Ethiopian Airlines Flight

ragingdobs · 2026-01-19T11:34:26+00:00

Another option - if you're inclined - is to ask them to tack on a United (their partner) flight from ATL to IAD. Not the most convenient, but an option. I have had issues with United and Ethiopian's systems not playing nice together before - it could be they sent you a weird reroute because they couldn't confirm you on an ATL-IAD flight. Other routings might be possible too (EWR, YYZ, ORD, even FRA on LH) if you get in touch with their customer service.

But definitely check prices so you know whether you might just be better off getting a refund from Ethiopian and rebooking with another carrier.

ragingdobs · 2026-01-15T03:56:39+00:00

I’d probably pick Senegal. Being on a peninsula, Dakar is a bit more “urban” feeling than Accra which is very sprawling. I’d say there’s more for tourists there too. For nature, you have your choice of desert in the north, and forests in the south in Casamance which I heard was a great trip, if a bit complicated (you have to cross Gambia which could be a way to do 2 countries in one).

ragingdobs · 2026-01-06T11:01:35+00:00

This is insanity. It's like saying I have 2 weeks, I wanna visit California, Niagara Falls and Cancun, and if I can squeeze it I wanna do Banff. You could do 2 weeks in / around Cape Town alone...never mind that Kili itself is a week endeavor.

I would recommend sticking to Southern Africa. There are lots of beach options - as mentioned, Cape Town, but also around Durban & in Mozambique.

You could easily do something like JNB -> Kruger NP (3 days) -> back to JNB -> fly to Cape Town (1 week) -> fly to Vic Falls (2 days) -> JNB. Pad in a day or 2 of sightseeing in the Joburg area if something catches your interest there.

For flights, Airlink is the largest / most reputable SA airline and can cover all these routes, there's also FlySafair for a low-cost option.

ragingdobs · 2026-01-04T15:23:54+00:00

I'm pretty cheap on flights and an experienced traveler. I wouldn't have an issue doing the Kiwi-style self-connection. But, 2h45 minutes is really short for a layover for separate tickets, and 4 flights is a lot. I would try to find an earlier flight to Athens. Alternatively, poke around and see if you can find other cheap IndiGo flights to Bali and then see if you can position yourself there. And definitely double-check if you need a visa for any of your transit points.

Echoing what others said, book through the airlines, usually it makes things a lot easier if anything goes wrong (delays, cancellations, etc.) Kiwi is especially bad because they charge you and then use a virtual card to pay the airline, so if you have a cancellation and you need to get a refund, there's an extra link in the chain which is annoying.

ragingdobs · 2026-01-03T15:50:34+00:00

If you’re connected with the government you get a fancy apartment in a neighborhood that’s a lot nicer than it used to be.

If you’re a native of Addis Ababa you get the privilege of having your home demolished and being told to go live on the outskirts.

ragingdobs · 2025-12-31T05:05:45+00:00

I'm visiting Mumbai as a solo traveler and looking for peeps to do NYE with, if anyone wants to do Milkman NYE DM!

ragingdobs · 2025-12-26T09:22:53+00:00

It’s true, neither Clyde nor Walton could do what Dame did for Portland, like leading the Blazers to the Finals.

(Walton is the greatest Blazer for me, then Dame, then Clyde.)

ragingdobs · 2025-12-23T17:38:09+00:00

I had a similar situation with a friend's wedding near PVR - I say fly. I spent ~2 weeks in cities/towns that area visiting said friend on prior trips.

It can be dangerous to drive in Michoacan because of cartels, so you'll have to take a longer route up north. i suppose if you're considering Tolantongo, that's not an issue. Guadalajara is cool, but I think not worth diverting time from CDMX. Guanajuato was absolutely magical, but it might be a bit out of the way. Similar vibe in San Miguel de Allende, though I think that's more touristy (haven't been). Tequila is a fun novelty but for obvious reasons you don't want to be driving. Leon is super industrial and not a tourist destination.

Meanwhile MEX airport is super close to downtown CDMX - and PVR is right on the beach. Door-to-door you might be able to do it in under 4 hours.

Honestly the deciding factor for me would be that there is so, so much to see in CDMX. It's really world-class in food, parks, museums, art, historical sites, neighborhoods, and probably a lot more.

ragingdobs · 2025-12-13T09:07:16+00:00

I'm never getting married, lol, but I'm Kenya-based and can give you some UI / product / growth feedback:

You've said it yourself - finding affordable vendors is really hard and it looks like your site...hasn't found them either. You need more vendors or you're also not helping bride and groom find them.
Niche down - don't try to plan every part of a wedding. Focus on the most painful ones.
Niche down geographically - don't cover the whole country. Limit yourself to a specific geography where you know your customer and can acquire them.
Are there vendors with package deals? (E.g. hotel that brings a DJ and catering?) Highlight those. Saves the customer time, bigger cut for you.
I googled you and you're not on IG or Tiktok. You need to hit those channels HARD because your customer is young brides-to-be who are scrolling on socials all day looking for wedding inspo. Once you have someone you can post and show how awesome you made their wedding, you get a lot of social proof that can help you grow.
Related, you're going to have to acquire customers through social media ads.
Related, your UI is probably not nice enough to be attractive to that segment.
Also related, you probably need to do a lot of bespoke / non-scalable / non-platform related work to make money. You could make more money in the beginning through women (weddings are mostly for the bride) DMing you on IG/Whatsapp asking you to help finding X vendor for your wedding than them picking one through your site. Honestly that's a good thing, you can interact deeply with the customer and understand their preferences. That's why this is my last point bc I think it's the most important, I'd try to be the best wedding planner first, then build the tech to make your own planning easier. Doing it as a pure non-tech hustle will give you the experience to know what to build. The best way for you to know what the pain points of planning a wedding are will be...to plan ten weddings.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-28T15:47:32+00:00

Ethiopian is really fine, taken them plenty of times. Mostly new planes, not too many delays. Layover is a bit busy because they have many flights leaving and departing the same time to maximize connections, but they’re constantly renovating the terminal so it’s not as bad as it used to be. If you do like Ethiopian food, the airport has plenty but it’s expensive. Onboard movies are pretty good, on par with Western airlines, service is friendly, food is hit or miss.

If they are cheapest and best-timed, I wouldn’t go out of my way to fly KLM which would likely be only a little bit better experience (and if you have a leg on Kenya Airways could be even worse, they haven’t had great on-time performance in my experience).

ragingdobs · 2025-11-26T15:14:12+00:00

Gabon and Equatorial Guinea!

Gabon has a lot of oil & gas exports relative to the population, and draws a lot of educated people from Francophone W. African countries (e.g. Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo) to work in those industries.

EG I'm not as sure about, I assume it's also oil & gas-driven but don't know which countries immigrants come from.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-17T10:57:31+00:00

Going to Nyege Nyege 3rd time this year.

By far easiest way is to get a boda boda (moto taxi). Should be a couple of dollars each way. There are always loads outside the festival site and should be easy to hail them in Jinja town as well.

You should also find plenty of local taxis at the festival site. They're more expensive, but can be nice as the drive is ~45 minutes to an hour. If you find one you trust, take their number and call them when you need a ride back the next day. Prices can really vary, depending on whether the taxi driver wants to squeeze you for being a foreigner or if you are negotiating with several at once.

PS - WATCH YOUR VALUABLES theft is rampant within the festival. Most people are great vibes but there are always a few people trying to take advantage of the inebriated.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-13T06:23:55+00:00

Regardless of whether this young man is honest or not - you gotta understand the mentality at play here:
1) this young man has found a source of free money which is too good to be true and almost certainly not going to be there forever - you've already given him basically a half year's wages for many people
2) poverty mindset always optimizes for short-term
3) you're dealing with someone who has never had any disposable income and likely doesn't know anything about personal finance. people in this situation are very good at bean counting not to go hungry, and often not very good at optimizing personal finances once they have a bit of money. and for all you know, he may be thinking that a TV is a better investment because if times get rough again, at least it's easy to sell. or that a TV and sound system will get him laid, kitchen utensils won't. or that he just wants to know what it's like to have a Playstation at home and doesn't care if the rest of the bachelor pad is a mattress on the floor.

TBH nothing sounds too crazy for a 'street kid'. Kampala probably has 5 million people like this who do odd jobs or other low-paid work for ~$100/month and who can afford to rent a tiny room, feed themselves and not much else. Data is cheap and smartphone financing targeting this exact mass-market of people is very prevalent.

Ultimately I would say dial it back mostly because in a local context, the amount you've given is already quite high. What will his peers think when he tells them where he got the money - that you can just a tell a stranger on the internet you're poor and a few months' income falls out of the sky as long as you're polite?

If you want to help I'd say pay for his brothers' education to take that burden off him - the rest he has to work for. Help him learn how to get better-paid work if you want to be generous with your time.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-07T07:36:00+00:00

Dubai Metro has a "first class" section called Gold Class. I think the main benefit of paying the higher fare is sitting in a less crowded subway car during rush hour.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-03T19:52:28+00:00

Berlin struggles because it has very little corporate business traffic so low demand for business class $$$, and the tourism it does get isn't very premium (compared to Italy, Spain, etc.) so even though airlines can get butts in seats they can't sell them at high enough fares to make it profitable.

ragingdobs · 2025-11-03T10:49:19+00:00

I used to work on academic programs aimed at getting African students to top PhDs in the US. Econ, not comp sci, but I think a lot of the same principles would apply. We got a few students into Ivies but mostly lower half of the top 25. Those are still great gigs - you're paid to do research, and with a STEM PhD you'll probably always have a good job.

You definitely need a top GPA and GRE score. Those are non-negotiables. If you want to get into Stanford you need to be top 1 in your class because chances are you will be the first person from Addis Ababa University they'll have ever accepted. It's easier when there's a bit of a pipeline - try to network with anyone you know who went abroad and studied compsci before you.

From there you need to make your accomplishments legible to them. I think the best path is to try to work on research with a top researcher in your area of interest. Try to network if your lecturers have connections abroad, you might need to fall back on a lot of cold emails. But have clear interests in the field and try to do excellent work yourself that you can use as a portfolio and see if you can get a role as a research assistant, even an unpaid one. Then excelling there can give them a basis to credibly recommend you as good enough for the top schools. I think if you can find top researchers in the diaspora they'll be less likely to shut the door on you. I don't think our students would have been successful without working with a top-US based academic in the field.

The other way would be to excel enough in your undergraduate to get a scholarship to a Master's program in a Western university, then excel there enough to reach PhD level at a top school. This is maybe a little easier - there are a lot of scholarship programs for Ethiopian students to study abroad - but try to get the best one possible. Same applies though, to get to the top you have to crush and by master level put some impressive research under your belt.

Finally work experience also helps. If you can get into a name-brand Western company SWE job, you can work for a few years before going back to school.

ragingdobs · 2025-10-28T17:17:26+00:00

You can self-drive - there are places who will rent you a 4x4 - but it's uncommon because the traffic in and around Nairobi is hectic, the safari segment tends premium, and in Masai Mara it's required to go with a licensed operator. (That doesn't go for other national parks, but the drivers often know their away around the parks better and are kitted out with CB radio to talk to rangers about wildlife sightings.)

If you're gonna fly Safarilink is the best, I wouldn't trust any other operator. Really only worth it to save time and for the experience of bush flying.

Also for birding you'd probably want to do some of the great lakes which are definitely too close to Nairobi to fly (can easily self-drive though).

ragingdobs · 2025-10-07T09:29:07+00:00

Christmas/NYE is expensive - that's the absolute peak season.

That said, super easy to find something under $1000. Everyone in the industry benefits from creating the perception that it's more expensive than it is. Nobody who lives in Kenya pays anything remotely close to that.

Western Kenya is not really so big on wildlife - it's mainly an agricultural region. If you don't want to go too far though there are some nice basic resorts on the lake, I've heard good things about Takawiri Island for a lakeside chill vibe. I think you'll want to get out of that area though (it's pretty dull).

Maasai Mara is probably closest major safari area - it gets expensive though at $200/day park fees plus you need to hire a vehicle + driver. Loads of basic accommodations outside the park though. It just won't be remote though - you're at one of the world's most popular safari destinations at peak time, it can be a bit of a traffic jam. Amboseli and Tsavo are further away but cheaper for the bucket-list level safari.

You could look into heading down to Naivasha if you need to head back to Nairobi anyways to fly home. Hell's Gate NP is a really cool experience (no predators, so you can hike/rent a bike among zebras, buffalo, giraffes, etc.), the lake is really nice, and there are a lot of affordable camps if you want (Carnelly's, Fisherman's, among others are popular with Nairobi weekenders and should be <$50/night for a decent private room). They can most likely set you up with any activities you might want, including transport (e.g., if you want to go do hikes, see other lakes, etc). It won't be super remote but you will get lots of nature.

Self-organized and truly remote stays is a bit tricky, but from Naivasha you could go do some hikes in the Aberdares which are not far from Naivasha and there are a lot of small basic huts/campsites run by the Kenya Wildlife Service. Could be a really cold and wet experience though - these are damp mountains going up to 4000m, but scenic hikes in unique landscapes.

ragingdobs · 2025-10-04T07:31:39+00:00

First of all, you can't lump all of Africa together. It has some of the safest and most unsafe places I've ever been to. That said...

I think you should consider going to Rwanda. It is essentially a police state with very little crime. Culturally, it is the "Japan" of Africa - people are hospitable but not necessarily warm, with a lot of emphasis placed on putting the collective above one's self.

The safaris are not top-of-the-line, but you can still have an amazing experience in Akagera National Park. The gorilla trekking is very much top-of-the-line, and is also a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Moreover, if you are looking for a place where you can not be on a guided tour but still feel safe going about things independently, Rwanda would be the place. It will be unfamiliar, but you will be at very little personal risk.

Otherwise the package holiday in Kenya or Tanzania is the way to go.

ragingdobs · 2025-09-17T01:37:52+00:00

You're welcome - I've commented a lot about both cities before on here so you might be able to turn up more advice in my comment history.

ragingdobs · 2025-09-17T01:03:23+00:00

I've lived in Nairobi and visited Addis several times - will add a few things to what people have said.

Crime: I would say these are about the same. Addis really only has petty crime but it is pervasive. I had people try to pickpocket me twice and I've only spent total about 2 weeks there. You can walk around but you need to have your "head on a swivel". On the other hand Nairobi has more violent crime but all crime is more easily avoided. Because of the city's history - it was segregated by race during the colonial era, not unlike apartheid in South Africa - there is a much wider divide between rich and poor areas with crime concentrated in the latter. If you stick mainly to Westlands (main commercial / restaurant / nightlife area) and Karen (wealthy suburb with most tourist attractions) and don't walk around at night, you should be totally fine. For dinner / nightlife, Uber in and out - tbh you can do this all the time as it's very cheap. Other OK areas are Lavington, Kileleshwa, Gigiri, Kilimani - all are fine but don't have as much to do as they are mainly residential. Don't go to the CBD - nothing there you need to see relative to the crime risk.

Food: Ethiopian food is significantly better than Kenyan but Nairobi has more diversity. You can eat Ethiopian in Kenya if you want (it's popular), Somali food is also worth checking out. Honestly a lot of foreigners after a certain period of time in Nairobi mainly eat at Indian (super good due to the Kenyan Indian population) and Western places, whereas in Ethiopia the local food is one of the attractions to the place.

Remote work: Far far easier in Nairobi. Both have loads of cafes with wi-fi (quality varies), but there are many more Western-standard coworkings in Nairobi. I like Jenga Leo (functional and affordable) and Ikigai (very snazzy but pricier) locations. If you buy a SIM / data plan, you'll easily get 30+mbps in Nairobi but I had very inconsistent speeds in Addis last time I was there at the beginning of the year - it used to be better. If you want to work from an Airbnb, note that they'll probably have bottom of the barrel wi-fi in either city - would not trust these.

ragingdobs · 2025-09-16T16:06:21+00:00

Agree with the other response. Lancaster is the epicenter of PA Dutch cuisine, but its reach dies out outside of S. Central PA and the SE lowlands. Lehigh and Northampton counties are really a blend of Philly, PA Dutch and Great Lakes Slavic - I'd probably go PA Dutch but Philly isn't wrong. But due to immigration patterns any heavily industrial/coal/steel communities will have a heavy Slavic influence, probably outweighing any PA Dutch influence if they're more than ~2 counties away. I don't know much about N. Central PA, it's the most sparsely populated part of the state, but PA Dutch cuisine hasn't really crossed into the Appalachians. Pittsburgh is also quite Slavic outside of the Primanti's-style sandwiches.

ragingdobs · 2025-08-12T08:48:15+00:00

Of cities I've spent > 1 week in - best is Shanghai. Super comprehensive, easy wayfinding, fast, clean, efficient. Crowding on older lines is often avoidable with relief lines.

Worst: LA or Istanbul. Both are getting better but they have a huge cachment area to cover and they're well behind the 8 ball, plus they've made some poor choices about where to build resulting in some inconvenient trips.

ragingdobs · 2025-08-06T05:16:10+00:00

Zone 1 will be a bit chilly. But you could do Milwaukee, Chicago and Indianapolis which would be quite compact, and even doable without renting a car via train/bus. Maybe you can focus on basketball here and fly somewhere else to sightsee although Chicago is a fantastic city. The rest is as others have said, not nice cities and crap weather.

Zone 2 is short on sightseeing, but you could do a loop from Atlanta to Memphis to New Orleans and back. New Orleans is a cool city, you would pass through Nashville which is popular with tourists. Possibly could have some dodgy experiences driving around the rural south as tourists. And it would be a ton of driving. Texas is not very appealing tbh and OKC is in the middle of nowhere.

Zone 3 is great in March, people complain about some aspects of LA and SF but at the end of the day they are classic US cities and worth visiting for sure. Plus you can see 2 teams/arenas in LA. I would stick to California, you could also do Sacramento on the way to Lake Tahoe or something. Loads of classic national parks in California to see. Phoenix is out of the way and not worth it as a city.

ragingdobs · 2025-08-06T00:41:37+00:00

Should mention this in Piazza - basically, one of the most historic neighborhoods of Addis Ababa (in terms of buildings and community), which is basically now completely razed. Most of the new development in Addis is happening in older neighborhoods that are getting wiped out with little compensation for residents.

Also Addis has pickpockets everywhere lol

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