I have backpack experience traveling to Sabah for a mountain climbing and island hopping trip. And now I had just experienced another backpacking trip at overseas. Looking into backpack experience, every preparation has to be in detail.
Before you begin the trip, you have to plan how many members in a group. Is it a 4 people trip or 2 couples trip? Are they in the same interest? Do they have attitude problems? It is best to have 4 or 8 person in a group to travel. It is easy to share car or van or tables. 4 people are just nice to fit into 1 compact car or 8 people to fit into 1 van and share the expenses together. I would prefer to have 4 people in a group; smaller group is easier to control. If you are planning to travel in romance, then 2 couples are ideal. For example, you intend to have a romantic honeymoon trip in Venice, 2 couples will be great. To have 2 couples you can help each other to take pictures instead of depending on passerby to snap a photo of you. Some of the places where they do not speak English such as German, Italy or France and you will have difficulty to request a stranger to take picture for you. To meet people with the same interest to go traveling together is important too. I had a very bad experience going to tour with a group of people that has different interest. When I intend to visit the museum but they are not interested at all, it is hard to let your group member waiting for you to go into the museum alone. I love to photograph around when I go travel and my group members have no interest at all and they do not wait for me. Or your group members are more interested to do shopping at every country they visit where else you have no interest in shopping at all, you will bore to dead! Spending 3 or 4 hours daily in the shopping mall is really a waste of time for me. Worse is your gang is more interested with their personal handset more than the scenery. People with attitude problem or troublesome are not a good idea to travel along as well. Being not punctual can kill the traveling schedule of the day. This will affect your travelling destination schedule. When I was in Japan, due to not punctual when shopping at the outlet and we miss the chance to enter into the Asakusa temple. It was close at 5pm. Inconsiderate is another attitude that can crack the team spirit! There was once we plan for a trip and he requested the trip to begin at 1pm because he intends to sleep more. What is the reason you go for tour? Other bad example like: calculative, selfish, ego, uncooperative, etc…
Book your flight ticket at the cheapest rate and plan your trip well. Take note to check where we should fly from to get the cheapest rate. For example: flying to Munich from Singapore is only USD 700 but if we fly to Munich from KL could cost you USD 1200. We can buy a low cost carrier such as AirAsia or Tiger Air to fly from Malaysia to Singapore at lower cost. Check your passport before you fly make sure it is not expired! If you are driving at overseas, please confirm whether you need an international driving license. And also your local driving license expiry date. Make sure all are between the expiry dates. Money! For sure you need money when you go for travel. Make sure you have sufficient money and change in the correct currency. Try to have some USD or Euro as spare cash and keep it away from your wallet for emergency use purpose. Make sure you inform your bank that you will be going to overseas for the period of time and request for the ATM card that can be used in overseas or request your bank to authorize your credit card to be used at overseas. For Maybank ATM card you need to write in to apply for international usage, while for Public Bank Berhad ATM Card, they will issue a new international ATM card for you to use it at overseas. I think traveler cheque is not popular nowadays.
After all the basic things we had determined, now is the time to plan for the trip. First, where do you wish to go? USA? China? Europe? Once you have decided, you need to get the map of the location where you are planning to travel to. You can search it from Google Map where it is quite useful when you need to check the traveling duration and also the transport to reach your destination. Once you have decided, print the map or print screen. You may need the picture of your map when you have no wifi access. Usually I will print the city train map, the ideal road trip map such as traveling from Amsterdam to Paris, to Colmov, to Stuttgart and so on. There are also several website that allow you to check your cost of traveling journey. One of the useful webpage that I can share is www.viamichelin.com, where it will help you to check the traveling road map in Europe you can estimate your tol, petrol and also road tax.
There are few things that we need to take note when checking the transportation at overseas, such as: Car rental, fuel price, tol, train ticket, parking rate and the road tax. If you are going in a group of 4, driving a car can save a lot of money. There are a lot of diesel engine vehicle in Europe and USA where, it can reduce your fuel expenses. The price different between petrol and diesel is approximately 20 Euro cents per litre. Where is it about RM 0.80 per litre. Traveling by train allows you to rest and overnight in the train but it takes longer hour to travel. However, some country will have higher expenses when we travel with personal car, for example: Italy. You have to pay tol by traveling from one destination to another and the parking in Italy is quite expensive too. 8 hours parking in Venice car park cost 8 Euro (Euro 8 = RM32). On the other hand, parking in Munich can be expensive but you do not have to park for long hours at most of the places. If you are traveling by train or public transport, make sure you have the route map before you travel. You can snap shot the map from your phone or you can take a picture of the map. Make sure you can refer and confirm your train direction is correct. Some places require road tax but no tol, for example: Czech Republic and Austria. Before you pass the boarder of the country make sure you buy the road tax and place it on your front window. You can buy it at the border or you can buy it at the petrol station that near the border. Remember to avoid fine! Summarize for transportation check list, you must check:
1. Car rental rate.
2. Car parking rate.
3. Petrol rate.
4. Tol rate.
5. Road tax in the country.
6. Train ticket
Next we have to check the environment, which includes: Weather condition, locality, accommodation and also the season pass. Some of the countries are the 4 season country. If you like hot weather, summer is the best time for you to travel, longer in day and shorter in night. For tropical country citizen wish to go holiday on winter to experience the snow but I get you will regret after you begin your tour. Winter has shorter day and longer night. During winter, the sun rise at 8am and sunset at 4.30pm. You have too short day time to tour and you will feel more tired when the night comes. For those who have no experience to drive in snow, it is very difficult! A lot of places will be closed. Another troublesome on winter is the winter jacket that will takes up a lot of space in your bag, heavy and you have to put on and off when you go travel. You will need the jacket when you are at outside but you need to take it off when you are in the building. It is too hot to put on the winter jacket at indoor. It is not easy to adapt to the cool weather for the people from tropical country. The freezing atmosphere is really terrible! I would recommend going travel on spring or autumn where the weather is not very hot, it is cooling and you will have the experience to see the flower blooming or the changing color of the leaf. It is wonderful! Sometimes if you are lucky you still manage will see snowing at these 2 seasons. I experienced snow in Japan at the end of autumn and I experienced snowing in spring in Germany. Weather condition will also reflect on season pass. Some of the tourist center is close on winter. For example: White gold mine or Ice cave in Austria is close during winter. In order to save some cost, accommodation and locality are the strategic idea! Getting an accommodation near to the tourist attraction point might be quite expensive but it might reduce your parking cost and also your traveling time. However, you may get a much cheaper rate accommodation that further from the tourist destinations, but you can get the accommodation location that is near to a train station that allows you to take public transport to your destination. Some country public transport is free. Penang Rapid is free. Also make sure that the tourist destinations that you are going are hopping from one place to another and do not have a round trip to come back, return journey is an extra cost.
There are over night trains in Europe for long journey. You can plan to overnight in the train and reach the destination on the next day. For that, you will be able to save the hostel cost when you travel at night. Make sure you are well train to sleep in the train or in the bus! During my Italy tour, I experienced sleeping in the car in the highway. It is quite safe to overnight in the car in Europe and there are numbers of people were overnight in the car at the highway rest area. After having our late dinner at McD (12 midnight) we drove to the highway rest area and we reorganize the car and we slept in the car. Stop by the rest area, we have wash room to brush our teeth, we can buy coffee in the morning and some of the rest area may have 24 hours restaurant service. The experience gave me an idea to travel in Europe in low budget. With this, I would recommend a group of 4 people to rent a 5+2 seater car; while to rent a caravan is for more luxury tour experience.
Last is to pack your bag and get yourself ready to go. As a backpacker, we always have think of ways to reduce our things when packing our bag. We have to list down the most important things to the least important things to pack. Clothes and pants are rarely important, as you can buy it from your tourist destination. Priority, travel document are the documents you must pack, there are:
1. Passport
2. Visa (if require)
3. Air tickets
4. Entrance tickets that you have purchased
5. Accommodation booking number/ document
6. Transportation tickets that you had purchased
7. Driving license (both local and international)
8. Identity card or ID
9. Cash
10. Pen Drive
For E-booking, make sure you save a softcopy into your pen drive/ computer/ handphone where you can print out anywhere anytime. Some of the places allow you to scan the bar code from your phone for entrance but some are not. My friend lost his 40 Euro ticket when he did not print out the ticket copy when he was entering into the Munchen football stadium because the bar code scanner only accept paper scan.
If you are traveling to the seasonal country, there are several things that need to take note during winter season.
• Long john
• Winter jacket
• Jacket
• Lip bum
• Hair cap
• Glove
• Pair of good shoe
• Socks
You do not have to bring a lot of winter jackets when traveling. You only require 1 winter jacket, glove, hair cap and maybe 2 jackets when traveling. Long john is expensive, it is around RM 200++ for a set of quality long john but you only need 1 or 2 sets. You will not sweat even you run for a Kilometer. Winter weather is cool and dry and you can wear it regularly without washing it. However cool weather clothing should be brought along during spring or autumn, as the weather in spring is cool in the morning and warm in the evening. Temperature fluctuates from -4 degree to 18 degree.
Personal belongings are quite depending on personal. I would like to share in general and I would like to discuss the purpose of it. I shared base on my experience.
1. Toiletries
2. Clothes for 7 days
3. International plug
4. Extension plug
5. Umbrella
6. Sunglasses
7. Chopstick, spoon and fork
8. Thermos
9. Container
10. Cup
11. Instant noodle and instant coffee
12. Egg rack
13. Camera and sufficient memory card or hard disc
14. All charges (laptop, camera, handphone, etc)
15. Tablet or notebook (Luxury option)
16. Walkie Talkie (Luxury option)
For the first 2 items are quite straight forward, I would like to skip that. International plug is very important when we travel to other country and make sure you check the voltage supply from the country. US voltage supply is 110V and Europe is 240V. Make sure you have the right converter or international converter. Some countries do not have international plug converter but they have selected plug converter only. Make sure the one that you purchase is for international use. You may have 2 international plug but you may need more plugs, therefore bringing an extension plug is an idea. At least to have extra 4 or 5 plugs will be good. You may share with your partner or friends to save some space. During raining season, bring a small umbrella or a rain coat will allow you to have no obstacle to tour even during rain. Bring as spare. If you are driving, good sunglasses is important for the driver. During summer will have a longer day time where the sun might extremely hot and shining straight into your view and a pair of good sunglasses helps. Prepare to cook one or 2 simple dishes can save up a lot as eating in Europe or US the currency is expensive to us. Simple McD menu cost about 8 Euro which is RM 32. And usually for Asian, we will miss our home food after eating much the European or American food. We would prefer rice or noodle more rather than beef, fries, chicken chops, etc… I would recommend to bring a pair of chopsticks, spoon, fork, thermos, air tight or microwave safe container and metal cup. Instant noodle or instant coffee will be great too. You also can bring egg rack place the egg if you wish to have half boil egg or instant noodle every morning. This plastic egg rack is useful especially on backpack tour. It can prevent you from crashing the eggs in your bag. To eat a ready-made German sausage may cost you 2.50 Euro per serving (1 pc hot dog). While you can actually buy from a sundry shop at 5 pcs of hot dog at 2.30 Euro. With an air tight container you can cook your instant noodle with the container. Or you can use the container to make your corn flakes breakfast. Price of corn flakes at US or German is affordable! I manage to find 750g corn flakes is less than 2 Euro and milk is selling as low as 0.55 Euro per half litre. If you are bring your own instant coffee and I bet your breakfast is close to RM 1 per day which is much cheaper than eating a plate of wan tan mee in Malaysia. Otherwise, you can prepare your lunch in the lunch box/ container and bring it together with you when you travel and you can save some cost for your lunch. This is very common in Europe. Quite a number of tourist prepare their own breakfast and lunch. Simple lunch like bread with ham or hotdog will make your day. For sure you need a camera and sufficient memory card or hard disc to record down all your memories and make sure you bring all the charges too.
Last is the luxury items where I feel is quite useful. A tablet or notebook/ netbook are good enough for you check your tour destination. This will give you the luxury facility to check your itinerary, perform flight online check in. You also can perform file transfer from your netbook. These devices help in communicating with your love ones when free wifi is available. Last item that I feel very useful is the Walkie Talkie. When I was missing from my group member, I used the walkie talkie to communicate with them and search for them when the free wifi was not available. It is useful when you need to communicate with your group member.
