..you're only lost if you know where you're going..
Preparation
Phoenix in Amsterdam!
0794 days
We haven’t planned much at all lately, except for buying tickets to see Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club in Amsterdam. Jess and I both really like Phoenix – we’ve been listening to them for years, and I’m a big fan of Two Door Cinema Club (Jess likes them, just doesn’t listen to as much music as me). It’s at a place called Paradiso – hopefully a cool venue to check out.
Booking was a bit tricky at first until I found out about Ticketmaster. They are located in a fair few countries and just send you an electronic PDF ticket that you print yourself. Too easy! It’s basically the only way that we could get a ticket since we are overseas – most vendors will only send tickets to the country that they are in.
It ended up costing us just under AUD$80 to book the tickets, which seems pretty reasonable. I doubt we could see them for $40 each in Australia. So stoked. Now we know where we’ll be on March 26th!
Travel accessories
0806 days
by Jase
in Preparation
I think we are pretty much sorted for gear to bring now. We didn’t go overboard, since we both want a light pack, but we got a few essentials that will hopefully make life easier along the way.
Travel Packing Modules
After the recommendations of a lot of people, I recently bought us some earplugs for use on the plane and possibly for sleeping while we are in the hostels. They don’t block out all of the noise, so we’ll still wake up if there’s an emergency, but they are meant to get rid of just enough to give us a better nights’ sleep. Maybe a waste of money, but it’s not much money and it might make life a lot easier for us too.
After packing my backpack for a test run a while back, I quickly realised the hassle of getting something out of the pack. I can see how frustrating it would be trying to open your bag up and quickly go through it at customs – socks and underwear and everything else falling out of the bag and getting disorganised. Then you’d be forcing the zip closed because it’s all come out of it’s nicely compacted shape. I had one packing module at home already, and was able to fit all of my socks in it. Even with just one, I already could see just how handy they would be. We now have a set each which are a Christmas present from Jess’ parents. We ordered them from gogogear.com.
We bought some combination cable locks which should be pretty handy too. The idea is that they can lock more than just one zip. No doubt they wouldn’t be THAT strong, but they should be enough of a deterrent to keep our gear safe when we’re not around.
We bought some Menda Ultimate quick dry towels from gogogear.com too. I looked at some of the local travel stores for quick dry towels there but they were ridiculously priced. We ended up with a “mega” size towel and a “sports” size. Basically a full body towel and a hand towel. We’ll share the two between us to keep the weight down once again. After giving them a wash I gave one a trial run. They are pretty amazing really. The towel barely felt like it had been used by the time I was done it was so absorbent, so I think we can both manage between the two towels, even if Jess does need the sports one just for her hair!
Finally, we bought some silk sleep sacks from rei-outlet.com. The silk ones are usually quite expensive – around the AUD$75 mark, but I managed to score some for AUD$35 each. It’s a bit of a pain from ordering from overseas sometimes but from time to time it can really be worth it. We bought some other clothes from REI and it ended up really worthwhile, even if the shipping was $100 or so!
Poland and other ideas
0806 days
We spoke to our friend Anton on the weekend. His girlfriend lives in Poland and the two of them spend a lot of time between there and Australia together. He wasn’t going to be there for long next visit, but now it’s stretched out. With any luck we will be spending some time with them somewhere near Warsaw towards the end of February.
We’re quickly realising that time is going to be a real issue. We want to see so much but at the same time want to be able to relax as well. We planned to do the majority of our travel in Europe via train, but it looks like we might catch some planes to save us some time now.
At the moment I’m thinking that from Athens we fly directly to Berlin (€60 each), to save us some time, then Berlin to Copenhagen via train, Copenhagen to Stockholm via train, then Stockholm to Krakow in Poland via plane (79SEK). From Krakow we can catch the train to Warsaw to meet our friends – Anton has done this before and can give us directions and everything.
Jess seems keen, it’s just tricky. We don’t want to book too much in, but the later we leave it the less cheap deals we will get. I think we’ll book the flights and leave the train tickets until later.
Backpacking Travel Insurance
0819 days
by Jase
in Preparation
I finally booked our travel insurance yesterday. I had a lot of suggestions from friends (it seems as though everyone has travelled recently), however most had only travelled for a month or so, as opposed to a year (or less or more).
We wanted to make sure that we were covered for everything that we would do. While no cover seemed to take care of you for getting blind drunk and hurting yourself, a few would cover us for bush walking, mountain biking and snowboarding – perfect. We’ll keep the drinking to a minimum then..
I quickly learned that travelling to North America is about the most expensive country in the world to get insurance for, presumably because of America’s ridiculous health care system. It looked as though we were looking at around $1100 each for the year.
In the end we went with WorldNomads. For Australians, they are now underwritten by Lloyds, and come recommended by Lonely Planet, and many smaller reviewers. They came in the cheapest by far – for 1 years’ cover (combined – for two people) it cost $1290.60. Their normal rate was $1434, but I found a 10% off coupon for Australian customers. When you buy your insurance enter “SAVE10″ in the Promotional Code field.
Some others to try are Travel Insurance Direct and 1cover. We didn’t have any luck with them though.
It’s really getting serious now. 10 weeks till we go!
Backpacking Clothes
0822 days
by Jase
in Preparation
Planning for this trip has been a bit of a pain. We’ll be relaxing in the warmth in Singapore and Langkawi, freezing in the snow, rain and general cold throughout Europe, trying to go to restaurants, pubs, and the occasional club throughout the whole trip, and bush walking and mountain biking along the way too.
Trying to keep under our 15kg limit, I think we just need to accept the fact that we will have to buy a few things along the way..
686 Smarty Marker Jacket
We will take two pairs of shoes each. One pair of waterproof boots which we can use in the snow, wet and cold, and one pair of comfortable, but dressy sneakers, which will hopefully be enough for the rest of the trip. Jess just picked up some Onitsuka Tiger’s for her comfy shoes, and I have some Macneil Rinddel’s I picked up cheap a few months ago. We got our shoes from Zappos.
Since we are heading to the snow, we needed to bring our snow gear. We have snowboarding pants, jackets, gloves and goggles already. Singe Jess is a lot smaller than me, her clothes roll up nicely. Mine however, are a bit too big. As a bit of a trade off, I have bought a new jacket – a 686 Smarty Marker. While the entire jacket is the same size as my old snow jacket, it’s fleece liner can be removed, and doubles as a fleece jacket. After removing the fleece liner, the shell can also be used as a rain jacket. The idea is that it will save me some space and weight, and I still get to bring all of my gear (I don’t really want to hire clothes along the way). Either way, it’s comfy and it looks rad.
We have also bought some more thermals, some moisture wicking shirts and things like that. The idea is that we should be able to layer these thinner clothes on top of each other to keep warm while we are walking around. Having four or so thinner layers not only allows us to have four different amounts of warmth, it also allows us to have four different “looks”, so we don’t always look the same for the whole trip!
Finally, after reading around, every backpacking site seems to recommend good socks. I don’t think I’ve ever bought socks for myself. Ever. So this was a new thing for me. We ended up scoring some cheap Smartwool socks from Sierra Trading Post. The idea is that they keep your feet cool when it’s hot, they keep your feet warm when it’s cold, they cushion your feet, and also don’t smell. I’m a skeptic but bought Jess and I five or so pairs each. After wearing them for a week, I’m never wearing cheap socks again! I just feel so comfortable in them.
Basically all of our clothes I have purchased off of the internet. Many of the brands have agreements with the Australian distributors which don’t allow their US retailers to sell to Australians. This would usually stop most people, but when you can buy a pair of Tigers for $55 instead of $190, or a snow jacket for $160 rather than $650, I think it’s worth some mucking around. I signed up with Bongo. Bongo is a freight forwarding agent that supplies you with a US postal address, then consolidates your items and then sends them to you. Their shipping isn’t dirt cheap but it is still reasonable (I sent two pairs of shoes, a snow jacket, about 8 t-shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 10 pairs of socks for $150-ish). To make sure I was getting a great deal, I just used retailers that would ship for free within the US, and then pay for the Bongo shipping on top to Australia. For this trip alone I think buying from the internet I’ve saved at least AUD$1000, probably more. Good times!
Recent Comments