Seizing the day

It's one of the first things you Google when planning a big trip: "How much money do I need?" I can only tell you from my recent experience of how much my partner and I spent on accommodation, food, drink (mainly coffee and beer), and transport in Southeast Asia. How much you'll need really depends on a number of things: how long you want to stay in places how many places you want to travel to how you get around, for example cheap buses vs planes if you like drinking lots of beer and coffee day trips and excursions. Rule one: don't take life too seriously - it's only money Our itinerary  Over the 3 and half months we went to: Thailand - 1 month Laos - 1 week Vietnam - 1 month Thai islands - 3 weeks Malaysia - 2 weeks Singapore - 4 days In total we spent just over £5,000. Now let's break down the costs. Accommodation  Overall we spent : £1,665 Thailand : £532 - average £22 per night (one of these nights includes a st...

We've been on the road for about 2 months now so I thought I'd stop and reflect on what made us start travelling in the first place. Being on the open road (Marble Mountains, Da Nang) When you stop and think about it travelling is a bit odd – you leave behind family, stuff you’ve worked for and the comfort of your home to go to an unfamiliar place where you don’t understand the language and you deliberate over every piece of food you put in your mouth. But believe it or not travelling isn’t a revolutionary thing – if no one did it then most of the world wouldn’t know each other, and worst of all we’d probably have really bad coffee. For me I see it as a means of educating and enriching myself in my own way. Learning that's not taught in some classroom, or read on the news, but mine. Why we decided to travel For us (my partner and I) deciding to travel wasn't based on one reason as such, it was more of a collection of things and a shared understanding...

Travelling can be rather stressful at times: booking hostels, haggling with taxis drivers and getting extra charges on your card for silly admin fees. If like us you've saved all your hard earned cash on the trip of a lifetime and you want to it to go as far as possible, then hopefully some of these tips might help. 1) Transport Grab - Taxi app Grab is a Taxi app much like Uber that operates all over Southeast Asia in most of the cities. TIP : you should never take a driver who's got a low rating - always take the higher rated ones to be on the safe side. You don't have to connect any credit or debit card to Grab, just simply download it and book your trip. When you enter your destination from A to B it will give you a fixed price there and then. This saves you haggling a taxi on the street - who by the way, often charge you double and never have their metre on! Also, look out for promo codes in hostels you're staying in or near you. We found one and g...