cuppakopi.com

You’ve downloaded my handy trip itinerary and thought about what you want for your holiday. Before you do some serious research, you must first decide on the duration of your holiday, the country to go and the best time to visit. These may seem obvious to you. But before you dismiss this post, let me explain why doing this my way is useful.

Pace your efforts with preliminary research

Some people plunge straight into their holiday planning. They set up files, collect all sorts of information, photocopy guide books, print hard copies of webpages and make notes.

It’s not a bad way but it is also hard work. If you’ve limited enthusiasm for hard work, especially sustained hard work, you’ll falter long before your itinerary is finished. Or you may soldier on and eventually give birth to the itinerary. But the efforts involved leave you exhausted.

I advise you to do the detailed research after you’ve decided on the duration of the holiday, chosen the country to visit and pinpointed the best time to visit. These 3 questions can be answered easily without too much work.

The duration of your holiday

Before you trawl the internet for information, you have to decide on the length of your holiday. For most people, this translates to “how many days of leave can i realistically take?” Also important now is your budget. If you’re fresh out of school, have just sold all your material possessions for a thousand bucks and can’t count on family “sponsorship”, you’ll have to travel on the cheap. And unless you plan to take up odd-jobs on the road, your budget isn’t likely to last long.

For others, you may have some magical number in your head. A ball-park figure which you don’t want to exceed. For now, an estimate is all you need. This will give you a feel for how long you can stay out there, be it 3 days, 1 week or a month.

Which country and when to go

After you’ve decided on the trip’s duration, the next questions are where and when to go. Again like most people, you’ve probably shortlisted a few countries.

How do you select the country? One way is to “google” for information online. Most governments set up ministries to promote tourism. Just google for “country tourism ministry”. These websites usually contain important information like currency exchange rates, best time to visit and links to other sources of information. Lonely Planet is another good website for general information.

Here’s what you do with interesting websites you find:
1. Bookmark and give each one a meaningful name, e.g. “Argentina – When to go” or “France – Exchange Rate”; &
2. Park all of them under a folder, such as “Shortlisted countries”.

Organise your bookmarks properly now and you’ll be able to retrieve them easily later.

Don’t just rely on websites. Borrow a couple of travel guides from the public library for each of the shortlisted countries and skim through them. Use color tags to bookmark anything that interests you. Travel guides are more comprehensive and contain insights from the author. The author’s experience may change your mind about a particular destination.

When collecting information, pay attention to the monthly average temperature and monthly average rainfall for each country/destination. This determines when you should visit and what kind of clothing you need to pack for the trip. For example, if you’re spending a lot of time on the beach, you’ll want to go in the summer. You also want to make sure you’re not going during the monsoon season when it’s likely to be raining everyday. Some activities, such as snorkelling, are only carried out during certain months.

What next?

This process should be short and enjoyable. If you’re travelling with other people, discuss the information you’ve gathered with them. In my next post, you’ll learn how to research your destinations, accomodations and use the trip itinerary you’ve downloaded.

You’ve read my post on planning your holiday, downloaded my handy trip itinerary and taken a look at it. And you don’t like what you see.

If it looks like a lot of work, let me assure you it is a lot of work. However in my opinion, travelling independently still beats joining a package tour. Here’s why.

Sleep all you want

Look at any tour package advertisements and you’re likely to see a long list of attractions. Tour agencies know that the typical package tourist expects to get his money’s worth. That means advertisements and trip itineraries are usually crammed with activities to do and sights to visit.

Looking down the glossy brochure, you drool at the prospect of seeing the Effiel Tower, London Bridge and Stonehenge for the first time. What you didn’t know is that you’ll be seeing all that in 2 days. Say hello to waking up at 6am, wolfing down a greasy breakfast and squeezing into the coach with your fellow, bleary-eyed travellers.

In truth, you crave for a couple more hours of sleep. Forget London Bridge.

Do you really want to crawl out of your warm bed at 6am when holidaying? I definitely don’t. I prefer to wake up when i want, have a leisurely breakfast and then enjoy the sights.

I’ve have it no other way.

What do you actually experience?

With a full itinerary, you get to see more but experience less of everything. Imagine being told “you have 1 hour here” after a 2-hour drive. Barely enough time for you to take a few photos and stroll around.

And don’t forget that while you’re there, you’re fighting with “mates” trying to grab their share of the sights and photo-ops. Worse still if the sights are far apart, you’re more likely to spend much more time on the road than at the sights. Not only do you wake up early, you’re likely to hit the sack late.

Interestingly, if the itinerary is not scheduled fully or “packed”, what then are you paying tour agencies for?

Some people seem to think that the whole point about going on a holiday is the number of sights they tick off the itinerary.

Zero Tour Fare

I’ve not heard of this particular term but this unethical practice do surface in the news occasionally. The tour agency sells a package but instead of organising the programme and ensuring the tourists are looked after, they “hive off” the group to an agent in the destination country. These foreign agents do not get a share of the tour fee and rely only on the tourists spending extra money on additional tours and at shops they are taken to.

I’ve heard of horror stories where tourists were coerced into spending money against their wishes. In one case, the agent even refused the tourists entry to the coach when he felt that they “didn’t spend enough”.

If it’s up to me, such companies would be fined so heavily that they face bankruptcy and have their owners blacklisted by the Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (i.e. business registrar). Cut off their livelihood and maybe they will pay more attention to how they run their businesses. Simple isn’t it?

So do you still want to join a package tour?

Travelling by package tour is usually cheaper than travelling by yourself (for the same itinerary of cause). That’s because tour agencies are usually able to negotiate better deals for accomodations and air fares through bulk purchases. But is what you get really worth saving those few hundred dollars for?