on the way to somewhere
..you're only lost if you know where you're going..
Poland and other ideas
Nov 26th
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
Nov 13th
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
Nov 9th
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!
Langkawi Honeymoon
Nov 6th
Well our week of relaxing is booked. Almost a week anyway – 5 nights. As I’ve mentioned in my flights post, we have a ten day layover in Singapore. At the time of booking the flights we had no idea where we were honeymooning yet, so we just booked for a decent layover to give us some time to rest and relax before the big trip really began.
When looking for accommodation, our prerequisites were:
- Clear, warm water to swim in
- Private villa with nice surrounds
- Reasonably priced food
- Near Kuala Lumpur or Singapore (for convenience)
- Semi affordable
We had no idea how much it was going to cost us, but it was what we wanted. We rarely blow cash on what we want so while we wanted to keep it reasonable, we were happy to spend what we had to get something nice. After all, you only have one honeymoon, right?
After spending literally months trawling through Tripadvisor pages, and searching the net for information on weather and other information, I decided that Langkawi was the place for us to go. The east coast of Malaysia can experience some pretty rough weather through January, so that limited our options a bit.
From there we had plenty of options, but all of them seemed to have a trade off here or there. The service got bad reviews. The rooms weren’t up to standard. The beach wasn’t any good. There was always one thing wrong with it, while everything else about the accomodation was great. I was about to settle for one place that seemed like “the best of the average”..
Tanjung Sanctuary
Then I luckily stumbled across some information about a place called Tanjung Sanctuary. It had bad reviews from the past – the quality of the rooms were average and the service was below par. It has however, recently been refurbished, and from the reviews I have read and the photos I have seen it looks as though it’s done the trick.
I’ve since booked us a “Hilltop Villa”, the least expensive of the three. I wanted to give Jess the best we could get but she reminded me that money saved would help us out later and she’s right. Not to mention there is no difference between all three of the villas, and the beachside villas don’t actually have direct access to the beach. We don’t want to spend the whole time in the villa anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where it is. The Hilltop Villa’s are MYR1200 a night, including breakfast and airport transfers, which works out to roughly AUD$400 with the current exchange rate. So for 5 nights it will be around the $2000 mark. Could be worse..
Tanjung Sanctuary
On 62 acres, with a private beach and only 32 villas to share that all with, I think we should be able to “get away from it all” there. I’m as confident as I’ll ever be that this resort will tick all of our boxes, but only time will tell. Can’t wait!
Tanjung Sanctuary
Booking some cheap flights
Nov 4th
We booked our flights a little while back. Being the “safe” people that we are, we decided to book early, rather than wait for a killer deal. Because of the uncertainty of the trip, we ended up just booking one way tickets – From Adelaide to Athens via Singapore, flying Singapore Airlines.
It ended up costing us AUD$1050 each. Considering they are one way flights, we were pretty happy for the price. We have a ten day stopover in Singapore.
We booked the flights through Jetabroad. I’ve found them to be the cheapest website for an Australian person to book international flights through, however other people rave about Best Flights too. I think the best idea is to find a few “cheap flights” websites, and just go from there. Search them all regularly until you find what you need, then book. Watch out for hidden fees though, as they can bump up the cost of your once cheap flight.
Since we are getting married in early January, a few weeks before leaving on this trip, we will be taking a week for ourselves before actually backpacking. After flying into Singapore, we will stay two nights, then fly out to Langkawi, in Malaysia for 5 nights, then fly back to Singapore before heading off to Athens.
To get to Langkawi we are flying with Air Asia. Return it is costing us SGD$166.80, which at the time was around AUD$135. Booking directly with Air Asia was the go – it was considerably cheaper booking through them rather than any of the “cheap flights” websites. I’ve heard mixed reviews about Air Asia, but the next cheapest option was Malaysian Airlines for around $440 EACH! We’re going to spend up big on the accommodation for the “honeymoon” part of the trip, so we both decided the cheaper flights were the go. They are only 40 minutes or so anyway, and our connecting flights are days apart, so they shouldn’t be able to screw us over that badly.
So that’s where the flights are at. Once we are in Europe and we know when we want to fly to Canada we’ll start looking for cheap flights to Toronto. I’ve heard that it’s a lot cheaper to fly to somewhere in the US, although I don’t really want to go there. That said, if it’s going to save us a wad of cash I’ll go..
