Going traveling for a year - any advice?

Bananabelly

Sammy85 wrote: »

We spent 6 weeks in thailand.

Toiletries - maybe take your toothbrush so you dont have to go shopping immediately, but other than that i wouldnt bother taking anything else. All usual brands are available and at reasonable costs. I wouldnt take any non-prescription drugs with you, you can by the usual pain killers, and you dont want to risk inadvertantly breaking local drug laws. Any prescription drugs - make sure you have something identifying them as yours prescribed by a doctor.

Actually I would disagree somewhat - there are a lot of fake medicines and ones that are stored poorly/past the use by date in developing countries so I would take my own or look at the packet very carefully. The trouble is usually with codeine or 'strong' drugs like that (they are illegal in some countries - notably Greece!), so something like paracetamol and ibuprofen for sprain and strains would be fine. And don't forget the imodium . But definitely get a letter from your doctor about any prescription drugs.

Street Food - we lived on it for 6 weeks - yummy banana pancakes!! Just remember - eat where the locals eat! Loads of steet food stalls packed with westerners but no thai people eating there - alarm bells should ring. As i said, 6 weeks eating like a local and no tummy upsets.

Sorry, but locals in Thailand definitely don't eat banana pancakes. They are yummy though! And a backpacker staple for sure.

MrRhys

Hi, I'm also going to SE Asia for about 6 weeks at the end of April.

There's some good tips on here so for but I was wondering about the practicalities of recharging things (camera, phone, ipod etc) since the accommodation in some places looks pretty basic (ie. beach huts). Did you guys have any problems with this?

Also, i'm looking at taking about £1200 spending money (inc accommodation). Is this enough for 6 weeks? I'm not expecting to live like a king or anything on that much btw.

Sammy85_2

Actually I would disagree somewhat - there are a lot of fake medicines and ones that are stored poorly/past the use by date in developing countries so I would take my own or look at the packet very carefully. The trouble is usually with codeine or 'strong' drugs like that (they are illegal in some countries - notably Greece!), so something like paracetamol and ibuprofen for sprain and strains would be fine. And don't forget the imodium . But definitely get a letter from your doctor about any prescription drugs.

Thailand has reputable chemist brands, such as boots. I have had no problems buying from there. Yes its more expensive than other chemists, but its still cheaper than at home. I certainly wouldnt buy medication from anywhere shady looking, but then you wouldnt do that at home, would you?

There's some good tips on here so for but I was wondering about the practicalities of recharging things (camera, phone, ipod etc) since the accommodation in some places looks pretty basic (ie. beach huts). Did you guys have any problems with this?

Almost everywhere has at least one plug socket, we didnt have any problems getting phones charged up.

Also, i'm looking at taking about £1200 spending money (inc accommodation). Is this enough for 6 weeks? I'm not expecting to live like a king or anything on that much btw.

We spent considerably more than that during our 6 weeks, we didnt live like kings, be we didnt rough it either.

On average our hotels were £10/nt (about £420 for the stay) but then we had a few nights at nicer hotels that were more like £25-30 a night.

We also did a number of trips, we went to an elephant rescue centre in Chiang Mai for 2 days, that was a good £130 each. We also did sea canoeing down in Phuket, and that was about £50pp. We did our PADI OW, which was about £800 including accomodation for 5 nights on Koh Samui.

Travel costs, we went to Chiang Mai by train, i dont remember how much it was, it wasnt too bad, but it wasnt that expensive. We flew from Chiang Mai to Koh Samui, that was about £90pp.

I guess spending money wise, we spent around £40/day on food/drink/travel.


If you did it cheap, say £10/night accomodation, £20/day food/drink/transport (a beer is around £1 so ammend depending on how much you'll drink!!) that would work out to about £1200ish. So you'll still need extra money if you want to do any trips.

phatbear

Mr_Lahey wrote: »

i found getting pretty much anything you wanted in Vietnam easy and straight forward. There was nothing i wanted and could not get.

Are we talking about clothes here?

My brother lives in vietnam and he struggles big time for clothes, ok he's 6'4 but no fat on him and he has tried sending clothes to me but nothing fits. Thanks to airasia he pops back to blighty once a year to stock up on clothes.

Re mobiles you're supposed to be disappering around the world leave it at home and if you really need to converse with anyone at home use a public phone

fran-o

Had four months away in 2006 to Oz NZ and South America and your trip sounds fab. So many good tips here already! You might need yellow-fever vaccine for South america which takes more organisation than most jabs as not everywhere does it.

Agree with others its not worth taking anything of value with you other than a decent camera. You'll worry about losing valuables! Be very careful of pickpockets. Keep several copies of your passport and visa documents at home so family or friends can fax copies out to you should they get stolen.

I really recommend taking a torch you can power up by winding up or shaking, no need to worry about new batteries. We found the altitude in the Andes quickly wore down batteries bizarrely enough, so be careful you don't use all your camera power on the inca trail before you reach macchu piccu!

Also, sounds daft but you will get grubby and will be using washing machines in hostels or washing services that may not get clothes so clean as usual! Take hard wearing and patterned clothing that helps hide stained patches!

Wasn't sure if you are male or female... but i took a sarong and it was great! Many uses, including a something to hide behind when changing in communal dorms, something to lie on on the beach, to hang from the bunk ahead when you want to screen off your bed, covers shoulders or head when visiting places of worship, scarf to hide sunburn, put it between head and pillow when staying in a dodgy hostel... Plus its easy to rinse through and clean regularly and weighs almost nothing.

I ended up mailing a few things home when I was half way round my trip - things I was no longer using or souvenirs from the first few months. Its easy to do this from Oz or NZ and saves on weight for your next flight.

If you haven't set your route for certain yet I highly recommend Bolivia - cheaper than Chile or Peru, the salt flats at Uyuni, Lake Titicaca, La Paz are all great and fantastic souvenir shopping.

One last thing, seeing as you have a few months to go, get a cd-language course out from the library and learn a little bit of spanish!

Have a wonderful time! :j

Mr_Lahey

phatbear wrote: »

Are we talking about clothes here?

My brother lives in vietnam and he struggles big time for clothes, ok he's 6'4 but no fat on him and he has tried sending clothes to me but nothing fits. Thanks to airasia he pops back to blighty once a year to stock up on clothes.

Re mobiles you're supposed to be disappering around the world leave it at home and if you really need to converse with anyone at home use a public phone

Yeah i bought clothes out there. Had no problem.

Additionally there are few places where you can get fitted for suits etc cheaper than in Vietnam, if he has trouble then i suggest he visits one of the many tailors.

phatbear

Yup tailors are cheap as chips out there but given where the OP is going I shouldnt imagine a suit is required

MrRhys

Sammy85 wrote: »

I guess spending money wise, we spent around £40/day on food/drink/travel.


If you did it cheap, say £10/night accomodation, £20/day food/drink/transport (a beer is around £1 so ammend depending on how much you'll drink!!) that would work out to about £1200ish. So you'll still need extra money if you want to do any trips.

Ahh cool, cheers for that. Maybe i'll need more like £1500 then.

pilates39

If you are going to be in Sydney during Christmas and New Year would get that accommodation sorted out quite early. Just been there over this period and getting somewhere to stay that was not megga expensive or way out of town was not easy and we booked it in July!!

Ponchos

Hey again everyone, thanks for still posting! I haven't looked at this for a while so good to see there were some more posts coming in.

I hope to be booking my tickets and a few places to stay early net week, and thus making it official. My two mates (who I'll be joining up with) are flying out on Friday, seems very strange... and I'm a little jealous!

I shouldn't have too much trouble with clothes in Asia, I'm about 5'9" and about average size. Plus I'm only in Asia for 3 or 4 weeks before we move onto Oz, so I should be alright. a tailored suit would be brilliant, but probably wouldn't be very practical! Will go abck another time to get one :P

I've got two kinetic torches, so no need with the batteries, it's camera batteries and, more importantly, memory cards I'm thinking about. I take a chuff load of pictures at the best of times, so traveling for 10 months with no personal computer to load them onto poses the question of how to store them before clearing the cards. I'll buy another card or two, but then thinking either small pen drives or a compact external hard drive would do teh job, providing i dont lose it! I could upload them, but that could take ages, and on slow and/or public computers, there might not be time, and i dont want to lose picture quality. there's time to sort this though. Phone wise, I'll probably jsut get onto PAYG and top up as and when. I will probably only be using it to stay in touch with mates i'm out there with, and might be better just getting and Aussie SIM, then use Facebook/Skype to stay in touch with people back home. I also think I might end up posting a few things back to blighty that I dont want damaged or lost, or dont need anymore.

I'll be calling up the doc, dentist and optician this weekend to get all that stuff sorted, get shots and prescriptions and such, will see what the doc suggests I need and go from tehre. Mates just paid £100+ for rabies shot!

Fran-o, just to clarify, I am a boy! :P Sarong sounds like a good diea, though not sure I'll be getting one. You did make me laugh with the "you can hang it from the bunk ahead when you want to screen off your bed" remark - cheeky

The trip is pretty much a fixed route, though i might decide to spend a bit longer than the one week my mates want to spend in Fiji. Bolivia does sound a good idea, but don't fancy wandering around South America on my own yet. I want to do more of South America at some point, so will include in another trip though

Pilates, that's a very good point about Sydney Christmas/NYE accommodation, I mentioned it to my mats last night, but they rightly pointed out that we're not sure where we will be getting work in Oz yet, as if e stay somewhere to work, we are looking to rent an apartment rather than stay in hostels. If we worked in Sydney, then we'd be ok for a place to stay, if not, then would need to make arrangements for somewhere to stay. I'd be up for sorting something when we got to Oz in June, but that might not be possible, though if worst comes to worse, it wouldn't be the end of the world if we paid more for a hotel for a few days, would be a Christmas present to ourselves - what's the point in saving if you can't indulge a little form time to time?

Seems a little strange to ask but as anyone gone traveling who wears daily contact lenses? I wear monthlies, but as my sister quite sensibly pointed out, some of the places I will be visitng might not be the cleanest places in the world, and so keeping the lenses clean might be diffilcult, in which case dailies would be good as you jsut throw them away. but then again, carrying aroud 10 months worth of dailies might be a little cumbersome. Anyone care to weigh in to the dalies/monthlies debate? Obviously I'll be taking my specs too!

There was something else I was going to ask which I though you guys might be able to help me with... but I can't remember it now, grrr! I'll post it when I remember

Thanks again, keep talking! :P