Posts

Travel Advice for Ukraine

budget: £140 flights £80 Chernobyl day visit £60 trains between cities approximately £200 living costs total approximately £480 pounds 3 Days Kiev (one of which was Chernobyl) - 3 days Odessa- 1 day Karkov - 2 days Kiev - 9 days total Kiev transport Use Uber/Uklon as cabs will try to rip you off. If you need to get the bus use a company called autolux better quality than standard buses from city to city. the train to and from the airport is cheaper than the bus and gets you to a better location in Kiev. the metro and city buses and very cheap (30p a ride), frequent and prefectly adequate. the Sleeper trains between cities are pretty much the same price as the buses but better (if a little slower). Hostels Friends forever hostel has a filter that allows you to drink tap water which other hostels don't necessarily have which saves maybe a pound or 2 a day. Buy large bottles of water instead of small ones to save money. lipki globus hostel has a nice kitchen and bathroo

Travel advice for Cambodia

Cambodia Siem reap - 3 days - y ou can drink the tap water in large cities in Cambodia like Siem Reap and Phenom Phen. When going to Angkor Wat you can buy a ticket for the day the night before the day you want to go and go that evening to Angkor Wat and then also the next day i.e. the day you bought the ticket for. Also if  you're buying a ticket for someone else you need to have a photo of them as they put your pic on the ticket. Siem Reap itself has a jarring but interesting mix of cheap local markets and expensive westernized malls. Socially, Pub Street offers a great place to drink and meet other travellers. £100 spent. Phenom Phen - 2 days - is the capital city of Cambodia and has an interesting assortment of palaces, temples and government buildings. The two must do trips (both of which can be done comfortably in a single day) are the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (aka Prison S-21). Neither will make you feel happy as they both document the grim re

Travel advice for New Zealand

New Zealand - 3 weeks - Auckland, Whangarei, Paihia, Matamata, Rotorua and Turangi You can hitchhike around New Zealand. You can't do it in the main cities but you can around the towns both to get around the town locally as well as from town to town. Try and get to the outskirts of town on the road to where you need to. You can do a village visit (cultural experience of Maori culture normally 100+ NZD) in Rotorua. A much cheaper way of getting the same thing is going to kiwi kai restaurant in Rotorua or Whangarei or Nelson and getting a meal (10 NZD) and then seeing a cultural performance at the Waitangi treaty grounds, Whakarewarewa village (performance included in the price) or at the New Zealand military museum in Auckland (extra 20 NZD). the famous glow worm caves in New Zealand are Waitomo caves but they cost money. There are free ones in Whangarei and Waipu which also have glow worms and are unguided so best to do it with a friend. Also in Whangerei you can do a

Travel advice for Fiji

Fiji - 2 weeks You fly into Nadi (pronounced Nandi). You’ll probably end up staying at a Wailoaloa beach hostel. When you leave Fiji to go to back to the airport you don't need to get a taxi to the airport. You can get a bus to the main road get off there then walk left for a bit then you'll get to another bus stop this bus will take you to the airport for 2 FJD as opposed to 15 FJD for the taxi. I drank the tapwater in mainland Fiji and I was fine.The food in Nadi town is much cheaper and nicer than the food at the hostels/hotels at wailoaloa. you can get to and from Nadi town by a cheap bus rather than an expensive taxi. There is a corner store near the hostels in Nadi which sells much cheaper beer than at the hostel bar. When you go out to the Islands you can't drink the tapwater so before you go buy your own (2/3 litres a day) or get other peoples/your old drinking water bottles and fill them up at a tap and bring them before you go. At a push you can drink t

Travel advice for Vietnam

Vietnam - 3 weeks - spent £350ish - We went to Saigon, Hoi An, Hue, Phong Nah, Hanoi and Ninh Binh. Hanoi is the cheapest city in Vietnam. Hue is very expensive and mediocre. You can’t drink the tap water at all anywhere in the country. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) - 3 days - we went to the war remnants musuem, Cu chi tunnels, colonial post office, french cathedral, art museum. would recommend all of them. A lot of time is not needed for HCMC. Da Lat - due to its altitude, Da Lat is much cooler and less humid than the rest of the cities on this list. Culture wise, we spent an hour walking around the Crazy House - a hotel in the city with unique/crazy architecture. On a similar note, the 100 Roofs Cafe is a bar in the city which, again, is renowned for its interesting and complex architecture - definitely worth a trip if you have a spare evening. Perhaps Da Lat's best tourist activity is its canyoning - for roughly $30-40 US dollars you can spend the best part of a day trekking, a

Travel advice for Thailand

Thailand Bangkok - 4 days - Stayed at Lub d. Wouldn't recommend. It was really expensive compared to other places in Bangkok and in the business district. It was recommended to us by STA and we booked it not knowing how expensive it would be by comparison. It's also got links to STA which is why they recommended it to us. So slightly unethical behaviour by them. The city is filled with temples of varying sizes. You can also visit the Palace or Water Markets. China Town is also worth a trip if you have some spare time. Tuks Tuks are a massive ripoff take one once for the experience but use actual taxis if you need to get around, they are cheaper, safer and air conditioned or take the skytrain or the river boats. Whenever you buy anything basically divide the price they say by a third and haggle up to about half. £80 spent. Koh Pha-Ngan - home of the infamous Full Moon Party. Booking your hostel/hotel well in advance is essential for the Full Moon Party - places

pre travel preparation/packing list/general advice

Image
I went to Thailand 4 days, Vietnam 3 weeks, Cambodia 3 days, Australia 2 weeks, New Zealand 3 weeks, Fiji 2 weeks, Los Angeles(USA) 1 week, San Francisco (USA) 1 week, and Montreal (Canada) 3 weeks. Budget £2050 flights £3700 while travelling £200 insurance £200 innoculations £50 misc before I left £6100 total All this info is going to be from a British perspective. Booked my flights through student travel agency (STA) as well as my travel insurance and travelling credit card. I got my innoculations done privately as I did them relatively last minute but you can get alot of them done though the NHS but it takes longer to get done. private innoculations are however more expensive than ones done on the NHS. Travel credit card. Costs £10 and it's a credit card you can use around the world without any fees associated with using a normal domestic card, no fees when using it for card transactions and no card fee for withdrawing money. You get a spare for