After our flight from Indonesia to the Philippines got cancelled, a two-hour stopover in Malaysia became a 23-day jungle adventure and we’re so glad that it did. We were given a free 90 day visa on arrival and we really wish we could have used it; we could have slowed down and been able to see much more of this beautiful country. After struggling with budgets in Indonesia, we figured that we needed to relax our spending in Malaysia instead of plucking a daily budget out of thin air and wildly sticking to it no matter what; with that in mind, here’s what we spent during three weeks in Malaysia.
01 September, 2013 /
We were looking forward to getting to Asia after more than two months and over £7,000 spent in Australia and New Zealand. Before we arrived we had set ourselves a budget of about £30 per day for backpacking Indonesia (along with the rest of Asia – a little naïve no?). So, we were ready for our costs to dramatically drop from here-on-in but how much did it really cost to travel Indonesia?
31 July, 2013 /

We all want to make our hard-earned travel savings last as long as we can on the road, but when Andrew and I got to Indonesia we became obsessed with spending as little as possible, with disastrous results – here’s how becoming travel budget fanatics almost ruined our trip.

25 July, 2013 /
On Friday I turned off my work computer, left my desk and walked out of the office I’ve spent more than three years working in forever. However many times I imagined leaving, saying goodbye and shedding my old routine I never thought it would feel like this: Hollow. Instant. Irrevocable. Insignificant.  All Friday a quote from a TS Eliot poem kept running through my head:

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper

11 February, 2013 /
To make the most of our travel savings we’ve always tried to use the best UK savings accounts. Due to the recession, interest rates in the UK have been pretty shocking for the past few years but we’ve still managed to make a bit of extra cash from stashing our money in high interest savings accounts – here’s a guide to what we’ve used in the past and what we’ll use when we start our trip.
03 February, 2013 /
We knew that our travel adventure wasn’t going to come cheap – that’s why we’ve been saving for this trip for three years. It’s also the reason why I’m securing freelance work before I even leave the country to ensure we continue to make a tiny bit of cash while we’re on the road.
03 January, 2013 /
Finding backpackers insurance has been the most difficult travel planning task so far. I left Andrew the task of researching and buying our long term travel insurance while he was on autumn school holidays and I was at work.  He found a great deal, a £253 year-long policy! That’s one more task crossed off the list, or so I thought…
18 December, 2012 /
Some of the most tedious and frustrating tasks on our travel checklist are the financial ones. After much research, we finally found the best travel credit card on offer, but we then had to consider how we were going to access our money while we’re away. Turns out that the fees for using your debit card abroad can end up seriously eating into your savings, so we set out to find the cheapest option. So, what's the best debit card to use abroad? 
29 October, 2012 /