Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I am Chanel. I'm Stevo. Together, we are How Far From Home. At beginning of 2015, we left our comfortable lives in Johannesburg, South Africa to take a dream trip around the world searching for credible inspiration. Our mission was to see how far from home we can get, literally, and figuratively to see how far out of the comfort zone we can push ourselves. When we left, we had four bags packed with all our essentials. We sold everything else. We quit our jobs in advertising, said goodbye to our friends and family and took the next available flight. So far, we've matched with huskies in the arctic circle, we've experienced some midnight sun, we've sailed through Greek islands and explored many cosmopolitan cities throughout the Europe. We're documenting our travels on howfarfromhome.com, our web blog, as well as to being a track of all the kilometers travelled on our Instagram page at howfarfromhome. This class is called Travelling the World on Budget. We're going to teach you everything you need to know about taking a dream trip you've always wanted to take. Everything, from how to pick the trips that distinctly and mentee, to all the essential tips you're going to need before and during your travels. We're going to look at accommodation bookings, currency conversions and even some resources to help make the trip better. We're going to walk you through the planning process and any bumps that you may encounter along the way. We're going to show you that just someday trip can happen a lot sooner than you think. The project is a creative challenge. We want you to describe the ultimate trip you've always wanted to take. We want you to name it and describe it in under 500 words. You can use reference videos and photos to buff it up visually. Describe what you want to see, what you want to explore, what you want to taste. It's a sensory experience. Are there any major sites you want to see? Remember, this is your bucket list, the big one, something you want to take off. The project is ultimately a visual cue designed to get you thinking about your trip. So, the reaching your budget goals will seem like the obvious thing to do. We're going to need you to get up and motivated so that you can take the trip you've always wanted to take, no matter your age or budget. How long should the project take you? Well, it shouldn't take you longer than a weekend and you've really thought about your dream trip, just like we had, it shouldn't take you more than two hours. The trickiest part is probably pinpointing the exact experiences that you want to have. It's actually easier said than done. You're going to have to do some internal searching and questioning to figure out how you would spend your time, if you had the time to do that at the end of it. We fill the swollen details. It's a sensory experience. So, stop over the rough idea of a vague trip you want to take and then think about; what is your mission? What do you want to achieve on the end of the trip? Remember, it's the little things you've always dreamed of, the long things you've always wanted to see. So, be very descriptive and this is exciting. You're taking something out of your bucket list. So, have fun.
2. Setting Goals & Your Vision: Every trip needs a mission. Even if the mission is to get lost and plan nothing and walk around the city, you still need to know what you want to achieve. Begin planning your trip by writing down a list of all the things you've always wanted to see and do. This will ultimately guide your budget and all your resources. We created something called a Wanderlist. It was essentially our travel bucket list. It had everything from taking selfies with koalas in Australia to fishing for salmon in Alaska. You just told me to do [inaudible]. Yes. So creating your Wanderlist has may benefits. For one, it helps you plan your itinerary, so you can group trips together. So for example, if you've got Brazil, Chile, and Australia, and New Zealand on your list, you can obviously group them by continent, which helps save your time and of course, money. Once you have your list, you're going to start researching the cost that go into that trip. So for example, we knew that we wanted to go for a road trip around Southern Norway. We then decided to look at all the costs that would go into that trip, such as the rental of the car, the petrol for that car, and any camping spots we might find along the route. Obviously, the more research you do, the better, but you'll always run into surprise costs. For example, in that road trip that we just spoke about in Norway, we didn't plan for the expense of tolls that we had along the route. So those surprise costs ultimately affected our budget, and I think we ate bread for the rest of the trip. So, we would always say, have about 10 percent more cash in each city, just in case. The final step at this stage is to plot a rough itinerary. We created a spreadsheet calendar that showed every day of the year. We started filling it in as we researched things we wanted to do and experiences we wanted to have. I would say that the final calendar we created about six months before our actual departure day. As global travel is becoming more of a norm and it's evolving, it's becoming easier to connect with people. So do your research on the new services that are available to make it easier for you to travel. We lived like Locals, with Locals, not having to pay for any accommodation or food. All for a few hours of volunteer work each day. Besides volunteer work, you could look at house sitting, pet sitting, or if you're into education, there are various exchange programs available. So depending on what you're into and what you're interested in doing, there are multiple options available that you could just research. So once you know your experience and you know your trip that you want to do, the next thing you have to do is research the best time of year to go. It may seem pretty self-explanatory that you want to go skiing in winter, but knowing when in the season is the best time to go is very important. So for example, in Europe, sometimes it's better to ski in February rather than December. So see what other experience hunters say online and just do your research. Travel blogs are normally a really good resource for this kind of information as they provide very honest feedback. However, if you are struggling to find information, you can always contact a couple resorts in the area. They'll know their service best. Knowing when to visit a place is very crucial. So keep in mind that certain places close due to weather, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. For example, in Austria, we wanted to visit some of the ice caves in Werfen recently, but they were closed for most of the winter. So we had to make a note to come back in summer. So just do your research and check up on that.
3. Planning: Long Term Travel: So, your wanderlist is already set up. Now this is your first important document. This is your vision, your list of dreams, and your list of dream items and places you want to go see. Obviously, this may change as you discover more places in the world, but that's okay. Think of it as an organic document. Wander will never be complete. Our wanderlist for example, is growing daily as we get suggestions from our community members on Instagram and on our Blog, sending us challenges and suggestions of things to do and places to go. There's just too much of there in the world to see. It's becoming a new way for us to travel. So, never underestimate the power of local knowledge. Talk to local people or people that have done it before. You might add some more undiscovered items to your list. So, the rough calendar you have been working on, now slowly starts to fill up. This becomes your go-to-calendar. So let's call it the itinerary. This is now your second most important document. Your third important document, we're going to call the tracker. This will log all your planned expenses, such as transport and accommodation costs. We are going to keep all important information such as costs and reference numbers, and also track all your expenses. We planned around 80 percent of our trip here, and the rest we booked on the go. So, make sure to have budget prepared for the unplanned 20 percent. For example, when we were staying in Alta, within the arctic circle at the top of Norway, we decided to spontaneously take a road trip up to the North Cape. Although this was not in our tracker, and we didn't budget for it, it was something we have to do. This tapped into our unplanned budget. But we thought it was worth it because we got to see the midnight sun, then we saw herds of reindeer, and it's just something we had to experience. It was credible, totally worth it. So, to save your tracker on another sheet in your document, you're going to create a detailed list of the following columns: city of departure, city of arrival, date of departure, time of departure, the cost in the local currency or the currency you paid, the cost in your currency which you linked to your exchange rate with the formula, the name of the service provider or accommodation, your reference or booking number, a notes panel, and whether you've paid or not. So, as you make the bookings, it's important to log them in your tracker. Putting the dates, the reference numbers, which payments are still outstanding, et cetera, it may seem obviously very simple, but if you book 30 flights for a year, this gets really confusing and you are going to forget some information. Even though we use the system for our year long trip, it is helpful even for short trips. It is always important to have anything stored in one place. So, keep it backed up on your laptop, hard drive, Dropbox, Google sheet, whatever your preference. You never can be too careful so keeping multiple digital copies of something is a must. Other important documents you should keep digitally includes your e-tickets, your booking references, your e-mail confirmations, scanned passports, IDs, visas and your international driver's license. We kept most of those documents on our laptop. We also emailed it to ourselves, so we could find them on the go. The only thing we printed were our e-tickets, and those we kept and filed with our passports, and we took this folder absolutely everywhere. When planning for your trip, be aware. The most expensive thing that you are going to pay for is air travels. So, you are going to want to book this way in advance. I think we booked most of our flights about eight months before departing. We flew about a land of airlines obviously because we were always looking for the cheaper deals. We flew loads of Red Eye flights. So early mornings with long layovers. For example, our trip from Munich to Sydney recently, took us over three days, with six hours stopover in Dubai, and 24 hours in Bangkok. It might seem tiring, it might seem like this isn't worth it, but it gives you a chance to try local delicacies, it gives you a chance to see the world. So just embrace it. The benefit of taking the not so popular flights as well, is that you get to save money for experiences at each destination. For example, with that trip, we were able to save up some cash to use in Sydney. So, we went the Toronto Zoo, had some ice creams at N2, even took the popular mani ferry, all because we did a bit of compromise. So, I think the best way to describe air travel is compromise. Yes, you'll be getting up a little earlier, it may be tough, but at least when taking the cheaper route, it's going to end up being more beneficial. There are obviously two sides to a coin, and there is a disadvantage to booking your flights, or pre-booking your flights. You are going to want to leave, sometimes. This happened for us in Copenhagen and Stockholm because they're beautiful cities and we just didn't want to say goodbye to them. But you can remember that some airlines allow you to book flights with cancellation policies. So, just make sure to tick that option when booking your flight. We would advise you to always, always, always read the fine print. Make sure your checked luggage is included in your fair. We have been caught out to a couple of times, where we have arrived at the airport, and this was not the case and that actually shot the price of the flight quite a bit. So, just be careful with that. Visas are also biggies. So, depending on the passport you are traveling on and the place you want to visit, research ahead of time. I would say, at least a month in advance. Yeah, most countries are very advanced with their visa applications, offering online options for you. It's very very simple. So, you can organize this before departing and you receive it instantly as a downloadable file in your inbox. You can only pay for them with credit cards. So, it's very, very simple and friendly. We actually found this was the case on our recent trip to Australia and to Turkey. We were able to book everything online beforehand, we got the PDFs emailed to us and we printed them up before going. Super simple. Then when we were in Dubai and Thailand however, we got free visas because that was just the way the nation works. So, I suppose the lesson here is, do as much research as you can. Most travel agents will also be able to advise you so you check to one when booking your trip. Otherwise, Google is always your friend. If you're looking for a volunteer service such as workaway like we did, organizing you host six to 12 months in advance is key. It's good to note that go hosts actually get snapped up quite early. So, you want get in touch as soon as possible. The workaway profiles normally show an available to calendar up to a year ahead. So, you can actually plan as far as 12 months in advance. Just remember, a lot of the hosts do a fair amount of research on you so, have your workaway profile up to date, as well as all your social media profiles looking clean and professional. No drunken selfies. Get rid of those. So, we organized a great host in Italy, an Italian dog trainer, all because we shared our dog photography portfolio with him. So, besides doing a lot of normal volunteer work that he wanted us to do, we also used our skills in building a website using our photos for him. So, we will always say, promote your unique skills that you have because you never know when that can help you. Some other things you're going to want to plan in advance are organizing airport connections, especially with your hosts. So, always have your host's contact details for easy access offline. We messes this up a little bit. We had lost I've stored on Evernote, and you need to sync your Evernote. So, when we arrived at the airport, although there was free Wi-Fi, we had to buy a local SIM card in order to activate the wi-fi. So that was an unnecessary expense that could have been avoided.
4. Planning: Short Term Travel: So, as your calendar starts to fill up and departure date gets closer and closer, you going to want to do some last minute check-ins to see if there's any specials available. For example, in Europe, in the summer, there's tons of music and art festivals around. So, you're going to want to find some local bloggers or local Instagrammers, and see if there is anything coming up so that you can plan your exact dates around that. A good way to get to know your city or a city when you're there, is researching it on social media. In that way, you can discover the festivals and the events that are happening as you speak when you're there. So, search for cities hashtag. For example, on Instagram. This gives you a possibility to join other local Instagrammers. We found that they always enjoy showing you around their local city. It feels like a very personal tour at the city. It's a good way to do it. We've been quite lucky both in Berlin, and Vienna, and Salzburg. We've had locals take us around all because we found them on social media. So, don't underestimate the power of it. Something else you might want to look into a few weeks before departure, is contacting your local host if you are staying within. You want to confirm your date, your pick-up, any special dietary requirements that you may have. That sort of thing. For short land in sea travel, we feel there's no need to book that far in advance. So, for train and ferry tickets, these can be bought on the day. We found buying ferry tickets in Greece, easier on the day as well as train tickets in Germany. It's easier from the ticketing station, they don't line, and we found that not all attendants understood the online process. The tactics that we used in Bangkok, we organized just outside the station. That was also done pretty soon. The overnight train trip that we had in Sweden, we had to book three weeks in advance using only the local currency, which we then had to organize with our local host. So, I suppose the lesson in all of this is you cannot do enough research. Checkout blogs forums. These places always discuss the pros and cons of when to book and when not to book, as well as familiarize yourself with the local transport that you're going to be using. Remember when in doubt, if it's not too far, just have a walk. It's healthy, it's free, get out there. You'll get to see more of the city. So, walking, we're very pro walking. It's a win win. To find some good accommodation deals leading up to a departure, why not contact some spots a few weeks in advance to see if they have any off-season deals or any discounted specials. If you're lucky enough to have a large social media following, you can benefit from discounted accommodation or sponsored experiences, or for some exposure on your social media channels. When we were in Florence, we scored a very cool deal. We got a vintage Fiat 500 tour off Florence, all in exchange for a blog post in Instagram posts. So, it was a great idea and we were very lucky. We found hotels.com to be very useful with finding accommodation specials. Not only do you get a special price when you sign up, because sometimes the hotels need to fill up some extra rooms. They've also got loyalty programs. So, for every 10 nights that you book, you get one free. I think we're yet to use that but- We are almost there. Almost there. I mean, we are great. Yeah. So, one or two more we'll be there. Booking.com also has a larger ray of specials. We sign up to a whole bunch of newsletters from all over the place, which saved us relevant deals straight to our inbox.
5. Budgeting: Your budget is your lifeline. It'll decide essentially which flight you're going to take and how many second thoughts you're going to need when you're in Austria. You're going to want to tick off as many items off your wonder list, so budgeting ahead is crucial. So once you've created your wonder list, we advise that you open up a new bank account. This is going to be separate to your main bank account and it's going to keep all the savings that you have for your trip. You need to treat it as a monthly debit order until you reach your goal for your dream trip. For over a year, we managed to save about 15 to 20 percent of our joint salaries and place that into the account every time payday came around. So, losing 15 to 20 percent may come as a shock it was to us, but the trick is to forget about the money, pretend that it never existed. This gets you practicing a life living with less and it helps you prepare for your trip. It's obviously very important to travel with less. So consider this tight budgeting a listening going back to the basics. For us, personally, it was quite a feat. We had a very crazy lifestyle back in Johannesburg, and retail therapy and socializing with our friends on weekends was our escape. So, we really had to be committed. I think it helped having the other person, it helped motivate us and encourage us. So, if you do have a support team to join you or to just encourage, we definitely give you recommend that. So once you've researched all the costs that go into transportation and accommodation that you're going to have throughout the year, you can start to work on a trip budget. So, of course, this can only be an estimate due to fluctuating exchange rates and surprise costs that you're going to get along the way, but at least it's a rough idea of what you're aiming for. Your expenses will obviously depend on what you're planning to do and how you maintained on traveling. For us using Workaway was a huge win, because all our accomodation and food costs were covered by the host that we were staying with. In May, for example, we knew that the only cost we had to cover were two flights to get to our host to Norway. In June however, it was slightly more expensive, because we had to cover a road trip and we needed flights to Copenhagen and Stockholm, and then all the food and accommodation in those cities. So, we budgeted each month separately and then took it from there. So, depending on the length of your trip, we do recommend budgeting per month instead of the entire trip. Breaking down the budget just makes it easier for you to keep it under control. Similarly, we recommend booking your Workaway excursions four weeks at a time. Again, it's easy to budget that way. You don't get confused with the 14th of one month and then the 12th of the other.
6. Packing: Only pack the essentials, seriously. Leave that extra jackets, or those extra boots you have behind at home. We advise doing a mock pack about a week before you leave, just to make sure everything fits. So, when you're doing your packing, your going to want to create three piles. A Yes pile, a Maybe pile, and No pile. The Yes pile will have all utility and plain colored clothing. I would probably recommend not packing white, because it gets dirty quite quickly. But all your black, your gray, I mean, we were pretty much sporting everything we brought, put them in the Yes pile. Your Maybe pile, you add the stuff that like, but you want to see if there's still space, and then your No pile is your partying stuff. All the items that only go with one outfit and one season. You're going to want to leave that behind. When doing the actual pack, you're going to want to roll everything. For some reason, it saves a tone of space and it's also easier to spot clothes. You can roll all your tops together, your buttons, and then it's very easy to spot stuff on the go. Your valuables, such as laptops, tablets, and cameras, we advise you to take with you in your hand luggage, and only use your check-in luggage for clothes. We normally don't take excessive toiletries with us, because those can be bought anywhere you go. They're so heavy, you really don't want to take them anywhere with you. For your hand luggage, you don't want to keep an empty water bottle in there that you can fill up at the boarding gate. It's important to stay hydrated but you don't want to spend ridiculous amounts of water. I think we ended up spending something in the city like four and a half Euros on water in Oslo, just because we needed water after we'd bought it. You need to hydrate. So, stay hydrated and this is just a good way to save costs. Check all airline luggage allowances before you leave. Summing international flights allow anywhere from 30 to 35 kilograms, whilst domestic flights, 17 to 23. So, just check beforehand, because you don't have to loose some items when you arrive and when connecting flights. Obviously with train and ferry travel, there is no baggage allowance. So, for us it's our preferred way of travel. Can you tell the nervous fliers that seriously, train and ferry travel, no baggage restrictions. So, you're pretty much safe there. We tend to dress really, really warmly on planes. We put all our heavy clothes on. It looks a bit weird, you might get some strange looks. But yes, the flights might get cold, but it saves luggage weights. Luckily, they don't weigh you when you go onto the plane. So, pack all those layers and try to get as much on as possible. Speaking of weight, invest in a luggage scale. They're available at most travel stores for next to nothing. You might want to shift some stuff around if your big suitcase is slightly too heavy and you might want to put some stuff in your hand luggage. So, do that before you leave. You don't want to be caught doing out of chicken with cues behind you.
7. Essential Travel Resources: For motivation, we read several books before departing. This got us into a good mindframe before we left. We love James Wallman's Stuffocation. It encouraged us to live lit, way before we even departed. Miki Agrawal's Do Cool Sh*t was also awesome as it gave us the perfect steam to actually go ahead with the trip. Stefan Sagmeister's talk about The Power of Time Off was a major reason we took this journey. We highly recommend it. You can find it on YouTube. Fellow travel bloggers like Sabrina from Just One Way Ticket also played a big part in this. For planing your wanderlist and any important contact information, we love Evernote. It will become your best friend. Everything from written notes, URL's, ideas, or contact info, you can save it on all devices and switch between your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac, whatever device you are on. Just remember to always sync. For plotting your itinerary and your tracker, you can use Excel, Mac Numbers, Google Sheets. They are all super simple and pretty self-explanatory. Google Sheets, you can edit on the go from any device. Yeah, which is why it's our favorite. For budgeting and doing your monthly trip budgets, we recommend Trial Wallet. We log every single expense no matter how small it may be. Even when we go to the bathroom and have to pay 50 Euro cents, we log that in there. It allows you to have daily and trip budgets and it prompts you with cheeky comments when you've over-spent. You can easily switch between currencies too. So, it's an extremely versatile app that we highly, highly recommend. For booking flights, we use an app called Skyscanner. Basically, what it does is it looks across all listed airlines that are happening as we speak around the world. It's very indepth and it lists from length of trip to how much a trip costs so you can decide, and that will ultimately help you save money. You can also highlight and save flights so you can watch them to book them later. So, for example, if you know you are interested in booking a flight in 10 months' time, you can highlight it and then as the price goes up or down, the app will notify you. So, you know when it's a good time to book. For accommodation bookings, we use things like Airbnb, hotels.com, hostelworld or booking.com, Costco and even Workaway. It all depends on your budget and what experience you want to have. We normally look across the board between all the apps and go with the budget option. For example, when we were in Stockholm, we spent a night in a hotel from a special price that we got on hotels.com, and in Copenhagen, we needed something a bit bigger so that we could accommodate our friends as well. So, we looked on at Airbnb and found a cozy apartment there. Luckily, all services have apps available. So, you can do research from your phone, whether you are on the train or at the airport,, and you can just switch in between and see what is the best option. For volunteer services, we use Workaway and Housesitters.com and I think we just met so many incredible people from those. We live like locals with locals, offer just a few hours of volunteer work per day. It really is quite rewarding. In Sweden, we lived surrounded by beautiful, beautiful lakes and we went on 3 am road trips where we spotted things like moose, baby fox, cubs, so you are just immersed in the wilderness and the authentic way of living. Yeah, the joy with using something like Workaway is that every experience will be unique. So, it's a great opportunity to see the world and you are able to live like the people that live there. For currency conversions, we use an app called Kurrency. The conversions are done in real time and it's really super simple to switch between currencies. For carrying money, options vary from bank and bank. We had a travel card that we got at the beginning of our trip. We loaded a couple of currencies on there and then we've been using it to pay at Visa terminals and withdraw cash from ATMs or all over the world for the On The Go purchases. Unfortunately, we did lose it once, but the replacement card was delivered within a few days to our address, free of charge. So, just have a look what your bank has on offer. I'm pretty sure everyone has a Forex option. For staying connected, whether you need to access your Google Maps or sync your Evernote or you need to watch Skillshare On The Go or just get in line with your social media, we highly recommend Tellink local services. We follow it the easiest and most efficient way to stay connected. All you have to do is purchase a global SIM card from tellink.com, it gets delivered to you from Belgium. Next, all you have to do is load it with some cash and this you can use for data, SMS, and voice calls, and what it does is it actually links to local service providers in that country. So, you're always connected wherever you are. For language lessons and learning a few local phrases before departing, we recommend Duolingo. There's various languages on offer, everything from German to Spanish, Italian, French, and what's quite cute is the app reminds you daily that you have goals to be met and you have phrases to learn. So, it's always good to know a few basic words before leaving. Staying connected with friends and family we feel is quite important. So, obviously social media is something we turn to and it helps keep your communities clued up on your whereabouts. We've scored many a free night in certain cities from friends of friends, all by posting our plans on social media. So, it's a great tool and we think you should use it when you can.
8. Closing: So, now that you're completely pumped, I can't wait to get creative with your dream trip. Remember to submit below and share it with fellow Skillshare students. Let the ideas flow, have fun designing your ideal trip as a first step to living your dream. It's creative world that connects memories and not things. As humans, our mission should be to explore and discover. So, let's spend what limited time we have doing just that.
Chanel & Stevo Dirnberger, How Far From Home
