Hints and Tips for travelling again

Simons cousin (Jade) asked us for some advise and this is what we wrote, it was good for us to collate the info together (For future travelling:-) )

This one is gonna be an epic mail guys, so brace yourself. This has mainly been compiled by Andrea so she should take all credit/gold stars for it...i just filled in the blanks one evening. The main thing to remember is that everything we say here are just tips and we are in no way telling you where to go and what to do as that's all the fun in the adventure. Without further ado, have a read and I hope that some of the tips might be handy for you....

Diary/Blog
Firstly for some bed time reading, please feel free to read our blog: http://gigpop.blogspot.com
Click on the months down the right hand side, to flick to differnet blog entries. We would highly recommend that you both write a blog. Its really an on line diary and will mean that friends and family can read it as you go along your travels and read about what you have done, without you needing to email everyone repeating your stories over and over again. More importantly though its something you will be able to read when you have grown old. We will at some stage have our blog printed out so its like a book. There are lots of different blog websites but we used: www.blogger.com which is a very simple blog but you can amend the design of the screens easily and also add things on the right hand side (have a look at our blog for what i mean) There are some other blogging websites that are more specific for travelling, so you can add an entry to each different place you travel. For example: http://www.travelblog.org/ . We decided against this as we wasnt going to necessarily write about every place we went to. They do however have a map on that you can track your journey on, which i think is very useful. I would check these all out before you go and see if you like them.

Email/Skype/Mobile
Asia and Australia have a lot of internet cafes so as long as you are in backpacking areas you should find one. America and Fiji were limited. The hotels in America normally have a computer though you can use in the Reception area. You may or may not have heard of skype, but its a great cheap way of ringing home. Before you go, get yourself a skype account and put say £10.00 credit on it. You will find that most internet cafes have skype on the computers and you can then ring your family on their landline through the computer and it will cost peanuts. Website is www.skype.com. If your family do have a computer then if they have skype running you can ring each other and it will cost nothing. The other options is phone cards. They are fairly cheap as well.
Mobile phone. If you have a mobile phone here thats unlocked so you can put a sim card from any network then this can prove really helpful. As soon as we got to Aussie we got an Aussie vodaphone sim card and then we could ring up trying to find somewhere to live in Australia without it costing a fortune. We also found it really handy in Asia. In Malaysia and Thailand we bought sim cards at the airport and we were then able to ring up hotels. In most of the countries i think the sim cards are free anyway.

Luggage
Its not easy to travel light, and we were rubbish at it, but it really does make sense to travel as light as you can. Particularly in Asia. In America its more difficult because you tend to dress up a little more, but in Asia its so hot and everyone is so studenty then you care less about the fact that are wearing the same outfit all the time (it does bug you though). We didnt have backpacks, and i would say it was only a couple of times where it would have made more sense to have backpacks (Only in Asia) and it was a little embarrasing that we didnt look like the other backpackers, but we purposely didnt want to do the backpacking lifestyle but be poshpackers.
Make sure though that you can each both carry your own suitcase up and downstairs. The case i started of with in America was far to heavy. (it had a heavy sticker on it hahah from the airplane) Ooo that reminds me.. Some of the airline companys are really anal about the weight of luggage. We got stung a couple of times, particularly in Asia wehre the limit is 15kg each, but the fine is so small anyway you accept it. We got really stung though going to Las Vegas.

Post Stuff !
Post offices - Buy stuff and then send it back by Sea. Its really cheap especially in Malaysia. It takes 3 months to get home but its great opening a box when you get home and seeing all your stuff.

Finding accommodation other than hotels..
In Australia and New Zealand it's a good idea to check out http://www.gumtree.com/ (Links on the right for the correct location). Stick to the flat/house shares as you can easily get a nice room with an en-suite for a very reasonable price. Having house mates can be a great source of company if you're doing each others heads in, conversely, it's also nice though to have a door to shut out your house mates too. It's a good site to remember anyway as they do a lot more than just flat shares.

Travel Insurance.
We ended up getting our travel insurance from Direct line as they were the cheapest by far. I think it cost us around £550 for the two of us for 1 years travel insurance that included USA. If you have no plans on going to the US you can get this cheaper still. I think it's down to their daft health care system.

Where to go
We bought an around the world ticket from trailfinders that was:
London - San Francisco - Hawaii - Fiji - Sydney - Cairns - Singapore
Hongkong - London
We had to make our own way to Hong Kong (more about this later)
We had to go to these places but we could change our dates as long as they were all within a year. We didnt actually take the flight between Sydney and Cairns, as we wanted to go to see some friends but as long as we told Quantas/British Airways that we werent catching it, then they are okay. Apparently if you miss your flight they cancel the rest of the journey. I think overall the flights were about £1200 each. Going around the November months i think is the cheapest.
In regard to Asia, we decided that as we were planning on spending 6 months in Australia we didnt want to plan the Asia part of our journey upfront as it was to much organising, so this is why we concentrated on good flights to America, hawaii etc and we would worry about the coming home at a later stage. Overall we are happy we did this because it allowed us to land in Singapore and say right where now?. And if we liked/disliked somewhere then we stayed there longer. We slowly made our way round Asia going to:
Singapore
Malaysia - Borneo
Kuala Lumpur
Langkawi
Vietnam - 14 days of travelling throughout
Thailand - Phuket
Phi-Phi
Ko Sumai
Ko Tao
Bangkok
China - Macau
Hong Kong

This took us just under 3 months to get round Asia. We had a sketchy map in our head as to where we wanted to go but we really did decide on the go, where we were going. Sometimes we was at airports landed somewhere trying to find somewhere to stay. The reason we flew between a lot of places was because the flights were so cheap. We would recommend www.airasia.com. However dont go on 123airlines as this is the one that crashed in Phuket. Actually after that crash apart from the obvious big airline companies the only budget asia company i would go with now is airasia. However in Malaysia we were there when there was really bad publicity about coach crashes and we didnt feel safe travelling on coaches. So in summary of what we did for each country.

Singapore
It can be expensive to fly out of Singapore but if you get a bus across the border into Malaysia to Johor Bahru You can fly from that airport really cheap. (Its not the simpliest of journeys to get there as you have to get on and of buses to get through customs...Lonely Planet is your friend here)

Malaysia
We flew around the different places using Kuala Lumpar as a base. (Note KL has 2 airports so dont get mixed up) The lonelyplanet book was really handy for Malaysia.
Borneo is where the orangutans are
I think Kuala Lumpur was cheaper then Bangkok for clothes and rip offs.
Specially Trainers.
Its a very muslim country so do expect to cover up a little more, you will see lots of the women with the black outfits on, even on the beach.
The places we went to in Malaysia are: KL, Langawi, Kota Kinabalu, and some other place on the east of borneo.

Vietnam
This was one of our favourite places in Asia.
As its not so tourist hit we would recommend that you do a tour here. We did a 14 day tour and it was great. We went down the country via coach and over night train, and dont get me wrong it can be minging at times, but its funny as well. If you get a good group of people like we did then you have a great 14 days. We went with www.intrepidtravel.com . In hindsight we would have liked to have done longer and gone on to Cambodia as well and which would of ended up in Bangkok and meant we didnt have to pay for the flight from Vietnam to Bangkok. I think this is the tour we did:
http://www.intrepidtravel.com/trips/VSR . I could talk for ever about this trip. So im going to stop.
Highly recommend buying the box sets of tv programmes from here.

Thailand
Thailand was a bit of a disappointment after going to Vietnam as they are more influenced towards tourists. Having said that once we got used to it again, we had a really good time here. This was the most backpackery place and the lonely planet guide came in really handy here. On some islands it is wise to book ahead for where you are staying as they can get booked up.
We got buses and boats to all of the planes, oh and an over night train back to bangkok. As mentioned this was prob the most difficult part of the journey with cases.
Full moon party was an experience, and worth trying to get to, this was at ko-phanghan (near ko sumai). Its a party on the beach all night, all the differnent bars have house music pumpin out of them. Its very amusing if you like that sort of thing. We were rubbish in that we stayed till 2 and then caught the speed boat back to ko sumai. I think i would have prefered to stay on the island and then be able to get drunk without worrying about a journey over water home. The big places to go and see Thailand beach wise is the James bond island (where they filmed man with the golden gun) close to phuket (a dump by the way). The other is Ko Phi Phi, which was devastated by the tsunami and also has trips from here to "the beach" where the film was made. quite stunning really.

Macau
It was okay. It was like a toned down unfinished Las Vegas. and a big hit to our pocket after it being so cheap everywhere else. We stayed in some nice hotels though.

Hong Kong
This was the last place on our journey and the plan was to shop. - which we did
Alcohol really expensive here.
No rip of dvds here. Actually not particularly great on rip offs at all.
Recommend going up to Victoria Peak for some stunning views of HK and good shops and places to eat. find out more here... http://www.thepeak.com.hk/full/en/index.php

Handy Extra Hints.
Doing Bangkok, Macau, and Hong Kong was the wrong thing to do at the end, It was to many similar cities at the end of the holiday that were a bit to expense and we just wanted to go home at that stage

Favourite places for us
Simon Vietnam, Australia and Tasmania
Andrea Vietnam and any beach

phew!

Like we said, have a look at our blog as well. If you have any questions, feel free to email us it's not a problem.

take care,
Simon & Andrea xx