{"id":41692,"date":"2023-12-07T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=41692"},"modified":"2023-12-05T14:20:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:20:10","slug":"hard-drive-crashes-onward-tickets-immigration-smiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/hard-drive-crashes-onward-tickets-immigration-smiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Drive Crashes\/Onward Tickets\/Immigration Smiles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/cbjyU?utm_campaign=Nomadico&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Revue%20newsletter\" target=\"_blank\"><em>A Better Life for Half the Price<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>The World\u2019s Cheapest Destinations<\/em>. See\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nomadico.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">past editions here,<\/a>\u00a0where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Are You Backed up?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I am so dedicated to you dear readers that I am typing this at a chain hotel business center. My laptop suddenly won\u2019t boot up and it is now sitting in a Costa Rican repair shop. I am praying to the computer gods, who are surely artificial beings, that I haven\u2019t got a dead hard drive. I think I\u2019m&nbsp;<em>mostly<\/em>&nbsp;okay if that happens because I back up photos from my camera to Amazon (a Prime benefit) and a lot of things are in the cloud these days via LastPass, Google, and Dropbox, but I haven\u2019t backed up article documents and the like to my external hard drive for\u2026not sure how long. Use this lesson as a reminder to back up often, preferably in more than one place!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>The Onward Ticket Problem<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I am in Costa Rica right now and for only the third time in my life, I got asked for an onward ticket before I could board the plane. This just ended up costing Volaris money because it wasn\u2019t really required by immigration and I cancelled the refundable ticket I had to purchase as soon as I landed. If your airline doesn\u2019t offer this though, there are services like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/onwardticket.com\/\">OnwardTicket.com<\/a>&nbsp;that will basically rent you an online ticket that goes to your e-mail or can be printed, then you&#8217;ve got your onward ticket to show when questioned. You will only be out $10 to $20 for the service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Be Nice to Immigration Officers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While I did get a little testy with that airline gate agent since this was not my first time to Costa Rica without having a ticket out and they give you 180 days now anyway, I do always put on my best face and behavior forward for immigration officers. The latest reminder of why that\u2019s important is the story of an American real estate investor who has been banned from the Philippines for life for causing a scene and supposedly writing profanity on his immigration form.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2023\/11\/17\/travel\/us-traveller-banned-philippines-intl-hnk\/index.html\">Details are sketchy<\/a>, but it\u2019s a good reminder to remember who\u2019s in charge and that you don\u2019t get entry to the country without passing that gate. &#8220;According to the immigration bureau, it has excluded and blacklisted 44 foreign nationals it deemed \u2018disrespectful\u2019 in 2023.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>About that Live-aboard Cruise Ship\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Just because you read about something in 50 places and saw it 100 more times on social media doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s actually going to happen. That cruise ship where you could buy a cabin and spend three years traveling the world? There was just one tiny detail they hadn\u2019t worked out: they did not actually have a ship locked down and in their possession. So never mind, all you people who sold your condo and put everything in storage.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.travelweekly.com\/Cruise-Travel\/Residential-cruise-company-cancels-voyage\">Details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nomadico issue #81<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2385],"tags":[2386],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41693,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41692\/revisions\/41693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}