travel tips - planning
Jon Carr | Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 6:29AM 
During our travels family and friends have asked for advice on how to pull off their own long term trip. A common theme is that most feel daunted on where to start and if it is even possible. In an effort to answer people’s questions we developed a guide. The guide is broken down into ten categories: planning, finances, 60 days before departure, useful websites, packing, transportation, culture, safety, technology, and necessities. We will post one category at a time over the next few months. While some tips may seem like common sense, we also plan to drill down into specific details and strategies. In the end we plan to combine the 100 tips into a downloadable PDF document. Our hope is that people will give us feedback as we progress through the list.
Let’s get started with our first category…planning.
1. Take a look in the mirror.
Investigate your real motivations for world travel. It is not always as glamorous as one may think and while it sounds like a sexy idea, not everyone will enjoy traveling for an extended period of time. It may seem odd we put this first but it is important to be honest with yourself. Long flights, uncomfortable bus rides, unfamiliar food, and conflicts with traveling partner(s) will certainly happen. For us, these are minor annoyances and a means to an end. The incredible adventures we have experienced vastly outweigh the negatives.
It is important to think about being crammed in the back of an enclosed pickup truck seated next to someone with a bag full of live bats, which will be eaten that night for dinner. How would you handle incredibly expensive, slow, and unreliable internet or no television for the length of your travel? Would you be comfortable waking up in the morning and having no idea as to where you would be sleeping that night? Are you okay with nightly checks of your bed to assure there are no bed bugs? I am assuming since you are reading this, the answer is an enthusiastic yes but for some, the lack of everyday conveniences will take a toll and can become a very unpleasant experience. Put some thought into this and see if you can go a week without internet or TV, it can be quite rewarding but may also lead to some unexpected anxieties.
2. Read Vagabonding by Rolf Pots.
Vagabonding served as our inspiration and offers a multitude of long-term travel tips. It could be just the right amount of push to get you on the road. It was for us.
3. Define a traveling philosophy.
Everyone has different ideas as to what makes for a great traveling experience. It is important to spend time thinking about what you like to do, see, and experience. Determining your goals from the onset will help the trip go more smoothly. Communicating and being honest about your philosophy is especially important when traveling in groups. It sounds simple but it really is important to have the conversation up front to make sure everyone is happy and accomplishes their individual goals.
For example, we are not big on museums so that wasn’t going to be the focus of our trip. I am a photographer and was looking to capture the essence of each country, which meant we went to scenic settings. I was up early many mornings by myself to catch an exotic sunrise. Annie is a foodie and loves learning about the culture of a region. It was important for Annie to try different foods and sometimes that meant she ate alone.
Getting to the bus stop and realizing half your group wants to go one way and other half the opposite way can be a bit tricky when the bus is about to leave. Avoid this stress upfront with a little planning and communication.
4. Determine logistics.
Focus on region of interest, route, length of trip, and when to start.
We considered South America and the Pacific-Southeast Asia because both were areas of interest and allowed our money to go the farthest. The countries were geographically close to each other so we could travel easily within the region. Eventually we decided on the Pacific-Southeast Asia because it allowed us to visit New Zealand and Annie’s family in Taiwan. We knew we wanted to end the trip in Taiwan and decided to start in New Zealand and work our way up through Asia. After a rough calculation of finances we figured six months would be a good goal for us. We decided to go early in the year because it would be summer in the Southern Hemisphere and we preferred warmer weather.
We purchased one-way flights to hop from country to country. Another option would be to purchase round the world tickets. We will cover flights in more detail in the transportation tips post.
5. Consider high or low season.
There are pros and cons to each but the low season has not required as much planning. Often we have been able to find accommodations upon arrival and at a much cheaper rate, which is usually still negotiable. When seeing attractions during the low season the crowds can be smaller. For instance, we had an entire resort to ourselves at Koh Chang in Thailand.
On the flip side we encountered many raining days while in Asia and sometimes it delayed our travels or prevented us from seeing an attraction. There are more festivals during the high season as that is when most people travel and the weather is much better. When you determine your travel destination, do a little research on when is the busy season and check out the weather patterns.
The rainy season has worked out well for us, we just try not to get caught without an umbrella.
6. Develop an exit strategy from your current life.
Time to come up with a game plan for all the odds and ends. Determine the items holding you to your everyday life (i.e. job, apartment/house, car, debt, personal items, etc) and how you can take a momentary step away to pursue your goal of world travel.
We quit our jobs a month before our travels. We gave our notice to our landlord and packed up our things to be put in a friend’s basement. Annie’s niece was more than happy to drive the car while we were away. This sounds a lot easier than it actually was.
Once you determine the things that are holding you to your current lifestyle you can then start to find solutions for the obstacles. Handling these details was the toughest part for us but once we came up with a plan for each item the idea of traveling seemed much more plausible.
7. Remember there is always a way.
For many people world travel will be a step out of their comfort zone. People have a tendency to create reasons to hold them to what is familiar. But it is important to remember there is always a way. You can rent your house, save enough money, or leave a job. There are creative solutions to all of our situations if we seek them.
I spent four years building enough clientele to support myself in a career transition from sales to video production. The timing was right to make the transition but instead we decided to travel. It was a difficult decision for me because I had worked hard to establish myself and didn’t want to lose my clients. In the end I decided to take the risk and had faith in my abilities to build my clientele again when we returned.
There are always going to be reasons not to do it. The comfortable always has a seductive call to keep us stagnant. The key is to push through our self imposed barriers and go after what we want.
8. Inform family and friends.
Telling family and friends you are quitting your job and traveling can be unnerving because you are taking the road less traveled. Almost everyone will be thrilled for you and secretly wish they themselves were doing it. They can also provide travel tips and connections that can be helpful to you along your journey.
I knew it would be a difficult conversation telling my mother I was quitting my job and traveling for six months. Her reaction was one of concern and she questioned if it was a wise choice especially in a bad economy. After hearing our plan she felt more comfortable and became our biggest supporter coordinating several connections along our travels.
It is better to get those difficult conversations out of the way sooner rather than later and you will be amazed at all the help and connections family and friends can provide along your journey.
9. Create a blog.
Our blog allows us to stay in contact with family and friends and keeps them up to date on our adventures. It is a good idea to have it up and running well in advance so you can work out the kinks and get everyone on board before your departure.
There are many easy to use blog sites, such as Blogger. Blogger is a part of Google and it is free. It is super simple but lacks some key customization features I wanted. We decided to use Squarespace, which is a little more technical but still very easy to use. Squarespace costs $15/month and it is well worth it because it allows you to easily create a polished site with advanced features, like a beautiful photo gallery. I am not a big fan of the backend programming and Squarespace eliminates these headaches for me. We also registered our domain name, unmappedlife, with GoDaddy. GoDaddy is a little sketchy because they try very hard to sell you a $10 domain registration for $30. If you avoid all the annoying upgrade options, you can get a name for $10/year.
Facebook and Twitter are good resources to get the word out about your blog. We have had many friends suggest setting up a Facebook fan page, and it might be worthwhile to investigate it since so many people use Facebook.
The main reason we created a blog was so we can look back on our trip and remember our adventures. We invested a lot of effort but feel it is well worth it and have had a lot of positive feedback from friends and family.
10. Enjoy the process.
When you first consider traveling it can be stressful and overwhelming but no need to get bogged down. We didn’t do nearly as much planning as you might think. Some people envision detailed itineraries with multi-city airline tickets and hotel accommodations for the next month lined up before you step out the door. Truthfully the major planning encompassed determining the region to visit, finding solutions to the things holding us to our current lives, booking a one-way ticket to New Zealand, and reserving a campervan. We will review some of the finer details in the upcoming posts but in the meantime it is important not to get stressed and enjoy the process because once you get on the road it will be over sooner than you think.
Next up is finances, where we will discuss strategies related to budgeting, ATM fees, and credit card conversion charges.
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