How Tech Has Changed the Trip Planning

Nineteen year's ago I did my first OE (Oversea's Experience/gap year/year out). I didn't call it my 'first' at the time, as I thought it was going to be a once in a lifetime experience....however, here I am almost 20 year's older, with a husband, a good job, a lovely house by the sea, about to do it all over again!

I've noticed how different things are this time in terms of planning. Given that my job involves working with tech companies this isn't really a surprise, however I hadn't really understood what it meant when we started thinking about our adventure.

​​I look at our bookshelf and see the row of travel guides that I literally lugged around the world in my rucksack. I sometimes carried three of these weighty tombs for weeks on end...the country I had come from, the one I was in and the one I was headed to next. I waited until I had a chance to send them back home or had a friend or my boyfriend (now husband) come and travel with me for a couple of weeks and who would take all my excess when they returned home!

We haven't quite decided on our technology for the trip, but I can guarantee we will not be lugging around these books!

So, what else has changed?

Trip Planning

In 1999 I was visiting travel agents, collecting brochures and flicking through them to see what I wanted to do first. I was travelling solo and a bit nervous so I decided to do a Tucan 'overland' organised tour through South America (which I loved). There were no websites, limited photos and the only reviews I had access to were the short snippets of happy travellers printed in the tour company's own brochure! Funnily enough, this photo never made it to the brochure!

Can We Do It?

Actually setting our mind to this travel thing is a big step in it's own right. For about the last 2 years I have been listening to various podcasts on digital nomads, people who are running their businesses from different locations around the world - podcasts like Become Nomad, Travel Like A Boss and Zero to Travel. Some come with e-newsletters with tips, some have been dire and I have deleted them. While I don't see us ending up as digital nomads these podcasts have been quite good in stimulating my thinking, giving suggestions of useful websites and apps and in committing to a date for leaving!

Where To Go?

OMG! There are YouTube videos on everything....and I mean everything! We had a basic plan of where to go, but in terms of details we have used YouTube to:

1. Look at destinations we want to go - we want to do the Trans Mongolian Railway, so search 'Trans Mongolian Railway'

2. Find out about destinations we know nothing about, such as China. We start the Trans Mongolian in Beijing and I would like to see the Terracotta Warriors too. Presumably there is more to China, but where to start? There's a plethora of videos made by vloggers, the Chinese Government and TV companies about places to visit.

3. Education - I don't want to be an ignorant traveller. There's also lots of documentaries about the history and facts of places we want to travel. Some are quite light, such as Michael Portillo's Railway Journeys and Lucy Worsley's history of the Russian Tsars; or there's details of human right's abuses and government crackdowns through the ages.

Google Maps is pretty useful as we flick back and forth between suggested locations and the map. Especially useful to work out distances between locations and if public transport is available or not. Was pretty helpful when showing Chris that despite the fact China and Bhutan share a physical border, you can't actually travel across it!

Booking a Flight

Eighteen years ago I went to the travel agent and bought a "round-the-world" ticket. This time, we felt we'd like to do a lot of our travel overland...but living in NZ we do need a flight to leave!!

Once we worked out we wanted to fly to Kerala I used Sky Scanner to keep an eye on the flight prices for us. It emailed me alerts of any price changes and when it got to a good price we bought.

Flights booked, easy. We're now committed to leaving NZ on 18th January 2019. From here everything else slips into place.

Google Flights does a similar thing, but didn't seem to have flights as far in advance as we were looking.

Buying Kit

When I travelled before I relied on the kit guide from the Tucan tour-pack and listings in the Lonely Planet South America. Chris helped me pick out a sleeping bag and rucksack from the outdoor gear shops and my mum sewed me a sleep sheet from an old cotton sheet, much heavier than my current silk liner!

Now? Well - of course, there are YouTube videos on which rucksacks are best, the features of all the rucksacks, what people pack in their rucksacks (including what they wish they hadn't packed) and the wonders of packing cubes (which were definitely not a thing before)!

Once you've decided on the kit, you can go online to buy. We decided to buy the Osprey Farpoint 55 and Osprey Fairview 55 and were actually going to buy from our local store, but they didn't have them in stock across the whole country and so we ended up buying them from Webtogs which I had never heard of before. Once they arrived we both squealed a bit about how small they actually are. I'm definitely going to have to watch a few more vlogs on how to efficiently pack!

At the other end of the scale, Trade Me has been pretty useful. Not only have we used it to sell unwanted kit in our (somewhat pathetic) attempt to de-clutter, I have also bought a nice new Icebreaker merino t-shirt for $20 and we bought a storage unit (for considerably more)!!