Playa del Carmen – Mexico

 

How to plan for a trip
Being prepared is the most important part of planning for a trip.
The best time to start planning for a trip is at the end of your last one. If you have not been on a trip for a while, start watching some holiday shows, watch some movies and take note of the places they shoot the scenes that interest you or think of the what you would like to do on your next adventure, for instance if you like snowboarding Google “great snowboarding destinations” or if you like beaches Google “best beaches in the world”. Possibly ask some friends/family where they had their last best trip and take it from there.

Google when is the best time/month of the year to visit where you want to go along with the weather conditions. You don’t want to arrive at your location wearing beachwear when it is -5 degrees Celsius outside. Contemplate what type of trip you would like to have ie backpacking, budget, luxury, camping, driving, organised tour, a combination of these or any other scenarios you can come up with.

Consider a total monitory figure you would be happy with spending on your trip. You may have to revisit this step if you want go 5 star hotels the whole 3 week trip but only have A$500 to spend in total. Start saving money for your trip as early as possible. Put the money in a high interest rate savings account and set up a direct debit each payday and/or put money into this account whenever you can and watch the compound interest work for you.

Start examining flights online and seeing if where you want to go works with flights. Sometimes this doesn’t work so being adaptable is key to planning.

Research accommodation available in the areas that you want to visit, maybe there might not be no camping allowed where you want to stay so you might have to drive a little down the coast instead.

Maintain a spreadsheet, like this one, with all possible payments to be made, to keep your budget under control.
Start booking flights, accommodation, tours, rental car, coaches, trains, taxis and anything else you have to pre-book.
Organise visas, vaccinations (if relevant), tell trusted people where/when you are travelling, see if they can look after your house/pets/car whilst on your trip, register your trip details with your government ie smartraveller.gov.au, check that you can access your money.

Arrive at the airport/coach terminal etc with plenty of time to spare. You don’t want to begin your trip all flustered and running late. You’re on this trip to have fun and adventure.
Have a great time on the trip that you have been wanting to go on for some time.

How to be comfortable on a plane
After I find out which aircraft the flight I will be on is, I go to seatguru.com and see what seats are the best and give this information to the booking agent and hopefully you get to sit where you want to. If someone has already taken the seat I would then always go for a window seat forward or after the wings. Forward of the wings gives you quicker access on and off the plane and no view interruption when looking down. Looking just at the horizon gets pretty boring after a while. After the wings gives you an ok view when looking down but don’t get a seat close to the galley or toilets as a lot of people could potentially interrupt you if you want to sleep or just be alone.

Try to wear loose comfy clothing when on the flight along with shoes that you can easily slip on and off.

Take a jumper with you as it does get cold in the cabin cruising at 12,000 metres above sea level even though the cabin is pressurised.

Take some noise cancelling headphones with a connection that can fit into the on-board entertainment system. If the flight does not have an on-board entertainment system, take a tablet or iPad with all your pre-loaded movies, tv shows and songs on it. The quality of your headphones will more than likely be better than the airlines freebies. You can take a travel pillow with you but I don’t personally use one as I can sleep anywhere these days after all the travelling I have done. I find I don’t tend to read on flights either as I usually just watch tv shows, watch movies or listen to music, chat with the people next to me, eat and/or sleep and that usually takes up the whole travel time. Books are also bulky and heavy and I like to keep the weight down for my luggage.

Only take a small bag with you as carry-on luggage with minimal items inside. Get your personal entertainment system out of the bag before you stow it along with a pen for filling out the departure/entry forms and your passport. Keep these with you. Fill out the departure/entry forms as soon as possible so that you have more time to do whatever you want and know that you don’t have to rush at the last minute when you’re tired. Once I’m in my seat I don’t like to keep getting up to get things in/out of my bag as it gets annoying for other passengers if you are constantly asking them to move for you. On that point, don’t eat or drink too much.

When sleeping on a flight, I tend to keep my noise cancelling headphones in my ears so that the sound of the plane’s engines is suppressed and helps me sleep better. I like to sit in a window seat so that I can lean against the window and not against my neighbours shoulder. Avoid sleeping pills as they might make you too drowsy and you may have to be alert before the effects wear off.

Do some leg stretches/exercises in your seat a couple of times on the flight so that your legs don’t go to sleep or go for a walk around the plane so you can avoid the effects of deep vein thrombosis on long haul flights. Relax and sleep as much as possible on the flight. Once you have landed, stay up as late as possible in the new time zone that you find yourself in so that you can get your rhythm back.

Enjoy the experience as much as possible as your trip is well and truly underway and your adventure awaits.

Taking Photos
When taking photos use the exposure triangle method ie aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings. I tend to leave mine on f/11, 1/100, 200 ISO as I find this to be good for most landscape photos during the daylight. I use the rule of thirds along with framing ie using buildings or trees or whatever I can. I tend to also use a focal point in the foreground or background to draw the eye in if possible. Sometimes I will change the perspective of the photo to lower or higher than eye level but this can be problematic if there is nothing to climb up or if there are too many people around and I don’t usually hang around a long time to snap a photo. I do a little post-processing meaning I change the light settings and/or add a filter and I change the saturation. I certainly don’t have much experience in taking good quality photos but hope my images inspire you to get out there and experience our amazing planet.

How much money should I carry on me whilst overseas and how to access it
This is very dependent on what style of travel you’re doing and which countries you are visiting but for me I budget A$50 per day for less developed countries and A$100 for developed countries, that is not including flights, transport to/from the location or accommodation, just meals, souvenirs, entry fees to museums etc and local transport ie bus/taxi/rickshaw. I find that that amount is more than enough to get me through each day. The A$50 or A$100 per day is based on one person. I call this spending money.

When I arrive at my destination, I use the above mentioned figures to determine how much money I should withdraw from the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). If you are an ING Direct or CitiBank customer you get fee free transactions around the world, so if I know that there will be a lot of atm’s in the region that I am going to I will only withdraw a few worth of local currency out at a time as I like to carry as little amount of cash as I can. If there may not be many atm’s, then I would withdraw the spending money for the entire time I am there and put it in different places throughout my luggage and secure the excess amount in the room or hotel safe as soon as possible. When away from the accommodation sightseeing etc I only carry enough cash to get me by for one or two days at most, along with carrying atm cards. I do not carry a money belt on me ever. You don’t want to draw people’s attention to the fact that all your money if right there. I keep the money belt in the room or hotel safe with a backup credit card in it, some cash and along with my passport or disperse them throughout my luggage. So far I have never lost or had credit cards, money or passport stolen, so must be doing something right. I pay for most large items with my credit cards such as flights, tours, car rental, train tickets, accommodation and duty free shopping and use cash for everything else. I split all my trip money up between my ING Direct and CitiBank accounts so if I lose or one of the cards gets stolen or for some reason the card doesn’t work (yes this does happen), I can use the other card. If renting a vehicle or staying in a hotel they like to have a credit card as a security bond and usually hold a smallish amount (maybe around A$200-A$500) just in case anything goes wrong. Sometimes these places take a long time to “unhold” the security bond and if you’re counting on using that money in the short to medium term, I would advise to use a card that doesn’t get used that much.

Last but not least, have an enjoyable trip and don’t splash your cash around. You want to have money available for the remainder of your trip.