Globe-trotting wheelchair user creates budget guide for disabled travelers

From The NY Times Frugal Traveler blog:

On paper, Matt Getze (pictured) looks like any other budget traveler. In the past six years or so, he’s gone to Madrid and Prague, to Bangkok and Shanghai. He’s stayed in $10 hostels, eaten street food and haggled over trinkets in Thailand, ridden buses in Malaysia, gone scuba diving in the Philippines and marveled at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Pretty standard stuff, except that this 36-year-old travels not just in planes, trains and buses, but also in a wheelchair. Stricken with polio as a child born in South Korea, he mostly lost the use of his legs, but never let that disability hinder his sense of adventure. Growing up in Southern California, he was a swimmer and a skateboarder, and as an adult he’s translated that independent spirit into a life of travel.

In 2007, he created WheelAdventure.com, a budget guide for disabled travelers with the motto: “Oil. Tighten. Pack. Roll.” Last week I called him up at his home in Los Angeles — “so accessible it’s almost boring,” he said — where he’s studying for a master’s degree in educational technology at California State University, Northridge, and planning his next big adventure.

Q.What’s the biggest challenge for disabled people who want to travel on a budget?

A.First, there’s getting over the hump of thinking that it’s going to be a huge hassle, that you can’t do it. When I decided to go to Thailand and Cambodia, that was my first trip alone. I mean, I was worried. “Am I going to be mugged? Am I going to be able to get around?” But I think it’s more of a fear of people just leaving their door, and whatever reason or excuses they make — it’s going to be a hassle or too much money — but it’s a fear of putting yourself out there. Anyone who’s entertaining the fact of traveling has got to have some money. But I never have the money until I have the money!

Q.When you fly, do you check your wheelchair along with your bags?

A.If I check it in, it gets processed and just gets banged around. I’ve had a couple of times when it just didn’t show up. So I make sure that I’m able to take it to the door of the plane, and then I’ll fold up my wheelchair and throw a bungee cord around it so it doesn’t expand. And then they take it down to the cargo hold.

Q.Do the airlines charge wheelchair users extra for any services?

A.Hell no, they better not! There’s no hard-and-fast rule. I’m assuming if the Americans With Disabilities Act doesn’t prohibit that — and the A.D.A. has very vague language —then yes, the airlines probably can charge. But if they do, they’ll probably get lawsuits.

Q.Do you have a special wheelchair for traveling?

A.The travel chair is my old chair. That thing is almost falling apart, so I’ll get a new chair soon and use my current chair as the travel chair. I use a Quickie 2HP. I don’t have a wheelie guard, I don’t have brakes on it or anything like that, for weight purposes. It’s the lightest folding wheelchair that I can think of. But I’m going to a TiLite wheelchair. Those start around 12 pounds versus mine altogether is about 25 pounds. You can take the back wheels apart, and it’s an L shape, and probably can actually fit on a plane in the overhead compartment. It’s probably $4,500 .Hopefully my insurance O.K.’s it!

Q.Is it hard to find accessible-but-affordable hotels?

A.When you factor in a low budget, I look for a hotel that is central. For me, location, location, location — it’s the most important thing. Because then I can just wheel around without having to pay for a cab. I mean, I don’t mind wheeling two, three, four miles back and forth. That’s what I do to save on costs, and generally speaking, hotels are not that much more expensive to be centrally located versus being a couple of miles away.

Q.What kind of hotels are these?

A.I’ve gone from $10 hotels and hostels — in Hong Kong, I spent a week in the Chungking Mansions for $15 — to four-star hotels. But if I’m going to do a four-star then I’ll shop around for prices. I generally try not to spend more than 50 bucks, 40 bucks, because it’s more important for me to spend money on other things. But the hotels have to have some sort of access to the rooms, whether it’s a ramp up to the entrance and then also the bathrooms have to be a little bit bigger. The doorways, I definitely have to fit in.

Q.How do you find deals that fit your needs? Do you go to the big booking sites, like Hotels.com and Expedia?

A.Those big companies, they do list — often, I should say —if a place is wheelchair-accessible. For hotels, because I like Southeast Asian places, I go onto Agoda.com and AsiaRooms.com. Agoda is cheaper than AsiaRooms. On Google, you can also type in “wheelchair-accessible hotel” and whatever destination. But I always read the reviews, I always try to look at user photos to see if I can get a sense of the entrance.

Anytime I go on a trip I just do massive research. I go onto the forums; for Bali, I went onto BaliForum.com. I Google a lot — I type in “transportation” there — and then I try to narrow the search down to within the past year or so to get current advice. That’s how I find out what I should be paying.

Matt Getze Scuba-diving in Cebu.When I went scuba diving in Cebu, in the Philippines, I found a really cool one—Cebu on Wheels. It’s pretty amazing. This guy, he’s a quadriplegic, he started a business to give tours of Cebu, which is totally overlooked compared to Bali and places like that. There’s also Tour Watch, run by Scott Rains; it’s a networking site to discuss disabled travel.

Q.How much more per day do you think you spend because of the disability?

A.All in all, when you’re including food, hotel, prescriptions, probably an extra $30 a day.

Q.Cheaper destinations — Southeast Asia, say, or Central America —don’t necessarily seem very wheelchair-friendly compared with Western Europe.

A.That’s why I came up with WheelAdventure.com. Because I didn’t want to go to regular places. I prefer Southeast Asia because of the cost factor, and because they’re so inexpensive, the dollar lasts so much longer. Yeah, a lot of places are not accessible. For the most part you’re going to have more challenges than in Europe.

In Asia, you’re going to find more inaccessible places, but the more you go around, the more you find your routes that are accessible. Southeast Asian places are still developing. You’re going to have more challenges, but you can get around in a wheelchair.

Q.Was anywhere in Asia surprisingly accessible?

A.Chiang Mai, Thailand, has steep ramps and often cracks in the sidewalk, and so you have to wheel in the streets, but it’s not that crowded — you feel you canwheel in the streets. In Chiang Mai, I saw probably three people in wheelchairs.

In Cebu, I was surprised at the transportation. I could get a ride for 30 pesos [67 cents]. It’s so cheap; because people need the money, they will do it. In China, I had the hardest time getting taxis to stop. They think it’s going to be a big hassle, so they don’t want to do it. I’ve literally opened the door while they’ve been moving away.

Q.How did you do in Cambodia, which has crummy infrastructure but also a lot of people disabled by land mines?

A.That was one of the places that I was really surprised it was accessible. The roads are just so flat in Siem Reap. I hired a guy with a tuk-tuk. He was an absolute pro at dealing with the wheelchair. It was no problem for him. I don’t know if it was because he’d done it many times before? But in terms of me having any extra sort of bridge with people, I didn’t feel that. Maybe they were a little more open-minded and sympathetic.

If I recommend any place in Southeast Asia, it would be Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I hired two guys to literally lift me up to the second floor or level of Angkor Wat itself, which otherwise I would’ve had to get out and drag my butt and pull my wheelchair up. But these guys were so awesome, they worked so hard to make $20 each for the day.

Q.Where will you go when you finish school?

A.I’m probably going to do a South American tour, but the big dream list would probably be Egypt, check out the pyramids and stuff. The other one that’s affordable — or will be when I have more money to do this — is the Christmas markets in Europe. I’d love to do that and bring my parents along. But that’s when I get money!