Recently my partner and I decided to embark on a new adventure of travelling around South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand for 6 months. We quit our jobs to fulfil this lifelong dream we have both had and it has been so worth it. Getting to see parts of the world that would be too difficult to get there in just a two weeks holiday has been so amazing. We have learnt so much about the world and it is an experience we will never forget.
Below we have written some things that we wish we had known before we travelled for an extended period of 6 months!
Less is more when it comes to packing
We majorly regret how much stuff we brought with us. We quickly realised that we could have easily brought less clothes and gotten away with it. Try to dwindle down your bag size and the amount of things you are travelling with, so that you can get around easier and don’t have to carry a big heavy bag whenever you change accommodation.
Get an international drivers license
We were adamant before we went away that we wouldn’t be renting any mopeds or quad bikes or anything like that. However, within the first couple of weeks we quickly realised it was the cheapest and easiest mode of transport in countries in South East Asia and around the world too. To make sure you are driving a little bit more legally, get an international drivers license before you go away. You can apply for it online and it will be sent to your home.
Budget beforehand but always leave some extra money for unexpected
Make a rough budget of how much you are willing to spend in each country. It was useful for us to have a ballpark figure of how much we were going to spend on a hostel and food each day. If there are any activities you are pretty sure you are going to do whilst in certain places, factor those into the budget and then have extra money for unexpected expenses, whether that be activities or for when things might go wrong.
We made sure that we had a separate budget for rainy days, which we could dip into throughout our time travelling, and boy did we need it!
Save all your photos and videos constantly onto an online storage
We are so glad that we did have an online storage area set up from the beginning of our travels. This means that if any device was to ever get stolen, lost, or damaged, we had a backup of everything online. We used Photo Circle, which is free, and you can even add your friends and family to it, so that they can see your photos whilst you travel.
It also came in handy when we had run out of storage on our phones and cameras, so that we could delete old content and make way for new stuff.
Bring passport photos for visas
We were actually advised to do this before we left, but we didn’t listen and wish we had. We only came across this in one of the countries we visited, Laos, but when getting a visa on arrival they asked up for a passport photo of ourselves to go along with the visa. As we didn’t have these, they needed to charge us. Bringing a couple of copies of images of yourself will help you avoid this.
Always ask the price first and do your research on prices beforehand to avoid scams
Unfortunately, you are likely to come across some scams whilst away. We found Indonesia to be the worst for it out of the countries we went to. We made a pact to always do research first on how much things like taxis or bike rental should be and always ask the price before agreeing to purchase anything. This will help you avoid overpaying.
Only book accommodation for one or two nights
This is an important one that saved us on many occasions whilst we were away. Often you will find when booking accommodation that in the photos it looks like an amazing and clean place to stay. In reality you might find something very different. We choose to only book one or two nights in a place, even if we knew we would want to stay in the area for longer, as we wanted to check we were happy to stay there. A few times we decided to change, so if we had booked for longer, we would have lost money.
Without A Paddle Travel 