10 Things to Consider When Planning Your Trip

Dear lilioftheworld.com reader, here is Lili, your co-editor. It is the beginning of the year and after the holiday season comes the depressing rest-of-the-winter (at least in the Northern Hemisphere :-). One way to cheer up a bit is to use this period to plan your yearly trips to other countries. No matter whether you plan your trip on your own or you are using an agency, there are some things we consider essential to have in mind during the planning process.

Here are our 10 things to consider when planning your trip:

1. Climate/ best time to travel during the year

Even if you are limited by the period in which you can take a vacation, you still have certain flexibility. For example, instead of going to the Caribbean in July-August (when is the summer school holiday), you might use the Christmas school break to do so in order to avoid the hurricane season. Checking the weather before planning your trip will help you have better expectations of the place where you are going.

We have a funny example in this relation. At the beginning of our “travel career”, we had booked a trip to Shanghai and Thailand in February. I had always associated Shanghai with warm weather (how silly was I). Two weeks before the holiday, we were discussing what kind of clothes we should take with us. Only then I checked the weather. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it would be zero degrees Celsius in Shanghai and 30 degrees in Thailand. Of course this totally messed up my plans as I intended to only take summer clothes. We never make the same mistake again when planning our trips :).

2. Events

Special events, holidays and celebrations influence a lot different aspects around the trip. And here we are not talking only about holidays like Christmas, Easter, etc. We refer to special events for the country/ town you are visiting. This might be the reason for higher prices of flights and accommodation. You might either want to visit the place for a special event or avoid it. 

We have a couple of stories here

The first one is from the famous Rio carnival. We have read that it is advisable to avoid being there at the time when it takes place. Not only because the hotels are twice more expensive, but also because all the pickpockets from Brazil and the neighboring countries are concentrated in this area by the time of the carnival. We knew we wanted to travel in February (the carnival happens also in February), so we just moved our holiday with one week ahead. 

The second case is from the Easter Island. It was part of a longer trip (you can read more about the Chile visit here) for which we had only the start and the end dates fixed. When researching about the Easter Island, we found that their famous Tapati festival takes place in February. It happens once a year and it is a must-see. We then arranged our program in order to be there for the festival.

And my favorite story is the one from Hanoi, Vietnam. We were just lucky to be there at the time of the Chinese New Year. It was a great experience due to several reasons. The town was almost empty for a couple of days, thus there was no traffic and noise on the streets. Due to the New Year celebrations, we were upgraded to a better boat for our trip to Halong Bay (there weren’t many tourists and they combined the groups). And last but not least, we could witness the amazing fireworks show above the lake in Hanoi. Since then, I always recommend people to choose exactly this time of the year when visiting Hanoi.

3. Budget

Budgeting a trip is also not an easy task. There are three main costs you should consider when planning your trip:

• The flight tickets
• Accommodation budget
• Your daily allowance

Before making any of the steps above in the trip planning, you should carefully check the rest. Depending on the destination, the biggest expense along the flight tickets is the accommodation. When planning a trip, we always start with checking the flight tickets and then the hotels/ places to stay. Nowadays, the low-cost airlines give you the opportunity to travel to different countries for less than €10 one way. In many countries, even the cheapest accommodation is times higher than these flight fares. Make sure the overall trip budget fits your purchase power. 

A couple of years ago I was looking for a destination in the Caribbean. I have found a good deal for flights to Barbados. Thankfully, I checked the hotel rates as well. In the end we did not go there- the hotels were too expensive for our budget back then.

4. Visa

You have to be aware if a Visa is required to enter the destination country. Why? There are several reasons we are mentioning this. 

• Firstly, issuing of the visa takes some time and you should have this time available. 

We wanted to visit Moscow and when researching the tickets, I found a good deal for going there the same week. Unfortunately we need visas for Russia and if I did not know this in advance, I would have booked and respectively not been able to use the tickets. There is no way we could obtain visa for three days. 

• It is also recommended that you check the cost of the visa and the way to obtain it. Its price in certain countries can be quite high (e.g. in US they charge around $150, even in Vietnam we paid close to €100). In many countries you can have a visa on arrival or an electronic one. However, certain countries are stricter and you need to visit the embassy.

5. Power socket outlet

Even though I write this here, I almost always forget to take my power socket adapter when going to the UK. Nowadays, many of the devices we use require charging. The mobile phone goes without saying, but we also need to charge our camera, watch, tooth brush, so on. It is a bad surprise to find out that you cannot charge your phone during the night because your charger does not fit the socket. Not that you cannot buy an adapter, but why not preparing in advance. So make sure you check the outlet type when planning your trip. 

I can recommend this power socket adapter as it has a couple of USB ports, so you can directly charge your phone.

6. Popular scams

This is something we learnt the hard way. Again it happened to us a couple of years ago in Shanghai (it turns we have many learnings from this trip :). Although this is one of the most developed financial centers of China, we found that not many people speak English. All signs were in Chinese. We were staying at the heart of the city and not in the outskirts and still it was barely impossible to find anyone who speaks English.

While sightseeing, we met some students who asked us to take a picture of them. We started a small talk- they were a group of students coming from another town. They seemed glad to have someone to speak English to, they could practice their language skills, they said.

Some time later, they invited us to join them for a tea ceremony. Actually we never accept such invitations, but this time we decided to be more flexible. Attending a tea ceremony was something unique for this country. Eventually, we went to the “tea ceremony” and we ended up paying around €150 for tea. They showed us the prices at the beginning, but as everything was in Chinese, we had no chance understanding the menu. Later on we checked on the Internet and it turned out that this is one of the most popular scams in Shanghai. That is why since then we always check in advance the most common scams.

7. Currency and means of payment

Living in Europe is a bit spoiling- we have the Euro and it is a standardized currency in most of the countries. However, once there is a different currency things might get complicated. Therefore, prior to your trip check what is the exchange rate. Check also which is the best way to pay: credit cards, debit cards, cash, etc. In some countries paying via credit card is subject to a double-digit commission, so having sufficient cash is a good idea. Do you exchange currency in advance? Or you take euros/ dollars with you and exchange them at the exchange office? Should you convert currency in exchange office or at a bank? Or is it better to withdraw money from an ATM at your destination? These are all questions which have to be answered in the planning phase of your trip. 

A bonus tip from us is to always check how the foreign banknotes look. This will further decrease the chances to be scammed when exchanging money.

8. Things to see

The main reason for this point is to define the length of your trip. Defining an approximate program will help you figure out how much time you need. Once you have the shortlist, see the locations, check the transportation options and make an approximate timetable. Thus you will know if you will be able to fit within the length of your vacation. 

I remember a friend of mine who went to Curacao for two weeks. In a week he and his girlfriend did everything they could on the island and the second week was extremely boring. And they had spent a fortune for the trip. 

When doing the research, check at least three or four sources, listing attractions and things to see at your destination. We use many websites (recently blogs of other people). Wikitravel.org gives relatively good lists of attractions. Then make a shortlist of the places, which seem to be interesting to you. While there are some must-see places (such as Taj Mahal in India or the Eiffel Tower in Paris), the rest of your itinerary is open and our advice is to adapt it to your personality and preferences.

Mix sightseeing and relaxation

We would advise you to plan a balanced mix between sightseeing and leisure time. Having enough leisure time is important firstly because traveling and sightseeing can be very exhausting and if you don’t get proper rest, your experience might be impacted negatively. Also you need some time to reflect on everything that you see and experience. Secondly, this is your vacation and you need to have some feeling of relaxation.

A bonus tip from us is to start your trip with an active part of sightseeing and leave some leisure time for the end.

Knowing what you want to visit is not enough. It is essential to check the latest status of it. Therefore, follow point 9.

9. Latest photos on social media- from hotel, places to see, etc

Internet offers so many possibilities. In general, we have more access to information in the recent days. But this information is sometimes unverified or it can be rather outdated. If the latest reviews are from 2015 (and we are 2020 now), you should  be quite skeptical about their credibility.

Restaurants get closed, hotels are being worn out with time, even nature changes. If you remember one of the recent examples from Malta where one of their most famous attractions (Azure Window) collapsed and it is not existing anymore. Also the popular Phi Phi Island in Thailand is closed in the last year due to biodiversity preservation program. You should exclude these from your sightseeing plans. 

Social media is not the most credible source, but at least you can see some up-to-date pictures from the place you want to visit. 

Our learning here is from the hotel we stayed at in India (more about the trip, you can find on the link). Everything about this place looked amazing- booking.com pictures, Instagram and Facebook pictures as well. However, I hadn’t noticed that they were all from February and we were there in September. We just learnt that September is the end of the monsoon season which destroys half of the hotels on the beach. Then the owners renovate them and by December when the season starts, they are again pretty and welcoming.

10. Special cultural differences

Last but not least, as a preparation for your trip, you should read about the culture of the country you are planning to visit. This will not only prepare your behavior, but also give you ideas for the way you should dress for example.

When visiting Oman (for more details about the trip, just click on the link), I knew that most locals are Muslims and that I should adjust my clothing. I specifically ordered long dresses with long sleeves for this trip. Otherwise I would feel quite odd.

 These were our main tips for you to consider when planning your trip. 

You have more ideas or you have questions with regards to planning your trip? 

Get in touch with us at lili@lilioftheworld.com