International Travel Tip #3: Cheapoair.com

Editor's Note: I suck, guys. I wrote this on the flight to Rwanda and forgot to post it. But good news! You get another tip tomorrow when I head to London!

Here I am in seat 20A embarking on another long day of international travel. This time I’m headed to Rwanda. It’s my second trip this year, and I cannot wait to get back. Only about 28 hours to go! Mr. Lacy is joining me for the second week of my trip. This cute guy pictured here is one of the famous Rwandan silverbacks. I snapped this on my last trip. We’ll see if Mr. Famous-Photographer-Geoffrey-Ellis can do better…

But let’s get down to business. Another flight means another travel tip for you. This one is a site called Cheapoair.com. Ever heard of it? I hadn’t before a few months ago. I found it because it was one of the only sites online that would sell me a plane ticket to Rwanda. In fact, when I booked my first ticket to Rwanda on it, I worried whether it was actually legit.

Cheapoair doesn’t have the best interface or functionality, but unlike most online travel sites that basically show you the same fares, Cheapoair has a way broader selection of international flights, including ones operated by niche foreign carriers. (I’m on a Brussels Air flight now, for instance.) Downside: A lot of times there are steep  foreign taxes, so make sure you look at the taxes (in parenthesis on the main listing page) before you get excited.

And although the fares are frighteningly expensive, both my flights to Rwanda were far cheaper on Cheapoair than ones I saw elsewhere. The one I got in February was thousands of dollars less than the competition. (Not quite so lucky this time around…)

Up Next: London

God forbid I sit still for more than two weeks. I've still got my Africa jet lag, but I'm already planning my time in London July 4-16.

The first week I'm traveling with a group of videographers, bloggers and authors called "The Traveling Geeks." I went on the first Traveling Geeks trip last year, which was also my first trip to Israel. Most people know I usually like to travel alone, but every once in a while experiencing another culture's tech scene with people from slightly different media disciplines can be eye-opening. Plus, they needed someone in charge of pub crawling. (Ahem, London readers, leave your suggestions in the comments...) I'll also get to present an award and do my best Michael Arrington impression at the UK TechCrunchies, or as they're actually dubbed the "Europas." I'll be blogging here and on TechCrunch, as I try not to step on Mike Butcher's capable TechCrunch Europe toes.

If you want to hang with us, get your ticket to the UK Crunchies or come to our Tweet-up. Tweet-up tickets are half-price until Friday, if you say you read about it on SarahLacy.com. (Just kidding, they're half-off for everyone until Friday.) Our full agenda is here in case you want to just STALK us the whole time.

Our statement of ethics is going up on the site soon, and I wanted to bring it up since I've been pretty harsh on Pay-Per-Post. No one on this trip is recieving any payment in exchange for coverage. We do have sponsors paying our travel costs, so we could get a diverse group of attendees without worrying about income or travel budgets. We disclose those sponsors here. Our only obligations are to go to the events we've committed to and write about whatever we find interesting.

I love London and spent a good deal of time there last year, so I padded five extra days onto the trip so I can reconnect with friends and meet new ones. I've always got a list of startups to meet, but this trip, I'm particularly interested in ferreting out some London investors who are doing deals in China, India, Africa and South America. Most of the ones I know do more Western-centric early stage tech venture capital. Would be great to mix some European investing perspective into the book, so please let me know any suggestions.

Also, in case you were about to comment about the un-American-ness of my leaving on INDEPENDENCE DAY to go see the very people we declared independence from in the first place, Mr. Lacy has already beat you to it.

Leaving Rwanda

Well, it’s that time again. I’ve been wearing the same dusty jeans for much of the last two weeks, I’m sick of every single item on the room service menu, the mini-bar is crying for mercy, weird insect bites are covering my limbs and I sorely miss US television (THANKS FOR NOTHING NON-INTERNATIONAL HULU!) Also, my head is so packed with stuff I need to find the time to sit and write that I live in a near-constant panic it will all pour out of my ear one night during my sleep.

Yes, it’s time for me to head back to San Francisco for a few weeks, and as I write this I’m  24 hours into the trip home with about six more to go. I smell absolutely horrible, for the record. Mr. Lacy is asleep on my shoulder. I’m on my second glass of wine and watching “Last Chance Harvey” which is one of the more depressing movies I’ve seen on a plane, and yet, reminds me how petty our worries typically are as Americans.

Rwanda has been amazing. It’s my second trip here this year, and it was somehow more challenging and inspiring than the first. And that’s one of the more unoriginal statements I’ve ever uttered. If I had to break it down into percentages, the impact of Rwanda is 75% the people of the country, 10% the gorgeous setting, 10% the impressive job the government has done turning aid into sustainable economic development and 5% watching some of the most successful and powerful people from the West take in that other 95% and be immeasurably affected by it.

In the last two weeks my experiences have vacillated between hanging out with wealthy, powerful or well-known Americans doing work in the country and some of the poorest Rwandans just getting by. And guess what? Everyone would grant that the Rwandans display the most hope and resilience of the two groups. The Americans I know who have spent any time in the tiny, landlocked country are humbled by the Rwandan experience and spirit and can't wait to go back. There’s something magical about the country that brings together people in ways that just wouldn’t happen elsewhere.

Here’s an example: At a dinner party last week in the volcano park where the endangered silverback gorillas roam, we were sitting near Jungle Jack Hanna—my all-time favorite David Letterman guest—and, believe it or not, the decedents of the Von Trapp family who sang several songs from "The Sound of Music"-- one of my favorite movies of all time. But the spotlight belonged to a guy named Frederick, a Rwandan who was left to die when he refused to kill Tutsis back in a time of post-genocide uprisings and scattered violence in 1998. Guerrilla fighters cut off his hands and left him tied to a tree. By a fluke, the ropes were tied so tight, it worked like a tourniquet saving three-quarters of his arms and his life. He now works with orphaned children in Rwanda. He also plays the guitar and paints with no hands. This is the Rwandan spirit: It doesn’t want special favors or handouts. They just want a chance to compete and rebuild their country.

Here’s the wackiest part of that aforementioned dinner: We didn’t know any of these people before it began. We just happened to be at the same hotel, and Hanna invited us to join the group when we exchanged pleasantries at the bar. Somehow, that’s just what happens in Rwanda.

Below are some pictures of my trip and check out my TechCrunch posts about it here. (Working on another one as we speak, jet lag permitting.) I’m saving the bulk for my book though, sorry!

 

So Other Than That Ms. Lacy, How'd You Enjoy Your Breakfast?

People keep telling me to "travel safe." For the record this is the only time I've been TERRIFIED FOR MY LIFE during my whirlwind of travel for my new book on global entrepreneurs. I'm going to let this video speak for itself. Mostly.

First, know a few things:

1. This was not staged, and clearly Geoff can read the future.

2. See how fast he left? The pictures don't show it, but that's how fast he came in. I happened to be reviewing the first part of this video on the FlipCam, and I heard Geoff yell, "HE'S BACK!" and looked up to a big snout a few meters away and closing on me. I froze, looking around for the staff to do something. But he had waited for the ENTIRE wait staff to go downstairs. Wiley.

3. In ten years of being together, Geoff says he has NEVER heard me scream as loud as I did this morning. I really thought I was about to get rabies or lose an arm.

4. Afterwards, my driver came up and said, "Come and look at who's on the roof eating a croissant!" Yeah, that'd be mine. 

5. Our cat, Mr. Vinnie, is on a diet. Our other cat, Boo, is not. So whenever he gets a chance Vinnie charges in the room where we keep her food and eats as much of it, as fast as he can, terrifying Boo in the process. I used to tell her to toughen up. Now I know how she feels. Sorry, Boo. 

6. He sat on the roof and ate all of the pastries he stole, then came down and his kids ran up. He didn't even save them any! They were like "Hey Dad, where's the food?" He's not even a good dad! 

7. Regardless of this video, I *highly* recommend the Akagera Game Lodge in Rwanda. The staff was amazing, and the scenery was beautiful.

When China, Russia and Day-Care Collide

It's about a week in, and I've been having quite a time in China. I found Shanghai incredibly frustrating and difficult to navigate, but I've really fallen for Beijing-- which is funny because every single person told me I'd feel the opposite way. "When are you going to stop listening to everyone? No one knows anything!" the curmudgeonly Mr. Lacy said over Skype when I told him of this stunning revelation. It's good advice except for the fact that as a reporter I'd pretty much be out of a job if I stopped listening to people. (Insert bad reporter joke here.)

Last night, we had an amazing dinner party starring Peking Duck and Mr. Kaiser Kuo, a Bejing rock star (literally), former editor for Red Herring Magazine and all around Beijing gadfly. Meeting him when you come to visit appears to be a rite of passage. And speaking of rites of passage, after dinner we went to Chocolate, a weird Russian nightclub in the Russian district of Beijing. Yes, there is such a thing. When I walked in I heard some warbling to Hotel California and excitedly said, "Oh are we karaoke-ing!?" Nope. That was just the house band. And they decided to keep coming back to that classic Eagles standard throughout the set.

Also, in this video is my fabulous traveling companion Mr. Tom Limongello. Tom and I met online (Remember when that used to sound sketchy? Ok, maybe it still does.) and he somewhat insanely volunteered to be a research assistant and China guide for free. I somewhat insanely agreed having never met him, hoping he wasn't an axe murderer. Please go follow him on Twitter NOW so he gets something out of this transaction. ;) In case anyone is wondering, I'm taking all applications for un-paid India travel companions. And no, I can't afford to pay for your travel. Also, I can't promise sketchy Russian clubs, I don't even know if India has a Russian district. But I can promise having to answer, "What time is our first meeting tomorrow?" over-and-over again and that you'll meet lots of cool companies. Don't all apply at once!

NOTE: If you feel bad for the tiny girl watching the racy pseudo-strip show, don't worry. There was a kids section to the bar.

When China, Russia and Day Care Collide from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

Health Tips, Anyone?

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I came down with a minor but annoying cold in Israel. So much for my first international trip in more than a year without getting sick.

Honestly, WTF? I am young(ish), work out several times a week, eat organically, don't smoke or do drugs, and for a blogger, I sleep pretty well. Yes, I take Emergency and Airborne on flights. I feel like I live pretty healthy, so why do I keep getting sick? I will give the Blueprint Cleanse credit for keeping me well leading up to the trip and through the flight. So maybe I just need more fruits and vegetables?

I'm open to any and all suggestions here, because I can't get sick everytime I fly this far. Given I've got about a trip per month planned for the next 18 months.

Speaking of, here's my lastest post on TechCrunch. It's on MyHeritage, an unconventional but, I think, underrated Israeli Web company. To my surprise, a lot of people in Israel didn't even know much about them.

Big News! Also, Yes, I Am Back at TechCrunch

As loyal readers know I’ve been spending quite a bit of the last few months quietly working on some pretty radical and exciting career changes. I’ve already blogged about my role shifting at Yahoo's TechTicker, and the fact that I’m cutting out almost all conferences this year. I'm finally able to talk about the last two pieces of news today, and you’ll see why it was crucial for me to make a little more time in my schedule. 

The first one is something I’ve been working towards since December 2007: I’ve finally closed my next book deal. Before I tell you about it, let me step back and say that the experience of writing “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good” was probably the most exhilarating and challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. I knew I wanted to do another book, but I was worried that anything would pale in comparison.

Business reporters are rarely in the middle of something that’s also a mass cultural movement, the way Web 2.0 was. And it’s even rarer to be the reporter in the middle of that trend early-on, with near-unfettered access. The book was also the culmination of ten years of covering startups and the Web, with so many of the themes of the book coming out of articles I’d written week-after-week and conversations at endless breakfasts, lunches and dinners with investors, coders and nearly everyone who makes up the Valley ecosystem. I worked hard, but I was also in the right place at the right time, and I didn’t think it was possible that I’d find another book that I could be that passionate about again.

Then, a month after finally turning it into my publishers in 2007, I was sitting on a beach in Mexico and my next idea hit me. (My husband may never take me on vacation again.)

The new book is about global entrepreneurship. What I don’t mean by that is globalization or social entrepreneurship. It’s the story of real, ambitious, risk-taking entrepreneurs in emerging markets around the world who are taking advantage of the turmoil all around them to build huge businesses, the Western venture capital money that’s trying to invest in them, and the cultural chasm the two are, so far, having a hard time crossing. To tell this story right, I’m going to spend between 30-40 weeks on the ground in Israel, China, India, Africa and Mexico/South America over the next year and a half. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I've actually already started. It works out to roughly 2-3 weeks at a time overseas, followed by 2-3 weeks here, and a few months with no travel here and there for sanity. My publisher is John Wiley & Sons and, yes, I was border-line insane to try to sell a book in this market. Huge thanks to them for believing in the project so much, and my agent, Daniel Greenberg, for pulling off the impossible once again.

I’ll still keep a foot firmly planted in Silicon Valley—after all, it’s an integral part of this story, too. And I’ll still write my Valley Girl column for BusinessWeek and do three-to-four interviews per month plus my daily Valley Buzz post for TechTicker. I’ll also still appear on NBC’s Press:Here during the weeks that I’m in town.

So, to sum up, we've got a column, I'm hosting one show, commuting an hour to be a regular guest on another and traveling around the world to write a book…is that enough to keep me busy? Hardly. That’s why I’m also announcing that I’ll have an ongoing gig with TechCrunch. Actually, Michael Arrington already did. Given my other responsibilities, I won't be there everyday, but I’ll be writing two-to-five posts per week, likely a lot on the weekends, a lot on airplanes and a lot from the road. You're better off sending announcements about your latest product launch wherever it is you send them now, because I’ll be focusing on analysis of the business of Silicon Valley, emerging markets and the collision between them.

While I've been working on pulling the book together for more than a year, no one is more surprised than I am at the TechCrunch announcement. You should have seen the Cheshire cat "I won" grin on Michael Arrington's face when we finished negotiating it all. He and I have had an ongoing Abbot-and-Costello routine about how I'd never write there because I was too busy and liked writing on this site too much.

But when I filled in for him in February, my thoughts changed. Trolls aside, I was blown away by the level of engagement and love for that blog among entrepreneurs around the world. It's not just a blog about Silicon Valley and Web 2.0. Subscribing to newspapers or business magazines doesn't really mean you read them. (Ask the tall plastic-wrapped stack in my hallway.) But TechCrunch readers read every single thing on that site, chew it up, digest it, spit it out and talk to their friends about it. It seemed the perfect place to write about what I was seeing on the road as the book unfolds, because I'm well aware I can't write this book alone. It needs a community. After all, a world of entrepreneurs is a pretty big topic.

I'm not killing SarahLacy.com. I'll be cross-posting my TechCrunch stuff here, linking to BusinessWeek and Yahoo stuff, and writing more personal posts about my experiences on the road as I travel. And yes, we'll have FlipCam footage.

I said in an interview late last year that my next book would be "stupidly ambitious" and I think I've delivered on that promise. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I know I will.

It's February 5 and I'm off to Africa

Why? That's not important. What's important is that I'm fully-- FULLY-- vaccinated. I've also got anti-malarials and cipro. I won't be blogging or Twittering much while I'm gone, so enjoy this little farewell video shot from the floor of the San Francisco Department of Health. When I get back, it's TechCrunch time!

Ow ow ow ow ow! from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

BTW: this is what my arms felt like the next day. Wait for it...

Typhoid Sarah

It's another one of those up-early-because-I-can't-sleep-but-yay!-the-house-is- quiet-enough-to-blog mornings. The reason I'm up too early is because I was horribly ill last night from taking the pill form of the Typhoid vaccine. I'd felt so bad-ass that I'd found a way to avoid the Typhoid shot several days ago. Now, I'm dreading the fact that I have three more to take this week and wondering if the shot might have been a better option. Hint: When they say drink several large glasses of water; they mean it. Every bit of moisture seems to be sapped from my body. I can barely even blink without my eyelids sticking! (TMI?)

All the vaccines signify a change in my travel plans for 2009. While I'm having to be coy on exactly what they are, let's say there's a significant project or two brewing that's going to involve some extended international travel. While some of the projects are new, the growing obsession with studying entrepreneurship around the world isn't.

I grew up in a family of seven with parents who are teachers; we had no money for international travel. When I got my first reporter job for $21,000 a year-- I wasn't exactly flush with funds either. More than ten years of being a beat reporter with two weeks vacation hasn't helped matters. So ever since I quit BusinessWeek to write my book, I've been making up for all that lost travel time. Last year, I went to Israel, Cannes, London (twice) and Mexico, but the bulk of my traveling was my 15-city-book tour.

That book tour was amazing, but exhausting. Part of what made it so exhausting was that I was wedging tons of small trips into my already packed schedule. So I'd wake up at 5 a.m., go shoot at Yahoo all day, hop on a plane to, say, Omaha, go to a late night tweet up, get up for a few more events the next day, stay out talking to entrepreneurs until 2 a.m., wake up at 4 a.m. for a flight home, write a BusinessWeek column on the plane, then race into Yahoo to shoot more. I'm not exaggerating.

So this year, as my job switches from book promotion back to reporting, my new travel plan is focus, especially because most of my travel is self-funded. I am only doing two types of trips: Ones where there is a very specific reporting ROI-- where I am following a specific, amazing story that has not been written-- or ones with a more literal ROI-- ie, where I'm getting paid to speak to support the former travel.

This means, I'm cutting out most conferences. It's a hard call, because conferences are fun. I'm sad watching via Twitter right now as all my friends arrive in Munich for DLD while I suffer through mini-Typhoid fever on my couch. But I can't be on the road as much as I was in 2008, for the sake of sanity, health, my marriage and my work and that means something has to go. And if I study my travel in 2008, I got way more out of trips where I filled my time meeting with new people without all the distraction and noise of a conference around us. Conferences are great for connecting with people and deepening relationships with people I already know. But increasingly I don't meet a lot of great new sources at them, and I don't get great new stories ideas. By definition, being at an event with a hundred other reporters keeps you in the echo-chamber.

That was the reason I reluctantly skipped Le Web in December. And why I'm on my couch, not in Munich right now. It also means I won't be attending SXSW; I'll be in another country instead. If you read my BusinessWeek columns you know I never attend Ted, and this year is no different. I will still attend AllThingsD and The Lobby (assuming there is a third Lobby), but those are two of the only ones set in stone on my calendar.

So you won't be getting conference circuit news, fun videos and photos here in 2009. But you will (eventually) get genuinely new and different stories that could never come out of a conference. Some of those will appear on the blog, some may appear in my BusinessWeek column, and some you won't read about for quite a while. But I'm pretty sure you also won't read about them anywhere else. And that sort of makes the Typhoid stomach-ache worthwhile.

Controversy at Le Web? Sacre Bleu!

I had to skip this year's Le Web conference, and I have to say, as much as I enjoyed it last year, on Monday I was so happy not to be jet lagged (again) and cold. (Well, colder than it is in my non-heated house. Brrrrrrr!)

Of course, when I travel to conferences I never get the posh treatment of Michael Arrington, who has apparently picked a fight with Loic about American vs. European entrepreneurs. Loic answers back here. As someone who has gone on four trips to Europe in the last year and has met with hundreds of entrepreneurs, here are my thoughts.

First, Loic is right when he says at the end of the post that this is no longer an interesting or meaningful debate. That said, like it or not, we'll keep having it because of the stark and honest reality that Michael describes:

"...the joy of life is great, but all these two hour lunches over a bottle or two of great wine and general unwillingness to do whatever it takes to compete and win is the reason why all the big public Internet companies are U.S. based. And those European startups that do manage to break through cultural and tax hurdles and find success are quickly gobbled up by those U.S. companies. Skype (acquired by eBay) and MySQL (acquired by Sun) are recent examples.

The crowd jeered but the stark reality of it all is unavoidable. And the fact that the panelists on stage, all either American or living in America, suggested that you can somehow succeed with a startup while maintaining a healthy work-life balance is unfortunate. Too many people choose to be entrepreneurs as a lifestyle, without realizing that it takes everything you have and more to win. And if you aren’t in it to win, why not just take that nice job down the street that gives you five weeks of vacation."

I couldn't agree with Michael more. I think we're going to see entrepreneurship explode globally over the next decade; but as of now, there are very, very, very few examples of startups that have become billion dollar, stand-alone companies that are not at least headquartered in the Valley. So as a result, sharp entrepreneurs around the world who I've met want to know what the Valley does well. And what the Valley does well is tireless work. During several of my book tour stops in the Midwest and the South I was asked if you could have a family and be an entrepreneur. You can. But not if you are trying to build the next Google or Facebook. There is no work life balance at that level. Again, know the game you are playing.

That said, I am not sure what Silicon Valley Loic is living in when he writes this:

"There is a huge difference between being lazy and taking time to know each other. It is one of the main cultural differences I feel everyday as I moved to Silicon Valley: every minute, every coffee, every phone call must have a point. When you call someone in Silicon Valley for anything you will likely get "why are you calling me?" ...

...Don't even think about starting a conversation in Silicon Valley by "how was your week-end" or "how are your kids", they all want you to go straight to the point and no time to lose. I never thought inviting someone I really liked to know better to dinner would get me an email from his assistant "why would you like to invite him to dinner?". I do not think europeans are lazy taking the time to know each other and build deep long term friendships that are not limited to business and I do not think this hurts Europe in any way. On the contrary."

As hard as we all work, this is in no way my experience. Everyday I IM, email or have calls with people that all start out with us chatting about our personal lives. In fact, my favorite conference, the Lobby, is entirely centered around that, which is a big reason most of the attendees bring their families. Several times a week I have long meandering dinners with entrepreneurs and investors where we talk about everything from entrepreneurship to family life to politics to tech and, yes, business. This is why I love living in the Valley. I'm rarely bored in a conversation.

The most extreme example was the research for my book. Incredibly busy entrepreneurs at the most crucial stages of building their companies took hours at a time to talk to me about life and work, repeatedly over more than a year's time. I was never asked what they'd be getting out of it. In fact, a lot of people have asked me why they gave up so much time, and I never have a great answer, because I never once had to have that conversation. So I asked Max Levchin that at the Churchill Club event we did. He looked a little stumped, as though he'd never really thought about it that way either, and said that he just thought telling the whole story of the Internet from the bust through this generation of companies and doing it right was somehow important.

Perhaps Loic just needs new friends in the Valley? ;)

[PHOTOS: Me interviewing Kevin Rose on stage at Le Web last year by Adam Tinworth. Me laughing it up with Le Web's incredibly talented content creator Cathy Brooks after one of those amazing French dinners. Doc Searls took a zillion photos that night of Mr. Lacy and me, Evan and Sara Williams, Jason Calacanis, Jeff Pulver, Pistachio and others chilling in the hotel lobby. If Loic was right...would all those people have flown to Paris just to hang out?]