How I Have Planned This Trip

I have been getting many questions on how I was able to plan for this trip, if someone planned it for me or if I have had to take out loans to take this trip. I will go through my many ways of how I've prepared for this world tour of mine.

1. Choosing my locations

To plan my route and the countries I'm visiting, I picked out the absolute major sites and countries I MUST visit. After that, I built my trip around those places and looked to see what other places were practical to add.

My major MUST sees were Dettifoss in Iceland, Norway, Amsterdam, the Moulin Rouge in France, Pompeii, Santorini, Hagia Sophia, Great Wall of China, Phuket, Galapagos Islands and Easter Island. Once I plotted those on my map, I looked at surrounding areas and found what else was reasonable to see within a decent or cheap distance.

2. Finding my flights

I have always been obsessed with finding really cheap flights and was able to use my obsession to my advantage for this part. I used three main websites to find and book my flights.

Kayak.com Kayak is a very good resource to use. It has many different options you can use to your advantage.

When you add in an airport you're leaving from and/or flying into, you can choose more than one airport. This was you can ensure you're going to be flying out of the cheaper airport. For my area, I always use Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta and Myrtle Beach for my home airport.

You can also look at advanced options to change the range of dates. If you're able to be flexible with your dates, you can always find a cheaper flight. I usually set my date for the middle of the week and select +/- 3 days. Again, this will ensure you can fly out on the cheapest day.

Momondo.com After finding the cheapest date to fly out on on kayak, I would put the airports Kayak gave me as being cheapest on the cheapest day and see what prices I got from momondo. Almost 98% of the time, Momondo came back with a cheaper price than Kayak would.

Bookingbuddy.com Bookingbuddy is good for comparing several different websites on one page. I've found several flights on this website that are $20 to $200 cheaper than Kayak or momondo. It's just a matter of checking your resources and cross checking to find the better deals.

You can also sign up for cards that give you miles for purchases and flying their airline. I signed up for Spirit Airlines and that's how I got my $17 flight to New York. I also have a Citi card in my wallet that collects miles for American Airlines. I have over 35,000 miles which I plan on using for my flight from New Zealand to South America.

Using these three websites, mileage cards and booking my flights 6 months to a year in advance saved me a ridiculous amount of money. Yes, it cuts down on the amount of freedom I have, but I'm going on this trip to experience as much as I can and not just float around wherever I please. I needed some certainty and security on this trip and booking my flights gave me that. I know most travelers don't do it like this and that's perfectly cool. Maybe one day I'll do that as well, but for now, I'm happy with saving a ton of money and the certainty.

3. Research

Next up, was research and finding out all I could about the countries I'd be visiting. I used Lonely Planet and Frommers for basic information such as finding out the "in" season and shoulder seasons, rainy seasons, average weather for particular times of the year and so on.

For more in depth research, I went to government and embassy websites, travel bloggers who have traveled for years and years and tripadvisor forums.

I looked up visa requirements, vaccination requirements, average daily costs for living and food expenses, costs of all the touristy things I wanted to do and different modes of transportation and the cost of those different ways. One thing I also focused on was finding the American Embassies in all of the countries I'm going to be visiting. usembassy.gov shows you where they are all over the world.

This took up most of my time when figuring out this trip... Not only do you need to know what to expect to spend, when to go and what places to see but also how you should act and the culture of the people you're going to be around. When you go some where different, you need to be aware of the differences between you and the people in the country you are visiting. Respect the fact that you are a visitor in someone else's "home." Don't go in ignorant because that will create conflict and unnecessary problems.


This is pretty much the process I have gone through for each and every country I have decided to visit. I want to make sure I am well prepared and know the necessary and maybe even unnecessary information about the places I am going to. I love learning about these areas anyways. I mean, I'm going to visit them, so I want to learn about the countries. The research was long and sometimes annoyed me but overall, I loved going through this and it has helped me learn a lot and made me more prepared for where I am going.

I hope this post has been helpful and can maybe help you for booking your future trips, whether they're short trips or longer ones like mine.