"I'm Not Apologizing Until *You* Apologize"

If you plan ahead, you can afford a great summer vacation without going into debt or raiding your long-term savings. Consider opening a vacation fund now. Set aside a small sum every month to pay for the trip of a lifetime—and avoid credit card debt. You probably already have your paycheck deposited into your checking account electronically. Why not put your vacation fund on autopilot, too? Each month, have an amount of money moved from your checking into a money-market or other fund. You'll be more likely to stockpile enough cash if you don't have to think about the process. How much should you set aside? Here's a benchmark: You only need to move $310 per month in a savings account paying 2 percent to end up with $5,000 for a trip abroad in summer 2010. Consider opening a savings account with an online bank, which may offer a higher interest rate than your current accounts do. Today's online-only savings accounts often come with debit cards you can use to withdraw cash at ATMs worldwide. A case in point is ING Direct's Electric Orange account. To find the best money-market account (paying approximately 3 to 4 percent a year), visit kiplinger.com/money/credit/. To compare higher-yield certificates of deposits, visit bankrate.com. In the meantime, while you're waiting to take your next big overseas trip, you may want to take a more affordable road trip in your region. You'll find a list of suggested road trips at BudgetTravel.com/roadtrip. Photo courtesy of James Jordan, via Flickr & Creative Commons ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB Get your finances in order in 31 days by reading the blog The Simple Dollar. Are you nearly broke? You can still travel. Read the tips at the blog Less Than a Shoestring.

Ruled by a repressive military junta, Myanmar (traditionally known as Burma) is taking baby steps to promote tourism, after ruthlessly squashing protests led by Buddhist monks back in September. As Ethical Traveler reports, the Ministry of Culture has reopened Thiri Zeya Bumi Bagan Golden Palace, one of four recently restored sites. The 1,000-year-old Golden Palace was built by King Anawrahta in what was then the capital city of Bagan (also called Pagan). Thousands of ancient temples still crowd the skyline. Making the choice to visit Myanmar—or any country with a bleak human rights record—can gnaw at your conscience. Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Aung San Suu Kyi and groups like UK-based Tourism Concern have urged travelers to avoid Myanmar while its regime remains in place. Some tour operators refuse to run trips there. G.A.P Adventures, however, offers a guided 14-day tour of Myanmar from $945 and states that "...travelers should have an opportunity to experience this country firsthand, meet its people, and potentially return home as ambassadors for positive change." Journeys Within also covers Myanmar, and co-founder Andrea Ross raved to Budget Travel about the little-known resort area of Ngwe Saung. The State Department's consular sheet on Myanmar has information on what to expect and how to prepare for the trip. One tip: Bring cash as local businesses typically don't accept traveler's checks or credit cards, and ATMs are nonexistent. Are you intrigued or put off by the idea of visiting Myanmar? Can boycotting a country do more harm than good? Voice your opinion by posting a comment below. RELATED To Boycott or Not to Boycott and Mr. Bush, Let Us Go to Cuba! PHOTO of balloons over Bagan courtesy of Sara Heinrichs via Flickr.

Today, Farecast, a free online service that helps travelers decide whether they should buy a ticket now or wait and hope that the price drops, has begun to forecast ticket prices for 200 international routes for flights departing within the next six months. Until now, the site only predicted fare trends on most major domestic routes. The website makes its predictions primarily by searching for patterns in ticket prices recorded in computer databases for select routes to Europe, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. Farecast is the only fare prediction website that tells you in a clearcut way whether a ticket is a fair value, with big bold-faced words like "buy." The site also leads the field in making it clear how confident it is in its predictions about whether fares for your itinerary will rise or fall during the next week. Unfortunately, by limiting its predictions to what prices will do in the next week, Farecast doesn't resolve the question of whether to book now or wait another month (or any longer period of time). It's best for travelers who are ready to pounce on a deal. Farecast, you'll recall, is the winner of Budget Travel's 2007 Extra Mile Awards, and we've blogged before about its airfare prediction tool for domestic flights. Some of Farecast's other new tools include a tab for "Prediction & History details." If you want to know just how expensive it will be to fly to, say, London in July, Farecast will tell you. If you want to know how those London fares compare with the fares for flying to other European capitals, you can click a few buttons and the Farecast will display an easy-to-understand graph comparing fare trends between the cities. You can quickly see if you'd get more bang for your buck by flying to, say, Rome, instead of London in July. Predictions are limited right now to trips lasting between two and eight days in length. Farecast is not offering insurance on its price predictions for international trips—at least not yet. For domestic trips, in contrast, the site sells a Fare Guard option for $10 that guarantees you can buy lowest fare you see today, even if that fare disappears later in the week. (As Laura MacNeil explained this option in a Budget Travel story last year, "If the company is wrong and the price goes up—and you book a ticket within that week—you'll receive a check for the difference between the original quote and what you ended up paying. If the price goes down, your $10 will, you hope, be made up for in the savings.") EARLIER Starting in May for domestic flights, United will only allow you to check one bag free, charging you $25 for your second piece of checked luggage, $100 for your third, and $100 for your fourth.

This March, Canada's Porter Airlines will launch its first flights in the U.S. Starting now, you can book seats on one of seven daily round-trip flights between Newark and Toronto, first departing March 31 at Flyporter.com. Fares start at about $280 roundtrip, after fees and taxes. The airline has connecting flights, via Toronto, to Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, and Mont Tremblant. Later in the year, the airline may expand to Boston, Chicago, D.C., and Philadelphia. The airline flies into Toronto's City Centre Airport, instead of the city's famously more congested international airport. The Centre Airport is also closer to downtown than the international airport most people use. The new turboprops offer custom leather seats with two to three inches more legroom than the 30 inches of legroom you typically find in the economy-class sections of other airlines. [NOTE: This blog post originally used the description "regional jet," instead of "turboprop," to describe the planes. And it said "30-inch wide seats" instead of "30 inches of legroom. I regret the errors and will now go back to bed.] More at FlyPorter.com.