Two Bags

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Always read the small print

Seen my last post? It turns out the Blue Lagoon Resort wasn't such a bargain - that price was just for the room which looks great on first appearances, BUT after some more research we found that

A) "Single Private Shared Bathroom" actually means "Single bed in a very public dorm" 

and

B) The smaller island resorts each have a compulsory meal plan that was not included in the price charged by hostelworld.com which brought the price up to over £1000 for 7 nights.

SO, we cancelled Blue Lagoon and after a bit more searching found the fantastic Wayalailai Eco Haven Resort which is a cool £455 including meal plan for 7 nights.

We finish at Wayalailai on June 29th and do not fly out to Sydney until July 3rd (another bargain flight at £390 for two) so we are going to see where the wind takes us and do some exploring over those few days.

Another thing ticked off the list is Working Holiday Visas.  What a great online system the Aussies have! We both submitted our forms online at 9pm last Saturday and 11 hours later we had approval e-mails sitting in our inbox.  Pricer than I wanted but as we budgeted £245 per application we were very happy when only charged £213 and some pennies.

Lastly this month we have bought our insurance.  We went with Direct Line in the end - £234.35 from June 14th -Feb 1st.  I worked out that it saved over £70 by buying backpackers insurance for our Fiji-Aus-Thai leg and a single trip policy for our 3 nights in Los Angeles. I can't believe how much companies charge for "Worldwide incl. USA, Canada & Caribbean" compared to Worldwide excl.

All of our spending has come to a tidy £3233 so far and we only have a couple of internal Aussie flights, a few nights accommodation in Melbourne and a few nights accommodation in Brisbane left to pay for which will take us to a round £3500.

So far the saving has been going brilliantly, £1300 a month on average which will do for a pretty big adventure!

[twobags-blog]

Just booked! 5 nights at The Beachouse Fiji (Coral Coast) for £174.50 (Private Travellers Room) and 7 nights on Nacula Island is the Yasawas at the Blue Lagoon Beach Resort for £160- these are the only two hostels we are pre-booking in Fiji the rest of our time will be decided on the fly!

The best deals with the Beachouse is direct with their website www.fijibeachouse.com

We booked Blue Lagoon through Hostelworld, which whilst now the same company as Hostelbookers, is proving a little more useful!

[benandjosbigadventure-blog]

Tuesday 2nd December - Wednesday 3rd December

It was a long day. Up at 6:30am to pack our bags we headed downstairs for a final free hostel breakfast of tea and toast among the bleary eyes. A 5 minute walk took us to the Connectabus stop in Queenstown central ready to catch the 8:15am bus to the...

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2015...the year to change a life?

I realise I haven't posted in a while, but with Christmas and New Year I've been too busy enjoying my time off work and being generally lazy.

Rob and I have bought each other some pretty good gifts. Namely, two return flights to Riga for Rob's best friend's wedding (he is best man!) and two ONE WAY flights to Los Angeles!

We leave June 11th 2015 for what is going to be the best 6 months of our lives to date.

Our flights, meals and baggage came to £638 - now we need to plan how long we plan to stay in LA before heading to Fiji (between 4 and 6 days). As we are using LA as a jetlag and flight time stop there is not much that we are desperate to see there, more of a way to ease ourselves in to our new lifestyle.  Also, as neither of us can drive we are restricted on where we can go due to a combination of time, distance and expense! We both agree we'd rather have a few extra days exploring Fiji.

Now that we are well into January the real countdown can begin, and also the real savings! Together we will be saving a minimum of £1000 per month, with an aim being £1200. We already have £4000 to by the time we leave we should have around £11000 - remembering we are also paying for our flights with this total.  Our flights to Fiji are just over £500 for both of us, so we'll say so far we have spent £1138 on flights, double it plus some change and we'll have our total.

To be honest, money is not something I am too concerned about as we will be working throughout our stay in Australia for our room and board (plus a little extra I hope!).  I just don't want to worrying about it whilst we are away - defeating the object of 6 months away!

Soon we'll have to start thinking about our Visa, hopefully I will be able to give a good insight into the process, as I haven't been able to find one online yet!

[twobags-blog]

Family drama's and Canadian woes!

Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been almost 3 weeks since my last confession!

We finally told our families - Mum is not happy as she wants us to use all of our money to buy a house and settle down (she is also desperate for her first grandchild!). Understandable, however we live in London and do not wish to live anywhere else so barr a lottery win we are still years away from being able to buy property (fit enough to live in).  She will come round.

If I have learnt one thing from these last few weeks it's that plans change, and quickly! You'll be pleased to know that I am now temping, it's good money, dull work, but is a means to an end and they seem to like me so fingers crossed it will be longer term.

We've also decided to exclude Canada completely from our itinerary and head to Fiji from LA for a few weeks before setting up camp in Australia until January 2016, we'll still keep the Singapore-Thailand leg as is.

As far as budgeting is concerned we think we have done quite well.  Including all taxes, baggage costs etc our flights will total just over £2500 (for both, not each!) leaving us with £7500 to play with.  Accommodation in LA is looking pricey, but we are hoping to become excellent house sitters for at least part of the time we are there. Fiji, in particular Nadi, has some very reasonably priced hostels (Private rooms from around £8 pppn) that are recommended.

We expect to enter Australia with £6000, and as we are there to work I am hoping this will be more than enough (please someone tell me if I am dreaming!).

I'm booking our flights from London to LA this week - £269 each, absolute bargain Norweigan.com! 

[twobags-blog]

#jamaica #ochorios #sun #sea A little taste of our summer. I'm hoping to recreate this next year on our travels!

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Visa woes!

We still haven't told our families that we are going away - I've now set a time limit on the end of this week!

Also, finding temporary work has been harder than I thought, but this evening I have another potential so fingers crossed for this one.

We've been looking into Working Holiday Visa's for both Canada and Australia.  Canada is going to be hard! There are only around 5000 available for UK citizens and the 2014 program was so heavily subscribed they ran out within 30 mins.  We will still try for the Visa (when the High Commission finally announce dates!) but if we are not successful then it's back to the drawing board.  

We originally planned to stay 3 months in Canada (only possible if we can work whilst there) and another 3 months in Australia.  The Aussie visa looks a lot simpler (if a lot more expensive) than its Canadian counterpart so I don't think we will have a problem with it.  I'll let you know how the applications go!

So, from our initial discussions, and barring any Visa dramas our trip will look a lot like this:

London to Los Angeles beginning of June 2015 (8th or 9th)

3 weeks around California with a quick trip over to Texas (bucket list)

From LA we will head to Vancouver and stay in Canada until the end of September.

From Vancouver we go over to Sydney until December, after which we will spend 2 weeks making our way from Singapore, through Vietnam to Bangkok, where we will fly home to London around Dec 22nd in time for Christmas!

If the Canadian Visa does't happen I think we will head over to Sydney early, and really make the most of our time there - it might work out for the best!

[twobags-blog]

Two Bags

After reading several DIY travel blogs to attempt a start at planning my own trip I decided to set up Two Bags for a few reasons.

1. It will help me be organised

2. I have an outlet that won't bore my friends and family to death!

3. I know there will be those of you out there who will point out any mistakes, and also give me hints and tips!

4. Hopefully, someone like me will stumble across it when planning their own trip and will find it useful

For those of you who don't know me - I recently became unemployed and had been using the excess of free time to really think about what it is I want my next step to be.  My partner in crime, and incredibly understanding boyfriend is a very successful deputy manager for a very large and very prominent hospitality company but has become disenchanted with our situation.

I've been the little devil on his shoulder and have somehow convinced him that we should go travelling for around 6 months as of June 2015.  He has now spoken with the powers that be and arranged a career break - we have no mortgage, no kids, no real commitments - it's now or never!

We still haven't told our parents as there is the worry that they will disapprove, especially as we plan to use some of the money we had saved for deposit on our first home, and we know they will not like that. But I suppose we just have to remember that we are 27 and 28...oly enough and ugly enough to make our own decisions.

I'll let you know how that goes!