How much to budget for a 'round the world' trip in 2023/4?

CKhalvashi

TheLondoner said:

tightauldgit said:

annabanana82 said:

My Brother managed to fly into Thailand recently with a one way ticket without any issues. He's also secured a longer tern visa whilst out there, I think he has 12 months. 

He's currently renting a condo for £300 a month, I assume that's including bills but not certain 

Do you know what his plan was if the airline had asked him for proof of onward travel? 

I know it has sometimes been possible to talk your way out of it by explaining for example that you plan to apply for a longer term visa in country or that you plan to exit overland etc but not sure if airlines still go for that. 

when i flew from india to thailand in jan this year i wasn't asked for any proof of onward travel for entry into thailand. It has me wondering whether all the things you hear about from people about needed proof of onward travel is actually valid. Before my trip I assumed I would be asked for proof but I'm surprised I wasn't! And it's immigration's duty to check that stuff i'd have though - why would airlines give a damn? Surely it's not their responsibility to check if you have an onward flight booked out of a country? Either way if they do have a responsibility, which I don't think they do, they never checked for me! My uk to india was with oman air, india to thailand with air asia and then thailand to uk was with singapore airlines, so 3 separate tickets and no one checked or asked about any of my flights/plans.

Airlines are fined heavily for inadmissible passengers in some circumstances (incorrect documentation is one of them) and have the responsibility to get anyone inadmissible back to their point of departure, or a point of departure that they have the right to enter.

There are some countries where requirements are strictly and consistently enforced at the border. I've entered countries where the policy is strictly return flight and either proof of insurance or enough cash to buy insurance (in Euro only) until the departure flight at the border. On one occasion the check in agent was unsure if the insurance policy was ok so actually asked if we have about €30 between us just in case.

Never underestimate how difficult a border guard can be under specific circumstances or if they just decide they don't like you. I've never encountered someone unprofessional in this position but have generally faced differing levels of questioning (from nothing right through to explaining past trips to specific places), normally based on local circumstances and depending on how much flexibility the guards at that station may have, which varies widely from country to country.

tightauldgit

TheLondoner said:

tightauldgit said:

annabanana82 said:

My Brother managed to fly into Thailand recently with a one way ticket without any issues. He's also secured a longer tern visa whilst out there, I think he has 12 months. 

He's currently renting a condo for £300 a month, I assume that's including bills but not certain 

Do you know what his plan was if the airline had asked him for proof of onward travel? 

I know it has sometimes been possible to talk your way out of it by explaining for example that you plan to apply for a longer term visa in country or that you plan to exit overland etc but not sure if airlines still go for that. 

when i flew from india to thailand in jan this year i wasn't asked for any proof of onward travel for entry into thailand. It has me wondering whether all the things you hear about from people about needed proof of onward travel is actually valid. Before my trip I assumed I would be asked for proof but I'm surprised I wasn't! And it's immigration's duty to check that stuff i'd have though - why would airlines give a damn? Surely it's not their responsibility to check if you have an onward flight booked out of a country? Either way if they do have a responsibility, which I don't think they do, they never checked for me! My uk to india was with oman air, india to thailand with air asia and then thailand to uk was with singapore airlines, so 3 separate tickets and no one checked or asked about any of my flights/plans.

Airlines should check that you are eligible to enter the country you are going to - valid passport, valid visa if needed, onward travel if required, etc - because if you get denied entry they are responsible for repatriating you. It's not a legal requirement but its standard practice.

It doesn't mean they always do, and I'm not sure but they may have access to information on your onward flights anyway. 

Equally not every immigration officer checks either. 

The problems arise when someone does check and you have assumed that noone will and not complied with the requirement.  

tightauldgit

CKhalvashi said:

tightauldgit said:

TheLondoner said:

Quick follow up question everyone. How feasible is it to 'wing it' with flights? I don't want to book all my flights before I leave. I would prefer to book one way tickets as I go along. Will this cause issues with immigration in certain countries? Can I get visa on arrival for most places, or would I have to do something as laborious as interview at a country's mission in london for a visa prior to departure?

Quite often the issue with one-way tickets is that the airline won't let you board rather than immigration on arrival. You're the airline's responsibility if you get rejected so they do tend to check in my experience. What you can do is book a cheap ticket out or yes there are services you can use to effectively pretend to have an onward ticket. The way I tended to do it was just to book one ticket ahead so when I was flying into Country X I'd book my onward ticket to Country Y.

The majority of countries will have visa waivers so you should be able to enter for a month typically without needing to worry about it. You should always check entry requirements though as they can change. In SEA I think you are pretty much OK - Laos needs a visa but you can get it online/on arrival. Possibly Myanmar might be trickier but I've never been there.  

Thailand apparently can also be a difficult one. You ideally want to be at least 3/4 flights ahead of yourself though.

The only airline (not country) I've always consistently had documents (onward flight/insurance/funds) checked with has been Belavia (who no longer operate to the UK/EU) at LGW, VNO, TBS and TIA (the last on a charter, so it was obvious I'd already entered/left once). LOT Polish/Austrian weirdly enough never asked when travelling to the same country via WAW/VIE.

Visa free agreements normally have conditions of being able to show proof of onward travel and other documents on request, but I tend to find that the 'first time' to a country/region on a passport raises more questions than subsequent visits. The only country that I've really had a lot of questions on a subsequent visit has been Moldova, completely correctly as there are increased threats to that country, we wanted to enter for about 8 hours for transit purposes/change of bus and we'd flown into a Romanian airport on the day of entry (mainly as it was sub-£25pp return instead of £100pp flying directly to Chisinau). Once the immigration officer had established OH's nationality (which was very relevant to the situation) and that we'd travelled together, all was good in the world.

Slight derail ... but did you fly into Iasi and then bus it to Chisinau? How easy/difficult is it to do that? Just looking into ways to tick Moldova off the list and that looks like the cheapest route. 

CKhalvashi

tightauldgit said:

CKhalvashi said:

tightauldgit said:

TheLondoner said:

Quick follow up question everyone. How feasible is it to 'wing it' with flights? I don't want to book all my flights before I leave. I would prefer to book one way tickets as I go along. Will this cause issues with immigration in certain countries? Can I get visa on arrival for most places, or would I have to do something as laborious as interview at a country's mission in london for a visa prior to departure?

Quite often the issue with one-way tickets is that the airline won't let you board rather than immigration on arrival. You're the airline's responsibility if you get rejected so they do tend to check in my experience. What you can do is book a cheap ticket out or yes there are services you can use to effectively pretend to have an onward ticket. The way I tended to do it was just to book one ticket ahead so when I was flying into Country X I'd book my onward ticket to Country Y.

The majority of countries will have visa waivers so you should be able to enter for a month typically without needing to worry about it. You should always check entry requirements though as they can change. In SEA I think you are pretty much OK - Laos needs a visa but you can get it online/on arrival. Possibly Myanmar might be trickier but I've never been there.  

Thailand apparently can also be a difficult one. You ideally want to be at least 3/4 flights ahead of yourself though.

The only airline (not country) I've always consistently had documents (onward flight/insurance/funds) checked with has been Belavia (who no longer operate to the UK/EU) at LGW, VNO, TBS and TIA (the last on a charter, so it was obvious I'd already entered/left once). LOT Polish/Austrian weirdly enough never asked when travelling to the same country via WAW/VIE.

Visa free agreements normally have conditions of being able to show proof of onward travel and other documents on request, but I tend to find that the 'first time' to a country/region on a passport raises more questions than subsequent visits. The only country that I've really had a lot of questions on a subsequent visit has been Moldova, completely correctly as there are increased threats to that country, we wanted to enter for about 8 hours for transit purposes/change of bus and we'd flown into a Romanian airport on the day of entry (mainly as it was sub-£25pp return instead of £100pp flying directly to Chisinau). Once the immigration officer had established OH's nationality (which was very relevant to the situation) and that we'd travelled together, all was good in the world.

Slight derail ... but did you fly into Iasi and then bus it to Chisinau? How easy/difficult is it to do that? Just looking into ways to tick Moldova off the list and that looks like the cheapest route. 

I'll PM you

TheLondoner

So my round the world thing didn't happen this year. Work and life got in the way...unfortunately! I did have another mini 5 week trip, to India and Nepal though. I did the touristy EBC trek and some outdoor sports in india too. Plan now is to take a sabbatical next august. Benefits of sabbatical being I can return to a job after a year out. Unfortunately i'm not eligible for it till august at the earliest! On the plus side it allows me to save another 20-30k into the travel kitty!

Has anyone here been on a big 6month+ trip recently? If so, how is it out there? My mini 5 week trip has given me the travel bug and i'm keen to get back travelling but the lack of holiday situation is an annoying barrier!

hugheskevi

TheLondoner said:

Has anyone here been on a big 6month+ trip recently? If so, how is it out there? My mini 5 week trip has given me the travel bug and i'm keen to get back travelling but the lack of holiday situation is an annoying barrier!

I'm currently up to 14.5 months of travel through the Americas, just hit Ushuaia to complete a drive/bus trip down from Alaska

Things are much better now - COVID is a dim and distant memory now, no vaccination proof required, no masks, etc. The pound's exchange rate has stabilised from the wild days of Truss being PM and Kwarteng being Chancellor. Everything is refreshingly normal.

In South America, countries are wildly differing in prices. Argentina and Colombia are very cheap and excellent to visit, whereas Chile is very expensive (Argentina does a good range of day trips into Chile to see the main sites due to this). Internal and short flights around the region are extremely cheap - flights within Argentina are consistently about £35 including checked baggage, although that does require quite a bit of flexibility with schedule as the lowest prices are usually only on one or two days of the week. Internal flights in Peru and Brazil were reasonably priced.

Tourism in South America is returning to pre-COVID levels, but in many areas operators are saying it has not yet recovered fully, so it has been a very good time to be traveling through the region. Many countries in South America were slower to fully emerge from COVID closedowns than elsewhere, even where that was simply reopening businesses - even now, several small museums in Argentina have yet to reopen, and 2023/24 is likely to be the first 'proper' year of tourism in many areas. Getting around is super-easy, with no charges at borders, no visas required, no need for things like evidence of onward travel or proof of funds - the most arduous requirement is sometimes to fill in an online form in advance. Central American countries had more rigorous entry requirements, even though they were not enforced.

The El Nino phenomenon is upon the region though, disrupting things in general. You don't notice it much in everyday life, except wildlife can be significantly impacted, eg, we only saw a single penguin in the Galapagos and at Paracas, off the Peruvian coast.

Flights to/from Europe are still expensive - for a one-way flight from South America to England the cheapest I could get are slightly under £500 per person, including checked baggage. If you are flexible enough though, repositioning cruises can be very cheap to get to/from South America but they are at very specific times of the year, and mostly the MSC line.

Security has only been an issue in northern Colombia, everywhere else has been fine. Almost always tourists are treated fairly, but there were a few notable rip-offs I came across below. Oddly, not a single taxi has tried to overcharge me during the entire trip.

• In Peru, if you try to book flights using the Spanish language website of a large domestic air company it will not accept British credit/debit cards. If you book using the English language version, it accepts foreign cards but the price is double. I had to use a local travel agent to book the flight for me which was infuriating, especially when they messed up the booking and I had a third-party agent playing middleman with the carrier.
• In Argentina, in Patagonia, there are a few operators who try to exploit the official and blue exchange rates. One very popular hostel priced everything in USD and if paying in Argentian pesos converted at blue rate (this is extremely uncommon - conversion is always at official rate if price is quoted in USD). Just a dorm bed was almost twice the price of a 6-bedroom apartment in town, yet they had excellent reviews, so I guess a lot of people had no idea just how much they had been ripped off.
• A company operating penguin trips in Argentina required US$300 to book in advance if not in the town, or $90 if you just walked into their shop. They have a monopoly on the trip, but it was annoying that they were deliberately vague about use of blue/official rate, and the tours were booked several days in advance, so clearly they make a lot from people paying a lot more to book in advance.

TheLondoner

hugheskevi said:

I'm currently up to 14.5 months of travel through the Americas, just hit Ushuaia to complete a drive/bus trip down from Alaska

Things are much better now - COVID is a dim and distant memory now, no vaccination proof required, no masks, etc. The pound's exchange rate has stabilised from the wild days of Truss being PM and Kwarteng being Chancellor. Everything is refreshingly normal.
...

Great informative post, thank you! It's my dream to travel south america. Hope to do it next summer! - how's your spanish btw? Any issues with the language barrier? Do they speak a bit of english in most places you went to? I know a tiny bit of spanish but I learnt french in school so my spanish is crap compared to my french!

hugheskevi

TheLondoner said:

Great informative post, thank you! It's my dream to travel south america. Hope to do it next summer! - how's your spanish btw? Any issues with the language barrier? Do they speak a bit of english in most places you went to? I know a tiny bit of spanish but I learnt french in school so my spanish is crap compared to my french!

I learnt enough Spanish to have necessary conversations - buying food, bus tickets, giving directions to taxi drivers, numbers and the like. After that, I lost motivation to learn more - I would have done so had I been traveling alone.

Duo Lingo did a reasonable job of the basics, and there are language schools along the way - Antigua in Guatemala is a good and inexpensive place to go to language school, although I would suggest learning some Spanish in advance of doing that in order to get the most out of it. There are many different dialects, and Argentian Spanish in particular is very different to that spoken elsewhere. I would suggest learning numbers up to very high levels - it will not be uncommon in countries such as Argentina and Chile to get restaurant bills for around 20,000 pesos (£20, ish) so you need to know hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands (it isn't complicated).

English is only really spoken within the tourist industry - many tours operate with a guide speaking in both English and Spanish, which is usually very annoying as it guarantees you spend half your time doing nothing (although it is good for listening, especially if the guide has given the English version first). Google Translate is extremely good - especially the camera and spoken options. 

In terms of countries to visit in South America, I suggest you pick and choose which you want to go to and fly between them. I would very much recommend Argentina and particularly Patagonia and the southern ice fields. Peru has amazing tourist destinations, but is quite frustrating with low quality tours being commonplace. Chile is very expensive and best avoided - the main sights can be seen on day trips from Argentina. Ecuador is pleasant, but aside from the Galapagos lacks any great sights. Colombia is very good to visit. So Colombia, Peru and Argentina would be excellent places to visit.

I would also suggest Central America, and particularly the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala - it really is an amazing area.

There are more details in this thread if you are interested.

tightauldgit

TheLondoner said:

hugheskevi said:

I'm currently up to 14.5 months of travel through the Americas, just hit Ushuaia to complete a drive/bus trip down from Alaska

Things are much better now - COVID is a dim and distant memory now, no vaccination proof required, no masks, etc. The pound's exchange rate has stabilised from the wild days of Truss being PM and Kwarteng being Chancellor. Everything is refreshingly normal.
...

Great informative post, thank you! It's my dream to travel south america. Hope to do it next summer! - how's your spanish btw? Any issues with the language barrier? Do they speak a bit of english in most places you went to? I know a tiny bit of spanish but I learnt french in school so my spanish is crap compared to my french!

Spent a month doing Colombia last year and it was awesome and highly recommended - spent time in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Santa Marta. Almost nobody spoke any English in any of the places I went to or stayed in (budget hotels) so it really would be good to get onto Duolingo and start practicing now to at least have the basics (which is basically what I did). 

Still flummoxed me on Day One though when I went for breakfast in the hotel and the woman asked me what I wanted! 

Obviously you can survive without Spanish if you have Google but I would say the more you can learn before you go the better it's going to be. 

I'm in SE Asia until at least the end of January and then I am thinking about hitting Latin America again and tick off some of the places I haven't seen yet. 

TheLondoner

hugheskevi said:

In terms of countries to visit in South America, I suggest you pick and choose which you want to go to and fly between them. I would very much recommend Argentina and particularly Patagonia and the southern ice fields. Peru has amazing tourist destinations, but is quite frustrating with low quality tours being commonplace. Chile is very expensive and best avoided - the main sights can be seen on day trips from Argentina. Ecuador is pleasant, but aside from the Galapagos lacks any great sights. Colombia is very good to visit. So Colombia, Peru and Argentina would be excellent places to visit.

I would also suggest Central America, and particularly the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala - it really is an amazing area.

There are more details in this thread if you are interested.

I've heard the bolivian salt flats are worth a visit. Check them out if you have time . 

Also re: patagonia, is there any good bouldering there? I'm a rock climber and if it's easy to find climbing buddies (either sport or bouldering) I'd be well up for that! Good shout re: learning spanish. I did a year or spanish at university but I sucked at it so bad - keen to improve so i'll check out duo lingo and dig out my old uni book too.