A Look at Expenses from our Around the World Honeymoon.

You can't put a price tag on this much fun.

Thinking of planning a trip around the world? It's really not that expensive and honestly worth however much money you spend. You can't put a price tag on the fun you'll have and the lifelong memories you'll make.

Now that we’ve been back for about a month, I’ve had some time to analyze expenses incurred during our 268 day honeymoon and come up with hopefully helpful information to others embarking on long-term travel. For those of you not following our travels, we were married in Fiji last August and immediately departed on a trip encompassing 20 countries and 100,000+ kilometers, finishing up at the end of April in Australia. This was our dream honeymoon and therefore we had a much larger budget than we normally would have given ourselves on this type of trip.

We’re now living on the Gold Coast and trying to fit back into a normal everyday routine, all the while greatly missing our travels. Each day we find ourselves looking at photos from our adventures and dreaming of our next big trip, whenever/wherever that may be.

Below you’ll find a small list of basic expenses in US dollars and averages per day when appropriate. These figures are based on two of and include a brief explanation.

Lodging Cost: $10,170.44
Average Per Day: $37.95
We booked and paid for our own lodging except when on an organized tour. When we booked our own lodging we stayed in at least three star properties except the infrequent night of camping. Lodging prices fluctuated based on the country we were located on with the most expensive being the Maldives and the cheapest being Cambodia. This cost doesn’t take into account fifteen nights we used on hotel points or the seven nights on a cruise. While on our road trip through Australia we only booked timeshare bonus weeks giving us super cheap and semi-decent accommodation. We could have easily reduced this number down by any number of ways including hostels, couch surfing, camping and not staying in pool villas, but it was our honeymoon.

Food Cost: $9540.43
Average Per Day: $35.60
Our second biggest expense was no surprise. We love to eat and thoroughly enjoyed trying the local cuisine in every country we visited. Some may be shocked this number is so high, especially considering we were travelling through relatively cheap countries, but like I said before, we love to eat. The high cost is mostly due to us not cooking for six straight months. We mainly ate two meals a day, with large breakfasts holding us over until dinner. Once we started our two month road trip we cooked most meals which greatly reduced our meal costs. It was money well spent except the $15 coffees from the Park Hyatt Paris. I’m still irked about that.

Local Transportation Cost: $2938.08 
Average Per Day: $10.96
Definitely a big expense but also some of the most fun expenses. This category includes all types of local transportation but doesn’t include any air travel. Types of transportation included are: Train, Bus, Car, Taxi, Minivan, Boat, Ferry, Camel, Donkey, Tuk-Tuk (so many tuk-tuks), Horse and Carriage, Songthaew and many more. This also includes petrol and parking costs during our two month road trip through Australia. Surprisingly the most costly portion of our trip transportation wise was the petrol costs in Australia.

Souvenir Cost: $1159.96
Average Per Day: $4.33
This number could and probably should have been quite a bit higher. Pamela is the shopper between the two of us and I gave her a bit too much grief over souvenirs. In retrospect, I would have much rather stayed in cheaper accommodation and bought more stuff to bring home and as gifts. In any case, we did get something from every country including magnets and stamps. The biggest problem we had was carrying the extra stuff. We had one bag each which was already full.

Tipping Cost: $896.18
Average Per Day: $3.34
Tips for porters, guides, drivers, leaders etc are one of those expenses that I found hard to plan for. How much tipping we did depended greatly on the country we were in and whether or not we were on a tour. For the most part the tips were well earned so it’s all good. One thing to mention is that this number does not include tips for dining at restaurants as I calculated that as part of the food cost.

Visas and Departure Tax: $732.71
Unfortunately there’s no getting around this expense if you want to travel to many countries. India was by far our most expensive (and biggest pain) Visa with Vietnam coming in a close second. Thankfully the only departure tax we had to pay was in Jordan when we left via ferry.

Shipping: $205.73
With all the souvenirs comes shipping costs. We didn’t really spend that much with the bulk of this coming from one shipment to the US from Thailand and one shipment to Australia from Turkey. Unfortunately the only time we ever had anything stolen from our postage was shipping a small parcel something from Abu Dhabi to Sydney, otherwise the international postage was all good.

ATM Cost: $135.62
Average Per Day .51 Cents
This is one of those nuisance expenses. We weighed the cost of carrying large amounts of currency around with us before the trip and decided it would be safer to just use ATMs when cash was required. When purchasing things we tried to use our credit card as much as possible as we have a card with no international transaction fees.  We found the most expensive countries to withdraw money in were Thailand and Nepal with an average cost around $5 US dollars.

Toilets: $18.82
Another nuisance expense but a necessity are costs to use the toilet. Thankfully many countries don’t charge for using the toilet.  We accrued most of these costs in the Middle East. I think even looking at the WC in Turkey costs money, not to mention the constant allure of the tea.

I hope this article helps others planning a trip and we always welcome your comments or questions. There are obviously other costs associated with a trip of this magnitude and I hope to include some of those, including insurance and medical costs, along with lessons learned, on a future post.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

My Career Break – Fears, Gains and Why I’m Now More Employable

The 12^th of May, 2011, marked the end of an 11 year career at my former employer and the beginning of an adventure that would take Pamela and I around the world and back again.  A year later, now that we’re back in the “real world” it’s time for me to seek out new employment and start a new life in a new city. I’d like to try and describe some of the feelings and reservations I had about quitting my old job, taking a year off and hopefully finding a new job. I had made the decision to quit my job about 10 months before it actually happened so this whole experience has stretched for quite some time.

About Me

Let me start about talking a little about me and  my old job.  I spent most of my 11 years in one form of Information Technology role or another. I really enjoyed the job and for most of the time felt blessed to work for a good company surrounded by good people. I always seemed to be working on fun projects which taught me quite a bit about different aspects of Information Technology and really took advantage of my organization and planning skills. Yes, I’m a planner.  I was promoted a few times during my tenure and didn’t really consider myself a slouch when it came to work, I felt interested and motivated for the most part and think I did a relatively decent job. What I’m trying to get at is that I’m employable and worth a decent salary, at least hope that I’m employable.

Oh Crap
About five months prior to quitting I went through what I would call an extremely nervous phase which I refer to as the “Oh Crap” phase. It lasted about a month. Cyclical thoughts of negativity ran through my mind which had me doubting my skills, experience, personality and therefore ability to one day get a new job. Not only was I taking a year off and living off savings, but I would eventually be looking for a new job in a new city in a new country where I knew few people. Needless to say I was scared. Some of the questions and thoughts that ran through my head were: 

Would I find a job doing similar work? I’ll need to support myself.
Will I forget everything I know?  I don’t want to take a huge pay cut.
Are employers going to think poorly of my for taking a year off?

Thankfully I had a very supportive fiancé at the time who helped me through this negative phase, whether she knew it or not. Overall I’d say this phase lasted about a month and caused me quite a few sleepless nights. Interesting enough I never had these type of feelings when it came to getting married, it was strictly about losing my job and therefore means of financial support. I would also be holding back if I didn’t say that I had some of these same thoughts while we were travelling. Unfortunately my fear sometimes got the best of me and I’d lose a night or two of sleep thinking about this crap.

Oh Yeah
Negativity gone. It was awesome to think that in just a few months I’d be married, debt free, jobless, homeless and travelling the world one country at a time with my new wife. No Blackberry, no daily grind, no commute, no conference calls, no notes……WAHOOOOO, I was stoked. Most days I came to work happy as a clam. In some cases I think I developed a short timer syndrome but I really tried to stay as functional and responsive as possible. I’m sure my coworkers would have some input into how functional and responsive I actually was. In either case, I tried my best to get my work done and leave on a high note. I didn’t much care whether or not I’d find another job, I just knew that I was leaving this one, getting married and travelling around the world.

Time to Go
Turning in my keycard and Blackberry then walking out of work on my last day was one of the best feelings I can remember. Not that I don’t miss the crew from work, they’re all awesome. I just felt great to be un-tethered. All that was left to do was work on plans for our Fijian Wedding and get ideas for our round-the-world trip.  It was at this point that we got our finances together and determined an adequate budget for our big trip ensuring we’d have enough left over to set up somewhere new. The thought of spending so much money was a bit daunting but I knew it would be worth it.

Going, Going, Gone
The wedding and honeymoon were amazing. Over the course of time the plans changed and we ended up staying on the road for approximately nine months versus our original planned year. During the nine months we visited 20 countries and travelled well over a hundred thousand kilometers. Our forms of transportation ranged from first class airfare to a donkey in the Middle East. It was such a great experience and one that will live in our hearts and mind forever. From a budget stand-point we ended our trip with  a couple thousand dollars to spare, another reason to be happy.

Next Steps
With the trip over it’s time to start life over in a place called the Gold Coast. We chose this location because of the nearby activities, cost of living, job prospects, weather and overall atmosphere. So far we love it and spend as much time as we can outdoors, whether by the pool, at the beach or in the nearby mountains.

Now it’s time for me to polish up my resume and start applying for jobs. Unfortunately those same questions and negative thoughts start to circulate in my head. This time with a bit of added pressure as we need to pay our new found bills. Thankfully some of the answers to my thoughts are starting to work themselves out.

Would I find a job doing similar work? Although not a huge job market, there does appear to be IT jobs available here in the Gold Coast with some pretty decent positions coming available every couple weeks.
Will I forget everything I know? I did forget some things but overall I say I retained more than I thought I would. What I did forget appear to be small details but my overall knowledge base seems to be intact.
 I don’t want to take a huge pay cut. Thankfully jobs here seem to pay more so I hope to be looking at a little rise in my salary. Granted cost of living is a bit higher so it will probably work out even-steven.
Are employers going to think poorly of my for taking a year off?  From talking to various recruiters it doesn’t appear my year off should hurt my employability too much. Thankfully the year off thing is more common here in Australia.

What I’ve Gained
Yes, I’ve forgot a few things in the year off work but overall I think I’ve gained far more than I’ve lost. I’d even go as far to say that I’m probably more employable now than I was before my year off. You may laugh at that statement but here are some of the reasons why my year abroad made me a more employable person:
Increased Self Confidence: This endeavor and associated experiences has given me a much greater sense of self confidence. Self confidence is helpful in any job and increased self confidence will aid in decision making, allow more autonomous thinking and I open up leadership potential, and or, make me someone a better leader.

Improved Interpersonal Skills:  Let’s face it, in this era of globalization the chance of you doing business with someone culturally different from you on a daily basis is pretty high. Travelling the world gave me the opportunity to live amongst and meet people from so many different cultures far different from my own. I’d like to think that doing so has taught me how to more effectively and appropriately communicate with people from these various cultures. I saw how locals were raised and lived in countries whom I routinely communicated with, thus giving me a bit more insight into a culture and therefore a person which I didn’t have before.

Additionally, language barriers are sometimes not a bad thing. I think that I, as an American, tend to be too wordy at times. Existing in a place where English is hardly spoken taught me to use less words when communicating, basically not muddying the waters with my jibber-jabber, when all I needed to do was say the most direct words to get my desired outcome.   

Improved Negotiation Skills: Many people negotiate at work, for someone in sales it might be on a regular basis and their negotiation tactics directly impact their take home pay. Others, like someone in Information Technology (IT), may negotiate on a rare basis and their tactics may not directly impact their take home pay. Thus the person in IT has far fewer opportunities to negotiate and less of a reason to improve their tactics.  Prior to leaving on our trip I’d done a bit of travelling and had honed my basic negotiation skills on short two week trips here and there. I wasn’t very good at it and generally gave in pretty quick.

Anyone who’s travelled a bit knows that negotiation skills are essential to ensuring you pay a fair price for most things. Negotiating for goods, transportation, laundry, lodging, food and just about everything under the sun is a routine occurrence while abroad. Doing this over a two-week holiday is one thing but doing it over an extended period of time is a whole different animal altogether. Thankfully I had Pamela with me to show me the ropes, at the beginning of the trip I was a rookie. Over time the constant negotiation for everything taught me how to more effectively get what I want at a price that was both fair to me and to the person providing the goods or service. This taught me not to show my hand, when to walk away, when to keep pushing and when negotiation was absolutely futile. This experience was gleaned across multiple cultures where negotiating could be slightly different in each region and when the goods or services I was negotiating for directly impacted our bottom line. In any case, I’m a far better negotiator now than I ever was at my old job.

Increased Positive Attitude:  Before I left I like to think I had a pretty good outlook on life and didn’t complain all too much. Since embarking on this trip I have a new perspective and even greater appreciation for life.  I truly understand that I shouldn’t really complain about anything in my life. Witnessing and living amongst intense poverty for extended periods of time has taught me to appreciate what I have and what we in the western world can sometimes take for granted. Nothing I’m ever asked to undergo in any workplace would be as bad not having food on the table or a toilet to use.

On a less serious note there are certain experiences which I’ll always be able to look back on for comparison. No meeting will ever be as bad as a 17 hour bus ride through the back roads of Cambodia listening to Cambodian karaoke. No overnight work project could ever be as bad as our 2^nd class train voyages through India and no conference calls could ever be as bad as our terrible overnight train experience from Luxor to Cairo. These are the type of experiences that I look back and laugh on now but ultimately give me a more positive outlook on any situation and provide some good stories in the process.

Aftermath
If asked whether I’d do it all over, the answer is unequivocally yes. This has been a great experience that no money nor corporate job could ever provide. Not to mention I’m now married to the most wonderful woman on the planet. Looking back, I should have done this when I was 18 years old and then again when I was 25 and then again when I was 30.

Only time will tell whether or not I succeed in finding a good permanent job but as long as I stay positive I think it will all work out. Thankfully Pamela is highly employable as a Travel Consultant and has already started her new job which has greatly reduced any financial pressure we were feeling. Our big trip has only added to her travel resume and given her much more insight into the world of travel sales.

Hopefully this long post will help someone else who may be thinking about a career break. I’d definitely recommend.

Cheers for Now –

Dave

Five Months Already! - Our Top Five for 2011

Looking back on 2011

I can’t believe we’ve already been on the road for five consecutive months. We’ve seen and done so much that without this blog I probably wouldn’t remember half of it. Over the last five months we've travelled over 65,000 kilometres, visited 17 different countries across five continents, flown on 27 different air planes and stayed at 59 different hotels. The travelling can be tough at times but we've always had each other to ease that long night on the train, bus or plane.

As we enter our sixth month of travel we wanted to look back and jot down some of our favorite places. Over the holidays the most common question we got from family and friends was “What has been your favorite place so far?”. Below is a list of each of our top five places with the only commonality being #1 with the Maldives. 

Pamela
1. Maldives
2. The Dead Sea
3. Pamukkale, Turkey
4. Playing with the Tigers in Chiang Mai
5. Trekking in Nepal

Dave
1. Maldives
2. Trekking in Nepal
3. Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt - Article Coming Soon
4. Wadi Rum
5. Searching for Tigers

Happy New Year!
We hope everyone reading this as a great 2012 with very safe and fun travels for all of you taking a holiday somewhere. We had a great time over the holidays in Los Angeles with family and friends. The weather was very warm so the hiking was great (at least for me, the sales at the shops were in full force so the shopping was great (at least for Pamela), and we spent many nights relaxing at home just enjoying the fact that we weren’t in a hotel.

Month Number Six
We’re in Banff, Canada now enjoying the snow and a couple days of snowboarding before we head off to Florida and a seven night Caribbean Cruise with stops in Cozumel, Belize, Honduras and Grand Cayman. This is Pamela’s first cruise so she’s pretty excited, I’m just hoping I don’t eat too much…the breakfast buffet always kills me. After the cruise we’ll be heading to one of my favorite spots on the island of St. John for five days of relaxing on the beach. When we’ve had our fill of sun then we’re heading to Reno/Tahoe to catch-up with great friends and hopefully snowboard (please let it snow), then from there we’re off to Park City for some more boarding (again, please let it snow).

We have some articles coming-up about our time in Sharm El-Sheikh, Abu Dhabi and Banff so please stay tuned.

Cheers for Now - 

Pamela and Dave

Three Months Down – Lessons Learned and Highlights from the Previous Month

The 5^th of November marked three consecutive months of our round the world honeymoon. Just a month ago we were in Nepal, since we’ve traveled to India, Maldives, Greece, France and Turkey.  Over the last month we’ve stayed in 15 different hotels,  spent one night in the airport and one night on a train. The 15 different hotels range from the best of the best to the worst of the worst. We went from an outdoor rain shower to an indoor bucket shower and back again. This month has definitely been the busiest for us, we’ve seen so much in such a short amount of time that it’s hard even finding time to write about the stuff.

Lessons Learned from Month #3
Make sure you have enough sunblock when traveling to the Maldives. If 
not, expect to pay a very high price for sunblock at whichever resort 
you stay at. We ran out and had to spend quite a bit on a less than 
good bottle.

Be very careful when handing over money while traveling. Within 20 
minutes of arriving into India the Tourist Police of all people took 
us for 900 rupees (20 usd) using the old switcheroo technique.

Where double-seemed pants when walking through the jungle. Leeches can 
and will get through the seems of your single seemed pants to get to 
your tasty blood.

If you wear contact lenses then make sure you have a good pair of 
backup glasses. I (DW) have needed to wear my glasses off and on and 
my backup glasses (which I never wore for any length of time) gave me 
a lot of problems. Holiday pics don't look so good with a band-aid 
over your nose.

Be sure to pack your own towell if staying in budget accommadation. 
Even if a towell is provided it often isn't clean and could have the 
texture of sandpaper. Our large pack towell dries fast and doesn't 
have the texture of gravel.

Highlights from Month #3 and Why
Pamela -  Definitely the week in the Maldives. I loved it so much, it was a dream honeymoon.
Dave  - Maldives. Pamela and I got to spend some good relaxing time together. So much of our trip has been go-go-go that we haven’t had much time to stop-stop-stop

Lowlights from Month #3 and Why
Pamela – Indian Railways. I didn’t have a good time on the trains in India. From gag-inducing smells and sights at the stations, to trash lining the floors of the cars, it just wasn’t a pleasant experience. If doing it again I’d definitely spring for 1^st class tickets…but next time I’ll try my hardest to fly.
Dave – Catching a cold and eye infection and not in that order. I didn’t like being sick while traveling through India and I’m definitely sick of wearing my glasses. I should have listened to Pamela earlier and gone to the Doctors sooner vs later. Just don’t tell her I said that.

Where are We Now
We’re currently traveling through Turkey by bus and having a great time doing it. We love Turkey….the food, the people, the sights, everything has been great.  Yesterday we visited St. John’s Basilica in Selcuk and today we visited the travertines of Pamukkale.

New Website Info
I can’t believe we’ve had almost 9000 hits on our website in just over three months. That’s more than I thought we’d get on our whole trip. Thanks again to everyone for checking out the site. Recently we added a little gadget that posts our last Twitter updates from our account @FrqtFlyr and we also have a little gadget that lists where we are and how far we’ve travelled.

That’s it for Month #3 update. Month four will be here before you know it….especially since I’m a little late with this one J

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave