{"id":42347,"date":"2024-06-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42347"},"modified":"2024-06-25T14:30:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T21:30:51","slug":"most-expensive-cities-airbnb-insurance-online-passport-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/most-expensive-cities-airbnb-insurance-online-passport-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Expensive Cities\/Airbnb Insurance\/Online Passport Renewal"},"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>The Most Expensive Cities to Live In<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The annual&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercer.com\/insights\/total-rewards\/talent-mobility-insights\/cost-of-living\/\">Mercer cost of living study<\/a>&nbsp;is out and it\u2019s always fun to read. This isn\u2019t really applicable to most of us since it measures costs for salaried executives or government workers posted abroad\u2014those people in your book club or biking group paying $12K per month of company money for rent in Barcelona for instance. But it is interesting to see which locations are rising and falling from exchange rate issues or macro economic factors. Cities in Japan and China have gotten cheaper. Mexico City jumped up a lot, while Buenos Aires went the other direction. One trend is clear: if you want to live somewhere expensive and pay a lot for housing, the USA and Switzerland are ready to oblige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Think Twice About Airbnb Insurance<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Similar to when you have a minor fender-bender in your car, you might want to work out payment directly with your Airbnb host if anything gets damaged, rather than letting them file for insurance. The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elliott.org\/the-troubleshooter\/help-im-locked-out-of-my-airbnb-account-after-i-spilled-food-on-my-hosts-sofa\/\">customer profiled in this article<\/a>&nbsp;spilled some food on the host&#8217;s sofa and then got banned from the platform after the host filed an insurance claim. It required a lot of intervention to get the guest (who was also a host) restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Chill Out in Lake Toba<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When I first started backpacking in the early 1990s, Southeast Asia was full of idyllic spots with small crowds that only backpackers in the know seemed to visit. Many of these are overtourism poster children now, like Ubud, Ko Phi Phi, and Hoi An, but somehow Lake Toba on Sumatra is as chilled out as ever. See the recent&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomadicnotes.com\/notes-on-lake-toba\/\">report from James at Nomadic Notes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Online Passport Renewal for USA Now Open<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My wife just had to renew her U.S. passport and after paying for the expedited option and mailing it back, she had a new one in about three weeks. Apparently it\u2019s tough to copy this new hi-tech version because if you use the just-opened&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/travel.state.gov\/content\/travel\/en\/passports\/have-passport\/renew-online.html\">online portal to renew and pay<\/a>, you can hold onto your old passport for a souvenir without sending it to get a hole punched. The site says to not plan any international travel for eight weeks though, so it\u2019s not promising to be speedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nomadico issue #110<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"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\/42347"}],"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\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42348,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42347\/revisions\/42348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}