Hello Reddit, I'm Kix Marshall, travel blogger, travel speaker & student educator about gap year travel. I like to help demystify the problems 1st time adventure travelers face. This is one of a series of helpful tips I'm giving to get you started. Any issues, just ask. I also posted the link to that blog on my site. KixMarshall.Com The “WHY” factor. Where do you want to go & why? I was recently asked from an inquisitive soon to be global traveler.
“hey Kix, i saw your post about the gap year. that sounds exactly like me. I've been planning on going on heaps of trips in my gap year and here i am almost a full year after high school and no travels yet. one of the reasons is because i can't find anyone to go with. As much as i liked to believe its ok for me to travel on my own to foregone countries, i would feel very unsafe about it not only as a woman i would feel unsafe but just as a foreigner just in a completely new country.”
Lets start off by nailing down step one of a multi step system to get you from “Holy crap there is a whole world out there & it’s passing me by” to “Ohh man those were some great underwater shots of the manta rays we got today while snorkelling off the coast of Indonesia”. I know, I’ve been on both sides of this & learned a lot from costly trial and error. Let me help you to save time & while you maximize experience. First off I’d narrow down where you want to go and why. Do you want to go to South East Asia to explore your inner chef and suck up its deep historical culture? Or maybe you want to go to Europe so you can buy a T-shirt from twelve countries in twelve days? Or maybe you want to learn Mandarin and soak up the language / lifestyle of China. Who knows better then you? No one! Personally I knew that somewhere outside of the sleepy little town I grew up in was a world of excitement, I didn’t know where exactly thou I’d heard a good place to start was Australia & that’s where I headed. Let’s say you’re pitching this plan to your spouse, parents, friend etc. Like all good sales pitches you’ll need to be able to validate it within yourself before you can go and sell anyone else on the idea. Step one, decide where & why. Next you can start pitching the idea to possible interested friends, spouse, self and so on. Personally my first trip right out of high school I pitched the idea to several friends who I was sure we’re going to drop everything and come along. In the end I went with hands down the absolute perfect friend and I actually hadn’t even considered asking him when I was originally planning this out. My nephew had planned on going with a good friend for ages and a few weeks before a one year departure date overseas his friend BAILED (boo!). Magically another family member had been on the hunt for someone to go with & they ended up starting off the trip together a short time later until they made other friends and parted ways only meeting up again for the plane ride home. Some way some how it always works out, just get the ball rolling and the pieces fall into place.
As I’m sure is the concern of many, travel alone females in a foreign place, it sounds a bit intimidating. Hell it’s a bit intimidating as a male & I’ve been on many a trip. Well there are a few remedies for this even if you can not find a companion who’d be so wise as to see the world. Many companies offer group tours that are typically full of like minded similar situation people looking to meet others just like them. An introvert female friend of mine went on one such tour for a few weeks in Asia, by the time the trip was wrapped up she had met some friends who wanted to continue on, felt more comfortable where she was & developed a whole new outlook on solo female travel. I can’t speak from experience thou I’ve heard some reputable companies are Free & Easy Travel & GAdventures. There is also a whole host of other volunteer and religious organisations doing similar projects.
If you have any suggestions or comments please post them below. In the next post will touch on THE MONEY!
BLOG #2
A huge mental barrier that most people can’t get over is the cash. “So this has been fun thinking about world travel and all, though where am I going to get the money for flights, backpacks, camera, hotels, trains, beer, food, souvenirs and on and on???”
Recently I got this question, it can be worded many ways thou this seems like a pretty honest one.
“I can’t seem to ever save enough money. I want to save and I have some saved but I want to enjoy my everyday life as well as go travelling. What I mean by that is I want to be able to afford to go out with people now and again, or to get my mom a nice birthday gift. Anyway I thought I would write you back and tell you what experience has been and wondered if you had any advice.”
This probably THE BEST question ever. Everyone gets overwhelmed with the end result before figuring out the goal. Lets do this step by step & make it more achievable. First off get a 2nd job then get your research on. Lets say you want to go to Thailand, you live in North America and you want to go for four months. First off you’ll want to ballpark flight costs. Look through at least three different booking sights to get a general feel of round trip tickets. Maybe they are $1200. Next up grab yourself a guide book from the local library or browse through the one at the book store. Typically they have a section on average daily prices. Say $15/day for a hostel, $5 for a meal & $2 for a beer. Now you’re up to $22/day. Now factor in scooter rental or maybe daily transport with an average of maybe $8/day. Now were at $30. Next up you’ll probably want to have some fun and go on some tours. Say you do three a month for an average for $200 a tour. Now you’re up another $20/day bringing up to $50/day. This is a rough estimate, thou the guide book is typically pretty close with the local pricing and if you want to save more, couch surf, rent a place long term or stay in dorms & self cater. Now were sitting at $50/day x 30 days/month x 4 months or $6000 plus the $1200 flights or about $8200 dollars. Now you’ll still need a backpack a bag, camera & all that jazz. Thou chances are you could at very least borrow all of that stuff. At different points I have & I have also lent it all out. Back to the cash. Now to make up $8200 you’ll likely need to work a bit harder and smarter. If you want to work for 6 months before you go you’ll need to save about $46/day, 10 months = $28/day, and so on. If you made $10/ hour @ 8hrs/ day you’d have about $70/day after taxes. Even if you spent half of that you could still do it in just under eight months. The flights are the same to go for a week as a year & you’ll learn how to trim costs along the way so it’s actually cheaper the longer you go. Maybe you live at home, maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you make $100/hour maybe you make $3/hr, who knows it’s all different for everyone and if you are looking for an excuse as to why you will never in your life be able to take the four month trip of a lifetime you will find it. However if you are looking for some stepping stones as to how you can, here they are. If you set the intention all of the blocks will eventually line themselves up. Basically you could plug away for years working P.T. and going to the movies and buying new sunglasses or you could double your work load & half your spending then share that success with everyone else who just did it on the beach six months from now. I’ve done this many times over. I’ve even worked two years and taken one off a couple times & this was always with crap paying jobs, thou none of my sunglasses cost more then $10. Any questions, comments or even better stories of how you made it happen please post below. Happy goal setting!