Pai Canyon, Thailand

How to Make your World Travel Dreams a Reality this Year

A brand new year dawns on the horizon, what are you going to do with it? Perhaps you want to build a house, learn how to ski, have a baby, rescue a puppy or take up salsa dancing? Or maybe there’s a voice inside you whispering: “I want to travel the world!” Well, you’re not alone. Four years ago that voice had grown too loud for me to ignore and I was preparing to leave the UK for a two-year travel adventure that has now become a full-time lifestyle. If wanderlust is knocking at your door, here are my top tips on how to make your world travel dreams a reality in 2017.

Pai Canyon, Thailand

How to make world travel a reality this year

Budgets, maps, gear, itineraries, flights, vaccinations and visas… where do you start? I know from experience that planning a long-term trip or round-the-world adventure can be extremely daunting. In fact, it can be so overwhelming that you decide it’s much easier to just stay at home in your comfy cocoon instead. If you’re struggling to figure out how to get your trip off the ground this year, here are some tips that helped me transition to a life of travel – they might just help you too.

how to make your world travel dreams a reality this year - Pinterest poster

Pin me for later

To celebrate the start of 2017 and help you plan your travel adventure, click here to get 25% off membership with Trusted Housesitters until the 9th January. If you haven’t signed up to Airbnb yet, you can also get £25 free credit on the site if you sign up using this link. If you do click through these links we’ll receive a tiny bit of affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Happy New Year!

Just book a ticket

You can spend years planning, dreaming and saving up to travel but if you really want to get out there and see the world, you need to just take the leap. So, pick a destination and book a goddamn ticket. It wasn’t until Andrew and I had spent almost £1,000 on one-way flights to New Zealand that our trip began to feel real, we had a departure date circled on the calendar and we’d spent too much money to back out. Trust me, once you have that flight booked you’ll be forced to get everything else ready for the big day.

View of mountains from a plane window

Tell everyone you’re leaving

Like buying a ticket, telling your friends and family that you’re leaving will make it feel all the more real and you’re more likely to leave if there’s a weight of expectation on you. One of the most irrevocable moments for me was handing in my resignation and telling my boss that I was leaving London to travel the world indefinitely, I knew there was no turning back after that. Talking about your adventure will also help you and your nearest and dearest mentally prepare for the separation.

Leaving to travel the world

Our leaving cake back in 2013

Think about earning as you go

If you want to travel for a long stretch of time, think about ways you could earn money as you travel and lay the foundations now. If you want to teach abroad take a TEFL course, or sign up to some freelance websites and update your CV and work portfolio. Think about how you can transfer your current work skills into a more travel-friendly format. When we lived in London I worked in online journalism and Andrew was a teacher, so we use these skills today to earn money online. We’ve also both taught English in Vietnam and Spain. You can read about our experiences teaching English abroad and find out how we currently make money as digital nomads through freelance writing, blogging and online teaching.

Teaching a Grade Five Class in Vietnam

Teaching in Vietnam

Embrace your fear

When you go through any big life change your feelings are bound to oscillate from extreme excitement and joy to fear, doubt and moments of abject terror. I even experienced travel guilt and felt homesick before we’d even left the UK. Just embrace it. Being a little scared means that you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and whatever happens, you’ll be stronger for having taken a risk. I remember arriving in New Zealand and experiencing a brief wave of horror upon realising that I was literally on the other side of the world without a home or job to go back to. Both Andrew and I have had moments like this periodically over the last few years, but I’ve learnt to embrace that fear because I know with a positive attitude, a bit of ingenuity and a lot of tenacity, we can always make things work.

Us looking out at Pang Yng resevoir in Thailand

How to plan an itinerary

Don’t try and plan out months of travel in minute detail before you leave, it’s not necessary and you’ll just drive yourself needlessly crazy. I was definitely guilty of being an obsessive compulsive travel planner, but after a couple of months on the road I realised that it was much easier to simply plot out the big journey points and fill in the smaller details as we went along. You might want to start your trip planning like this:

  • Pick a region.
  • Note down the countries you want to visit in that region.
  • Look up the visa regulations for each country.
  • Find out when the high and low seasons are for each country.
  • Research flight prices and routes (you can read our tips and tricks about how to find super-cheap flights here).
  • Use all this information to plot a rough, logical itinerary.
  • Book a flight to your starting destination and fill in the finer details nearer the time.
Us in Golden Bay, New Zealand

At the start of our journey in New Zealand

Find inspiration

Don’t ever forget why you want to travel. Read travel blogs, watch documentaries about the world, look up flight prices, Google pictures of exotic destinations and search through Airbnb for cheap apartment rentals in random places for the hell of it. Just do whatever you need to do to keep your wanderlust alive and spur you on towards taking that trip. One of the best things you can do is seek out like-minded people who understand your passion. I’m lucky to have a partner who also loves to travel, but starting this blog has allowed me to connect with so many other travel-obsessed people and it has provided me with a platform to share all my travel thoughts, aspirations and experiences.

Yun Lai viewpoint in Pai, Thailand

Practical planning tips

Once your departure date is set, get cracking with the practical aspects of your planning:

Sort out your travel fund – make the most of your hard-earned travel savings by putting them into a high-interest account. Over the last six years we’ve switched between HSBC Regular Saver accounts, ISAs and various different savings and current accounts and we’ve earned nearly £2,000 of interest in the process. Read our original savings account comparisons here and an updated post about managing finances while you travel.

Get the best travel accounts – research the best debit cards and credit cards for travellers to avoid wasting money on bank charges abroad. We have a current account with Norwich and Peterborough, the only bank we know of in the UK that doesn’t charge us anything for withdrawing cash or using our card abroad. We also have Halifax Clarity credit cards as back-ups; here’s our post about the best travel credit cards.

Dollars and Dong

Set up internet banking and get back-up cards – make sure you know all your pin numbers and passwords so that you can access your money abroad.  Get back-up cards and carry them in a separate part of your luggage in case your others get lost or stolen. Don’t forget to inform your bank that you’re going to be away; otherwise they’ll probably cut off your card.

Buy insurance – don’t skimp on this, travel insurance is so important. Over the last four years we’ve used many different companies including Globelink, Explorer and Admiral. We tend to buy year-long policies and make sure that they cover us for repatriation. We find that most policies don’t cover all our electronics, so we buy extra annual insurance from Photo Guard to cover that. Here’s some more information about choosing long-term travel insurance and reading the small print.

Have a health check – get your eyes, teeth and general health checked before you leave home. It’s also a good idea to find out your blood type and make copies of any prescriptions you need.

Giving Blood in Cambodia

Giving Blood in Cambodia

Get your travel vaccinations – we’re lucky that as UK citizens, many of our travel vaccinations were covered by the NHS, however we did get some rabies shots from a travel clinic in London and we had to get a booster at a clinic in Indonesia. Find out more in our original travel vaccination guide and this updated post about vaccinations and malaria tablets.

Organise relevant visas – check the visa requirements for the first few countries you plan on visiting. At the start of our trip we needed to apply for E-Visas for New Zealand and Australia and we also got Indonesian visas in advance at the embassy in London.

Sunset on Koh Chang, Thailand

Make copies of important documents – take pictures of all your important documents, save them on your laptop and email them to yourself. This can include the photo page of your passport, education certificates if you want to find work as you travel, vaccination cards and medical prescriptions. We always keep a printed copies of our passports on us as they’re handy for visa applications.

Get passport photos – we also keep a supply of passport-sized photos to use for visa applications.

Unlock your phone – this will allow you to buy local SIM cards and use your phone aboard.

Cancel your life – if you’re leaving home on a long or open-ended trip like we did, you’ll need to go through the process of selling your belongings, putting stuff into storage, handing in your notice at work, cancelling bills and direct debits and letting the tax office and student loans company know you’re leaving.

Us at Pang Ung resevoir in Thailand

Whatever your travel or life plans in 2017, I hope this post has inspired you to make your dreams a reality.

Happy New Year!

12 Comments
  • Gilda Baxter
    Posted at 10:27h, 01 January Reply

    This is a great post and very well written, certainly a must read for anyone planning a RTW trip. I have been following your blog since the start and have learned a lot from your blog. To travel the world has became much easier and less scary with all the information that can be gathered on the internet, the ability to book flights, accomodation, activities and everything else even before you leave your home. Brian and I are planning our great escape for 2017, fingers crossed ?

    • Amy
      Posted at 10:36h, 01 January Reply

      Thanks so much Gilda and we appreciate you following our journey. I’m excited to see what 2017 has in store for you travel-wise! Happy New Year!

  • Nikki T
    Posted at 09:22h, 02 January Reply

    Excellent and informative post! As an American however, I found it easier and cheaper to get healthcare, dental care and vaccinations once we got to Thailand. Our health insurance did not cover travel vaccinations and we have large deductibles and copays for checkups.

    • Amy
      Posted at 10:45h, 02 January Reply

      Hi Nikki, Happy New Year! Thanks for adding that information for Americans, that’s a really good point. We are incredibly lucky to have the NHS in the UK which covers most of our vaccinations and also dental check-ups.

  • Alyson
    Posted at 09:42h, 02 January Reply

    This post even makes me excited and we’ve been living the above for 4 years! I love new years, new days, mornings, beginnings, so many possibilities! Hey I finally changed my theme yesterday, it’s awesome, quicker, bounce rate is down, page views are up, fabulous, come see!

    • Amy
      Posted at 10:46h, 02 January Reply

      Looking good Alyson, I like it! I think we are way overdue a theme/website update, definitely something to add to the 2017 to-do list. Happy New Year to you all over there in Romania 🙂

  • Amy-Anne Williams
    Posted at 19:07h, 02 January Reply

    This is such a comprehensive guide, I literally adore it. And it’s all so true! When I start travelling full-time (as I am still in education), I’m definitely going to be following these tips and everything’s covered. And omg how do you look so okay giving blood in Cambodia?! I can barely give a blood test without pulling the worst of faces. Props to you, man! c:

    Amy;
    Little Moon Elephant

    • Amy
      Posted at 04:00h, 03 January Reply

      Hi Amy, thanks for reading and commenting. I wish you good luck with your future travel adventures 🙂 I look pretty calm in that photo but in reality it took ages to get the needle in, the nurse had to call the doctor and I thought for a minute that it was never going to happen! It’s a common thing when I have to have a blood test/give blood as my veins are apparently quite small. Strange!

  • Victoria @The British Berliner
    Posted at 20:04h, 03 January Reply

    Happy New Year Amy! 🙂
    ‘Love the post. A great guide for anyone wanting to travel the world, and being overwhelmed ‘cos they just don’t know where to start.

    My biggest tip I think is to breathe, make sure that you have more than enough money to see you through a year, book the plane, and just go!

    I remember my first expat trip was to suppose to be for just 6 weeks. I was scared to death as I was going alone, I didn’t speak the language, really didn’t know what I was doing, and knew just one person who was going back to England the next day! 6 weeks turned into 2 years, and I never looked back!

    • Amy
      Posted at 03:08h, 04 January Reply

      Happy New Year Victoria! Good tip about the money, it’s definitely good to have a year in the bank to start with while you figure things out. Here’s to 2017! 🙂

  • James
    Posted at 10:01h, 05 January Reply

    This is a brilliant post packed with absolutely fantastic advice! Love it

    • Amy
      Posted at 03:50h, 06 January Reply

      Thanks James! Hope you guys are well and Happy New Year 🙂

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.