Dream Travel: How to Prepare for an Epic World Adventure

Do you believe that dreams come true? Are you always thinking about your dream travel?

If your answer is YES, welcome to our side of the ship, you are the person 11019181812217227 who believes in yourself and will probably get to take the trip of your dreams one day.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s make an announcement. When you read this post we can tell you right away:

we achieved our goal, we are traveling the way we wanted and it’s fantastic!

Tips | Our Plan | Budget | When to travel | Buy your ticket | Documents | Copies | Family | Work notice | Insurance |  Health | Visa | Travel cards | Subscriptions | Travel gear | Conclusions

This post may contain affiliate links. We earn a small commission if you purchase something through the affiliate link.

We are definitely fulfilling our (travel) dream as we decided to travel around the world. Our first destination was South America and we traveled with no plans or specific dates established.

In the beginning, Chile was our first destination. However, due to the protests of the Chilean people over the rise in transport prices and the government’s decisions to use military troops to stop them from creating only more disorder, we have decided to change the country. 

And from there our journey continued, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and others were many of the countries we had the pleasure of visiting.

At this moment, in 2024, while you’re reading our post, we have decided to experience Iceland, the land of ice and fire, after traveling and living for over a year in various Asian countries.

What we know for sure is that every day that will pass will be another day in which we will be proud of our decision to leave everything behind and travel the world together.

We know for a fact that many of you might start thinking:

Are you or your family rich?

What are you going to do with your work?

How are you going to earn money to travel?

And also,  how can you be far from your family?

To answer all these questions, we direct you to another post which we wrote at the exact moment when we left our jobs to follow our dream.

 

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Grab our Travel tag and Let the adventure begin!

OUR TIPS – Dream travel

CLARIFICATION: This is not a post to make us envious, we are very far from this idea.

The truth is that we want to help you take that damned first step to achieve your travel dream.

You only need three things to pursue this dream:

1. Believe in yourself and in your dream

2. Have some money to start with

3. Plan and Organise in advance

Sorry amigo, but the first two points only depends on you.

However, in this post, we will try to help you with the last point to plan and organize in advance.

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OUR PLAN (without plans) – Dream Travel

At the beginning of this project, we continually thought about what we would do or where we would go, however, each time we returned to the same doubts and with nothing plan yet. So after a little while, we decided to make our travel dream without a specific plan. In this section, we will explain what does it really mean.

A plan without plans is something like: you have to organize the basics for a trip without thinking about what to do or where to go exactly. Sounds a bit weird right?

For example, we have organized everything up to the last detail (PLAN), however, we haven’t organized anything that we are going to do on this trip (NO PLANS).

We will explain some things that we have decided to follow during our trip:

1. Travel as much as possible without flying. Travelling slowly allows us to enjoy more places and save money.

2. Follow summer and the sunny seasons as much as possible.

3. Respect our daily budget.

4. Do not hurry and follow our feelings.

5. Once a month stay in a good hotel and enjoy all the comforts (this always respecting our budget).

You can not imagine how much adrenaline can be accumulated when you don’t know what you are going to do tomorrow.

Below we are sharing our way of preparation and things we did before we followed our dream and start travelling around the world.

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1. HAVE A BUDGET TO START – Dream travel

It might seem obvious but the first thing you are going to need for travelling is a specific amount of money. With a specific number in your head, you can start making plans on how much you need to save every month to reach your budget.

To give you an idea, our budget for the world trip was 40 EUR/per person/per day. This includes everything, accommodation, food, transport, tours, and more.

After the pandemic many things have changed and many people now travel and work at the same time. We have also changed jobs and are now by natural definition digital nomads, people who travel while working. So you have several options for traveling, it’s just up to you to make some initial sacrifices to pursue your dream travel, you have no more excuses now!

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2. CHOOSE THE  FIRST TRAVEL DESTINATION

Now you should already have your budget, you’re working remotely or getting closer to it, so your travel dream is a little closer. The next step is to decide on your travel destination and how much time you will dedicate to the trip.

It was very important for us to set some basic rules since deciding to travel the world in one year is a bit ambitious.

Our plan was to start travelling in South America to follow the summer season there and respect our daily budget.

Currently, in 2023 as we explained before, we are working remotely as digital nomads and still trying to follow our daily budget and above all we are still trying to travel as slowly as possible.

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3. WHEN TO TRAVEL – Dream travel

Choosing the right season is very important so you can avoid the rainy season or bad weather.

For example, if you live in Europe and you want to go to South America during the summer (there), you will have to travel during the European winter. It is true that South America is huge and you can find variable temperatures in each region.

However, in general, the months between October untill March are the best for travelling there.

Same for a big part of Southeast Asia, like Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia etc.

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4. GET YOUR FIRST FLIGHT

If you want to travel to the other side of the world and start your new adventure, at some point you will have to get your flight ticket.

We bought our one-way flight from Barcelona to Santiago de Chile a few months before the trip as after days of searching we found a great deal with Iberia airlines.

To know more about how we find the best flight deals, check our post with all the tips.

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5. PASSPORT AND IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS

What is the most important thing for a traveler?

Without a doubt, the most important thing to always keep safe both before and during your dream travel is your passport

If you still do not have a passport getting one will be your first thing to do. It always takes time and a lot of energy so yes, start now!

If you already have a passport, you should definitely check the expiration day as many countries will not accept a passport that expires within six months from the start day of your trip.

Our experience: Simone’s passport was expiring soon, so he definitely needed to get a new one. It took him about two months to receive a new passport so just keep in mind when renewing your passport.

Another advice and totally recommended is to get an International driving license. Normally it is valid for one to three years depending on the country you will travel to. So if you are planning to rent a car during your trip, it is always better to have it even if nobody asks for it.

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6. MAKE COPY OF ALL DOCUMENTS

After having all the documents in hand, making copies of everything is equally important

We always travel with copies of all our important documents like passports, IDs or driving licenses, and even the bank’s details. We carry all copies in our luggage and we also save all documents in Google Drive or Dropbox.

Our advice, save everything you can online as you never know when you will need it. We also left copies of all documents to our families so in urgent cases they can still send them to us when we are on the way.

As people say, better safe than sorry.

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7. PREPARE YOUR FAMILY – Dream travel

It may seem like an obvious step, however, it is always good to notify and prepare your family that you will be travelling for some time.

When we were informing our families, they had different reactions and sometimes they just need time to absorb all information and get used to the fact that you won’t be reachable all the time.

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8. GIVE A NOTICE AT WORK – Dream travel

It is an important step as it might take months before you are able to leave your job. Check clearly the conditions of your work contract and when exactly you have to give notice to not get into trouble and lose money.

In our case, we informed our employer 2/3 months ahead so they had time to find someone else instead.

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9. TRAVEL INSURANCE – Dream travel

Totally necessary and essential like having a passport. Every time we travel we have travel insurance as you never know what can happen during your trip.

Currently, there are many insurance companies offering travel insurance and it might be difficult to choose the right one. Our advice is to take this step slowly, investigate, and read all the conditions before you make your final choice.

We always use TrueTraveller as they provide what we are looking for in travel insurance. The big advantage is also that you can get your travel insurance online even if you are already travelling.

Did you forget about your travel insurance? True Traveller is your chance to get it now.

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10. VACCINATIONS AND MEDICAMENTS

If you are thinking of travelling to exotic or not-so-developed countries, it is always recommended to get the correct vaccinations.

To know which vaccination you should get, visit your doctor or local medical centre to ask about it.

In general, we have these vaccinations for our World Trip:

Yellow fever, Hepatitis A, B, Tetanus, Tyfus, Cholera

Most of these vaccinations have various cycles and you will need some time between each cycle. Our advice is to start at least 6 months before your trip to make sure you can get all your vaccinations on time.

Regarding the medicaments, we always carry a first aid kit in hand luggage and a bigger kit with other medicaments in our backpacks.

In our first aid kit, you will find the medicaments we might use more frequently like painkillers, eye drops or travel sickness pills.

In the bigger kit we carry medicaments we almost never use like antibiotics or anti-malaria pills.

Our Advice: If you are going to travel for a longer period, we recommend buying a water filter. We use this filter for daily use to avoid buying plastic bottles all the time.

In this post, you can see all our travel gear and what we recommend to take for your trip.

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11. VISA – Dream travel

Getting a visa is a very specific topic based on the country you are coming from and where are you going to travel.

Many countries offer the option to get Visa at the airport when entering the country. Sometimes you can get Visa online or your country has an agreement with that specific country and you don’t need Visa at all.

As we don’t have an exact plan when we are going to be in a specific country, the best advice is to make a list of countries you know that for sure you need to get a Visa before coming.

For us, this country is, for example, China, as you cannot obtain Visa online either at the airport. What we have to do is basically going first to countries around China that provide Chinese Tourist Visa and get it there before entering China itself.

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12. CREDIT CARDS AND PAYMENT

During your trip, you will most likely visit a country that is using a different currency than your local currency.

If you are going on a shorter trip, we would say that not so much preparation is needed. However, the difference is when you are going to travel for some months.

In our case, we travel with a credit card, a debit card, and two prepaid cards. We almost never use credit and debit cards only in case of emergency. For our daily use, we have two prepaid cards:   Wise and Revolut

Both of them have simple Apps and great exchange rates to withdraw or send money, just what you need for your trip. They also have two different payment systems (one MasterCard and the other Visa) so you are practically covered almost everywhere.

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13. SUBSCRIPTIONS/MEMBERSHIPS

Another important point before starting a long trip is to cancel all your subscriptions or membership which you have accumulated during the time.

We mean not only the electricity, water, gas, and internet but also all the little things which you probably won’t use anymore like Magazines, Sport TV programs, Prime Amazon, gym and others.

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14. TRAVEL GEAR – Dream travel

For traveling you get accessories that will be useful throughout your trip.

Friend, in these years of travel we have also opened an online shop with many products that could be useful to you during your trip. it’s a project we care about a lot, it’s called funfoodtravelgear.com look here, I hope you can find something useful.

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15. CONCLUSIONS – Dream travel

These are all the points which we organized before our trip around the world.

We think that certain things are essential to prepare before you go anywhere as it is definitely better to be ready for everything.

We wrote this post for the first time after our escape from Santiago de Chile to Buenos Aires due to the demonstrations. In all these years, after many countries and a lot of accumulated experience, we continue to recommend organizing only the first flight and accommodation in advance and not planning the trip two months in advance with flights and everything else. It is much better to enjoy the trip without plans, which also offers more flexibility and adventure.

Just think about the last few years, those with a pandemic involved, how many travelers have been forced to change their plans due to different rules. Millions of people lost a lot of money because they had to cancel their flights and rearrange their entire trip again.
Do what you want but take the first step and follow your dream journey. See you around the world, your Fun food traveling friends.

Feel free to comment and provide the best tips for organizing a trip around the world. Do you have any recommendations? Leave a comment or send us an email with your suggestions.

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