Over the last few months me and Gary had been talking about travelling. We've finally got some plans in place and I'm about to go on my first travelling experience later this month for three weeks to Vietnam and Cambodia! The original plan was meant to be Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But due to visas and time restrictions we just focussed on these two countries. Below is a summary of what we went through from planning to booking the trip.
Destinations
I've always wanted to travel but wasn't sure where to begin with it all, you know where, when and who with etc. Me and Gary have mutual interest in travelling and had talked about places we'd like to go. So one weekend we both made individual lists of all the countries and places we wanted to visit. We ordered our lists in importance of where we would liked to go first. Next we used a spreadsheet and copied the lists side by side, then numbered them to give them a score. We then created another list and put all the destinations in and assigned the scores which had been given. The same destinations were added together giving them a bigger score which will put them higher on the list, thus making them a higher priority destination. Now we have our plan of destinations that was mutually fair and agreed!
Afterwards, we had an idea to get our most desired destinations to the top to beat one and another's. So we suggested doing presentations to sell the destinations to our family and friends and get them to rate them which would be added as a bonus score to the list.
Locations
After we had selected our first destination, Vietnam, we used Google Maps to scope where we are actually going to be stopping by. We also checked if there were any special and medical requirements for accessing the country. We used Gary's travel books and the internet to research places in the areas we were passing by to see what is there and what activities are happening to decide if we should stop there and if so how long for. This then formed an itinerary of all the places we are stopping by and all the points of interest we want to see whilst there. After this we then applied for our visas for Vietnam.
Accommodation
Once we had the itinerary in place we could then search around all the places for where to stay for the duration of our visits. I suggested doing the Airbnb as they are cheap and you can get a better feel for the culture on how people live. We may also get an informal guide! We've booked the first two places we will be stopping and the rest we will book as we go around.
I've had all my injections and all necessary travel arrangements have been sorted. I've next week to get packed and then we fly out over the weekend. I'm extremely excited but nervous as I've not done proper travelling before and been this far away from home in miles and time. It's going to be great adventure and journey. I can't wait to experience it all, it's been waiting for me!
