Best Backpack Travel Guide - Part 2 |
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To be a really advance backpacker, other than really hard work and smart in your research works, itinerary planning and budget allocation planning, you also need to fully work out the details of preparation for when your travels begins which cover clothing, foods, accommodation, and transportation. You can choice to spend a lot of money to enjoy really luxury vacation experience or you can save up a lot to cover couple of extra places in your trip. A. Clothing and Gears It is very important as the climate around the world is different and the southern and northern globe is having opposite season, example winter in northern globe, it is summer in southern globe. Traveling to four seasons country in spring is the best time. You also need to considering the raining seasons at each of your destination, travel in a rain is not fun at all! During winter, some places like mountain area will closed during winter season, some island will also closed for visitors as no transportation there. So once you have decided which season to go, you will no need to pack so just enough clothing as not to burden onto your backpack. A pair of really comfortable and durable walking shoes is needed, as you will rely on it through out your trip. So spend some good money onto your shoes. Minimum you should have 2 pairs of shoes, one is hiking boots, the other one is sandal, the best is both also water and slippery prove. Then 2nd important gear is your backpack, do not try to save the dollars in getting a cheap backpack, as normally cheap backpack is not good for your spine and more heavy than the good one. For the clothing, try to get t-shirts with easy dried and wrinkle free, same like pants, as this will save you a lot of time in washing, changing and keeping them. Lastly, remember bring a long a small first aid kit with necessary medicines, also vitamin C tablets. B. Accommodation The most common accommodation places for backpackers are guesthouse, hostel, and home stay. Check the most updated hostel pricing and available information online prior your trip, most of the time if you book advance will have better promoting price. This is also good for helping you to plan your accommodation budget from country to country. Also check as if they have any free airport pickup shuttle services or not, any free breakfast, any kitchen, etc for comparison. Once you found out the hostel you like, make sure book direct through their website for better pricing, once confirm the booking, remember always print out the confirmation email to prove, as sometimes they might deny the promoting. A tip to share here is if you are not traveling in peak or festive season, try to just book 1 night on the hostel will do, as sometimes their photos is not what as it shows in their website, or the services is not up to expectation, or not safe in some sense. Then do some local search on better pricing, services, etc hostels around the area, so you can immediate change it the day after. C. Transportation Air ticket usually it will be our main expenses for travel. Here are some advices for you: 1. You have to compare air fares with at least 3 different airlines from internet offer price as well as from travel agents as sometimes they might get promotion fares. Recent years many budget airlines like Tiger Air, Jet Star, AirAsia, Ryon Air, Easzjet, and many more. 2. Before buying your ticket, you should check out the map to see if there any neighboring countries that is worth to visit. As many interesting countries are connected on land, example traveling in Egypt, you too can go visit Jordan, Turkey, Greek, Spain, Portugal. 3. Avoid turning back route. Make sure you check with your airline ticket agent whether can this ticket in and out different destinations? Especially travel in Europe. 4. Other than in and out between countries, in and out different places in a country is also supported. E.g.1: you can fly in to Osaka, and fly out from Tokyo, as bus from Osaka to Tokyo only takes 10-12 hours, you can sleep on the bus at night. E.g.2: Fly AirAsia to Ho Chi Minh city, take car or bus to Phnom Penh, then take bus to Siem Reap, and fly out from Siem Reap. E.g.3: Fly in to Gold Coast, take internal flight or bus to Sydney, then Melbourne, and fly out from Melbourne. D. Foods Sometimes when we visiting high living cost cities, the foods expenses is very high, hence you have to check out the hostel which provide kitchen where you can prepare your own foods, as buying raw materials is quite cheap like in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe countries, and others. Buying in hyper market is the idea place for cut price goods and foods. Example like in Japan, after 8pm, a lot of foods in department stores, hyper markets will slash the price as far as 70% off. Local foods is must try and usually is very reasonable price, especially the road site stalls, you might find it so special and delicious that you ever realize able it. E. Others Entrance Fees: It is also could be one of the big expenses in our trip because usually the theme park prices, tourist spots tickets are kind of expensive. So advice to you is to list out places with different priority and wells, which is must go, good to go, not to go, etc. Safety Precaution: Travel alone or in couple out in different cultures and places, you need to aware and take precaution local people talk to you in tourist areas, especially in traveling in China. Passport need to have 1-2 copies, backpacks or luggage must not out of sight, be cautious everything happen in surrounding, extra safety precaution.
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