by BootsnAll’s Indie Travel Challenge weekly travel blog project.
This week’s topic: Food.

More yummy goodies

#FoodFri: where I feature something interesting that I have eaten.
YQ, The Gultton series: Food feature for different trips, includes KL, Indonesia, Ipoh, and San Francisco (for now).

#FoodFri Xiao long bao @ Singapore

It’s lunch time here at my office and I am hungry.

Today’s #FoodFri feature is the multi-flavored xiao long bao (literally “mini dragon buns”, or “mini steam basket buns”) from Paradise Dynasty in Singapore.

I usually avoid restaurants to save money but I got this set using a Groupon voucher so it was a lot cheaper. According to my voucher, the eight different flavors are: Original, Ginseng, Foie Gras, Black Truffle, Cheese, Crab Roe, Garlic, Sze Chuan.

My sister and I each had a steam basket and tried to guess the different flavors. Most of the time we probably got the flavors wrong because some taste quite alike. Those that are really unique, eg Szechuan, are easily guessable.

I don’t think the buns are worth the fuss even though I’m a a big xiao long bao fan. I guess it’s more of a fun dish to treat guests to.

More #FoodFri to whet your appetite:

Can art be a crime? #freestickerlady

On Tuesday, reports about the Singapore police arresting a 25-year-old “vandal” trended on Twitter and my Facebook wall. I’m not sure what the exact cause of arrest was, I think she was taken in for spray painting “MY GRANDFATHER BUILDING” on a pristine white wall and “MY GRANDFATHER ROAD” on a pristine gray asphalt.

Her works can be seen on Tumblr.

Besides spray painting, she was believed to have pasted stickers at on top of the button of pedestrian crossing lights. I find the stickers whimsical, something Zooey Deschanel would do after she checks the directions with Siri:

According to the Singapore Vandalism Act, enacted in 1966, those who are found guilty of vandalism “shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years, and shall also, subject to sections 325(1) and 330(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010, be punished with caning with not less than 3 strokes and not more than 8 strokes”. (TL;DR version.)

It’s strange that we’re still using a law enacted in 1966 for the arrest. Back then, gloves were still a hit among the ladies.

Street art overseas

Discussing this with D, she said the point of argument should focus on “how art cannot be a crime?”

I remember being impressed by graffiti during my travels so I scoured my photo collection for some street art/acts of vandalism.

In Nantes, this caught my attention because of Darth Vader and Little Miss Vadar.

Make love, not arrests.

The city of Yogyakarta is famous for its graffiti.

The Mission in San Francisco is famous for its murals. There’s even an app for that.

I suspect the graffiti in KL were city-sanctioned and even sponsored by a paint company.

I hope Sticker Lady would be given a lighter sentence instead of prison time.

Stayed: Pacific Tradewinds Backpacker Hostel, San Francisco review

Pacific Tradewinds Hostel was my second hostel in San Francisco but I booked it a lot earlier than I did San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel.

I spent seven nights there and loved the location. It’s between Chinatown and the Financial District. Plus, Union Square and Market Street is within walking distance. For the facilities and location, the less-than-US$30 rate is darn cheap.

The area’s also safe for a solo woman traveller since I didn’t see many shady characters hanging around at night.

The rooms

I was given the Haigh Ashbury bed in one of the two rooms on the fourth floor. There are six beds in each room. I believe the third floor has extra rooms (and showers) as well.

The room is not tiny as there’s still space for everyone of us in the room to open our luggage. There’s also storage underneath the bed. Remember to bring your lock.

My bed was comfortable. The room is nice and toasty at night if we keep the windows shut. Sheets were clean. Two mirrors in the room, in case you are a mirror person.

There were two power outlets which were shared among six girls who probably each have 2 devices. Other power source is available in the hangout area.

Hostel folks

If you are a people person who LOVEa making new friends, this is the perfect place for you. You’ll make lots of friends with the guests and staff in the kitchen/hangout area.

Unfortunately for me, I’m not that much of a people person so I kept to myself most of the time. (The hostel actually inspired my ealier post on ISFPs and hostels.)

The fourth floor is the hangout area. Unfortunately, the hangout area is the thing between me and the bathroom. So most of the time, I have to not-so-discreetly walk to the bathroom while everyone’s chatting about. (Psst, the shower next to the toilet has hotter water than the other one.)

If you are a light sleeper, the hostel has lights out at 12 midnight (hurray!) and most people leave the hangout area for some place else. Just in case, bring earplugs for snory roomies. I got mine from Daiso which has a branch right on Market Street.

Overall, the Pacific Tradewinds Hostel is a great place to stay. Do remember to make advanced bookings because they had to turn down a lot of people while I was there.

Pacific Tradewinds Hostel

Pro: Great location, cheap (<US$30), safe area, near good food
Cons: More power points please.

Heading to San Francisco? Here are some money saving tips for SF.

Stayed: San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel review

During my San Francisco trip, I had the chance to stay at two different hostel. Well, “chance” doesn’t really describe my situation. I had to book separate places because I misinterpreted my work schedule.

Since I had already booked Pacific Tradewinds Hostel for seven nights so I thought that I should give San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel a try for my first night in San Francisco.

This is the Fort Mason branch of Hostelling International’s three hostels in the city. I didn’t pick the other two because they seem to be in shady locations. For a solo woman traveler, safety is always a priority.

I got off one bus stop too early and had to drag my luggage up an extra slope. (I should have stopped at Van Ness instead of Polk.)

After I reached the Fort Mason entrance, there was another slope to conquer. The slope’s not too bad and there’s a beautiful community garden along the way to distract me.

The hostel front desk is on top of the hill. There’s plenty of parking space around.

I lived in this building. The stairs leads to the breakfast room.

The front desk person is curt but I don’t expect hostel staff to fawn over me so it was the right amount of civility. She used a marker to write that day’s date on my receipt for use as an entrance pass and my breakfast slip.

Room

I was lucky enough to get one of the smaller dorm rooms. There was only six beds instead of some other’s 10 to 12. There’s a radiator in the room for those cold San Franciscan nights.

I had the lower bunk which is good because there’s no ladder to climb up the upper bunk. You’ll have to step on the rungs (which were quite high). Under the bed is a luggage space which I locked with my padlock. I couldn’t find a power point in the room.

Room access is with an electronic card. My Room 13 was right outside the bathroom so it was convenient for showers. The bathroom was bright with three showers with three toilets.

There’s a theater and a large kitchen. I did a bit of blogging in the kitchen since there was Internet connection there.

Hostel with a view

The view from the hostel itself is not too fantastic as it’s covered up by trees. But if you stand at the edge of the hill, you’ll get a great faraway look of the Golden Gate Bridge (if the weather is gracious with low fog).

In the mornings, cyclists will ride past the hostel since it’s along the way to the bridge.

Breakfast was great. I had a bagel with peanut butter, a fruit (which I forgot to take away), unlimited coffee and juice. The breakfast lasted me from 11am to 3pm.

One thing cool about Fort Mason on Friday is Off the Grid. At least there was one the Friday I was there.

The event brings the street cards and food trucks around the city in a central location. Head banging music and crowd expected. I had the chance to try out the Creme Brulee Cart there.

Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel

Pro: Good view, great breakfast, space, cheap (US$29.99), safe area
Cons: Far from most sights, a bit of a trek from nearest bus stop, slopes, no power point in room

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#FoodFri Milk in plastic bag @ China

When I was on student exchange in China, I was very fascinated with these milk-in-a-plastic-bag. Besides regular milk, other types of liquid also come in these bags, eg: watery yogurt or peanut milk.

From where I grew up, liquid milk either came in a bottle or a paper box.

I like milk in a bag. It’s more convenient to pack since it won’t have the pointy edges of paper-boxed milk or the awkward shape and weight of a plastic bottle.

But I don’t like how awkward it is to drink. I either have to cut a hole and drink it like I’m sucking on an udder or find a glass to pour it in. There’s also a risk of the bags leaking because of sharp and pointy things in my bag.

If you’re ever in China, give these milk-in-a-bag a try. They taste good.