How We Chose The Destinations On Our RTW Trip

There’s something that most people who take a round the world trip don’t talk about and that’s *why* they travelled to certain places.

Most times, everyone starts out with an itinerary and a brief outline of sights they want to see and excursions they want to take. Often, this will fall by the wayside once you get to a place and fall in love with it. Or fall in love with someone. Or start running out of money.

Plans change, people change and time seems to start escaping you. Itinerary? What itinerary?

But what most travellers don’t tell you is that the reason they often choose certain places to visit is simple. Money.

Once you get out there in the big world and start spending money quicker than you can earn it, your plans have to adapt. There’s a reason that most people don’t spend an entire round the world trip in Western Europe and why so many flock to places like Central America and South East Asia. These places are cheap and you can sustain your lifestyle, and your travels, a lot longer.

So, in the spirit of transparency, I’m going to share why we ended up in some of the places we did during our rtw trip, and some of the reasons may surprise you.

New Zealand / Malaysia / Thailand / Hong Kong / England

New Zealand was always going to be the first stop on our itinerary and I’m glad we hit it up first because, damn, it’s expensive. We burned through money during our six weeks in the country, despite doing a WWOOF for a week and staying in hostels. It had always been our plan to head to South East Asia afterwards, but we had hoped that we’d be able to spend a little time in Australia beforehand. No chance.

I had always wanted to visit Malaysia and loved our time there. But after a expensive jaunt to the Perhentian Islands and a realisation that time was getting away from us, we headed off to Thailand.

Thailand was like a blip on our trip radar. We spent little time there and found island-hopping to be more expensive than we’d anticipated. Plus, it was rainy season. Our bank accounts were getting low and our spirits even lower. So we did what any normal couple would do, and booked a flight to expensive Hong Kong!

At this point we feared that we may end up going home soon if we continued to live as we had been doing, which was why we chanced it all on a flight to Hong Kong (a must-see destination for both of us). Scott hadn’t even met my parents at this point and as my baby niece had been born while we were in New Zealand I was desperate to meet her. We booked a last minute flight to England for a week to catch up with my family and try and figure out an action plan.

While in England, we decided that we’d like to head to Europe for the summer and try and get seasonal work. That way we could earn a little money while seeing some new places at the same time. That didn’t work out. As Croatia was on the brink of joining the EU, they were strict about any kind of work without permits and wouldn’t even allow volunteering work.

Which was how we found ourselves in Eastern Europe. Sarajevo, to be exact.

Eastern Europe (Bosnia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania) / Italy / England

We spent the whole summer and most of autumn in Eastern Europe and I have to say that I enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would. It offered a cheap cost of living and was unpretentiously beautiful.

At this point, I realised that I needed to start using my web design and web management skills from my previous corporate life to earn some money if we were going to continue travelling. I managed to pick up some freelance work through contacts that I had from my old company. After Eastern Europe, we headed to Scotland and England for Christmas.

USA

The following year, we headed to the US to spend some quality time with Scott’s family and our dog and save up a little money before some more fast-paced travel. Our next stop of Mexico was decided upon the fact that had to have on onward ticket out of US before entering and Mexico was the cheapest flight to take.

Luckily for us, we’d always wanted to go there anyway.

Mexico

We loved Mexico and could have spent much more time there if it hadn’t been for a housesit in Amsterdam that we’d been asked to do in the summer (and really wanted to take). At this point, we were starting to wonder what it would be like to live in Amsterdam and wanted to see what the city was like in the summer. If it hadn’t been for that, we probably would have stayed in Mexico or headed to Central/South America.

Spain / Amsterdam / Brussels / England

We spent a great summer in Europe and then found ourselves back in England for my 30th birthday. From there we were a bit limited on where to fly because of money and time constraints. We decided upon Turkey, because it was somewhere we’d talked about visiting for a long time and because flights were short and cheap(ish).

Turkey / Oktoberfest

By this point, I had several regular contracts for freelance work and we weren’t as restricted budget-wise as we had once been. So although we enjoyed Turkey, with hindsight we wished we’d headed somewhere more long-haul and difficult to get to.

We did manage to squeeze in two days at Oktoberfest in the middle of it all, though, which was another bucket list item for me.

Amsterdam / Christmas Markets / London

We knew that our travels were probably going to come to an end at the beginning of 2014 (for reasons I’ll talk about later) and so we tried to make the most of our last few months by hitting as many European Christmas markets as we could and enjoying some time in London, which I hadn’t done properly before.

As with everything in life, there are things we regret about our trip and things we wished we’d done when we had the chance. But we did what was right for us and our wallets at the time and I don’t regret any of the places we visited, both good and mediocre, because they were all places I wanted to see at some point in my life. Now I can say I did. And that I spent two years with no real agenda, living by the seat of my pants.