Our Big Plan - 9 months of long-term travel

Introduction

I remember walking along the esplanade with my mum, after having a particularly rough time at my corporate job and explaining to her that I didn’t know what I want to do with my life.

“Why don’t you just take some time and travel?”

That was her response (or something along those lines, I can’t remember exactly).

I had always wanted to travel long term at some point in my life, which she knew, but I could never find the “right time” to take the plunge – there was always university or work aspirations standing in the way.

“There’s never going to be a perfect time”. That’s what she told me next.

I went home and brought it up with my boyfriend. While he wasn’t completely sold at first, I could tell the cogs were turning.  

About a week later, we took a little weekend getaway to celebrate my birthday. Unfortunately, it rained the whole weekend, so we were stuck inside. Fortunately, we got to talk more about this whole long term travel thing.

Within five minutes, I think we had agreed to quit our jobs, end our lease and move in with his parents to save money until we left.

In full disclosure, we had already been talking about taking a year or more off sometime in the future to travel or work overseas (but in our minds that was at least 3 years away).

We had also already spent countless nights researching different countries, coming up with a massive bucket list of experiences we wanted to do in the future. So, it wasn’t completely out of character for us to do something like this. But it was still a very quick turnaround.  

In our minds we had convinced ourselves that it was perfect timing (even if there is no such thing). We already had a two week trip organised to South-East Asia that was 3 months away. We would just cancel the flights home and keep on travelling. Our lease was ending in a month, we just wouldn’t renew it. “Perfect” timing.  

Little did we know how big a task we were taking on in such a short amount of time. We soon discovered that planning a long trip requires a very different mindset compared to short getaways.

The dark rain clouds rolling in that led us to making one of the biggest decisions of our lives so far!

The Big Picture

Our departure date was already set - 3rd October 2024. So we needed to come up with a plan around our pre-existing holiday.

After a few weeks of research and discussions, eventually decided on the following schedule:

Phase 1 – Asia, including our original trip of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand plus additional countries of Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Japan and the Philippines.

Phase 2 – Europe, including the countries Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Balkans region.

Overall we decided on a 9-month timeline (with the possibility of extending or shortening), mainly based on our budget. We also needed to be back home for our friends’ wedding by October 2025.

When forming our itinerary, we considered various cultural festivals, when peak/shoulder seasons were, how the weather would impact any activities we wanted to do as well as how far our budget could stretch in different countries.  

This was a large chunk of time in the planning process, and quite an important part, so we’ll talk about how we formed our itinerary in more detail in a later article.

Phase 1 - Asia

We used Google Earth to drop pins on any city that we were interested in visiting

We started our time in Asia as we had already booked a shorter holiday for the first 3 weeks in October. Looking back on it now it was a very full itinerary, which included FIVE countries in 19 days. This was mainly to make use of our frequent flyer points which meant we had a short stopover in Ho Chi Minh City on the way there and in Hong Kong on the way back.

After cancelling our flights home our original itinerary had us ending in Chiang Mai, Thailand. From there the next couple months of our itinerary unfolded– working our way from Northern to Southern Thailand, then flying to Nepal to make use of the ideal hiking window before heading back down south through India and Sri Lanka.

My partner’s family had already planned a trip to Japan in February, so of course we would go and meet up with them!

We also found cheap flights from Japan to the Philippines, which was another bucket list location.  

As we were planning on our laptop, we used shared Apple Calendars  to keep track of where we wanted to go and when. It was easy to keep track of and update as needed. We talk more about which tools we use to plan our itineraries here.

Phase 2 - Europe

Top Tip: You can share Google Earth with anyone that you are travelling with to assist with the collaboration process

Phase 2 is still in the works, but we already have the first leg down.

We start in Spain (using our frequent flyer points to fly from Manila to Madrid) as we wanted to attend the Las Fallas Festival in Valencia. This sets us up to explore Spain and Portugal by train, before flying to the country at the top of my bucket list: Italy!

From there we plan to explore the Balkans, but nothing has been confirmed or booked at the date of writing this. But we will update as soon as we do! 

Budgeting 

As you can imagine, creating a budget was one of our primary concerns. To start with, we sat down and talked about how much each of us was willing to spend on a trip like this.  

Once we had our number, we wanted to see if it was realistic with our bucket list.

We initially struggled with how we would do this – as each country was so varied in terms of cost per day.

In the end, we just budgeted for each country accordingly. This sounds simple- but it definitely took some time to figure out!  

At this point in time, our budget has been reasonable and very easy to stick to. But our planning skills will definitely be tested once we hit the more expensive countries in Phase 2! 

A part of budgeting includes planning for any visa costs - excel is a great tool for keeping track of dates and totalling costs

Final Comments

As we embark on this journey, we’re filled with excitement, curiosity, and, admittedly, a bit of trepidation. This plan feels like it has been a long time in the making, and while the next eight months promise a whirlwind of experiences, we know there will be ups and downs.

We’ll be sharing our learnings along the way—both the triumphs and the challenges—so others can benefit from our experience and maybe feel inspired to take that leap when the “perfect time” doesn’t quite come. This trip is not just about ticking places off a list; it’s about discovery, adaptation, and growth. We can’t wait to see where the journey takes us next. Stay tuned!

Day one of our big adventure!