More Preparations

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PENSION GAP : FINAL PREPARATIONS 22 July 2008

1. Paperwork
After recently reading in the press about James Pennington, a nineteen-year old from Wimbledon, who sustained severe injuries after a moped accident in Vietnam and then discovered that his insurance policy didn’t cover the costs of medical care and repatriation, one gets a little bit paranoid about travel insurance. This boy’s parents thought that they had done a good job of researching policies on offer to ensure that their son was well-covered for his Gap Year travels. He had the accident in May, just four months in to his travel year and it cost the parents 25,000 pounds. As the boy’s father said to the press, when disaster strikes, insurance companies will happily find a loophole! We are notoriously bad in our family when it comes to tedious things like travel insurance. In fact, the last time we went to Thailand we blithely forgot to buy any at all! The Eastern gods were on our side that time but this time around we are being more sensible! We haven’t got 25,000 pounds! So, we have spent ages surfing the net and reading terms and conditions and we think that the insurance cover we have is pretty comprehensive. Time and fortune will be the judges. Anyway, it’s all booked on line, paid for and the documentation printed out to add to the folder that contains our e-bookings for flights. We printed all of it out, all twelve pages of terms and conditions which include some very small print, and some vague phraseology open to debateable interpretation to boot: but they were all like that so we’ll just trust to the gods again, even although the insurance cost us 700 euros (350 euros each) but that isn’t bad for eight months travel.

Whilst web-surfing, we discovered a very sensible site called “locate” run by the UK Foreign office. This encourages travellers to submit their itinerary to the foreign office, so that, in the event of a major disaster, like a tsunami or earthquake, they know which UK citizens are in any given country. Of course, they won’t know exactly where one is, if like us you are independent travellers, but it helps. This means that, having submitted the dates of our departures and arrivals, say for e.g. from Indonesia to Malaysia, they send an email to the respective consulates or embassies with the details. Then, they can locate and notify next-of-kin more quickly. This is an excellent free service and takes just a few minutes of one’s time to set up. So, we’ve done that too, printed out the blurb and added it to the folder. That’s the paperwork done!

We are not booking anything else, no hostels, campsites, trains or boats or hired wheels: we’ll take all of that as it comes; with one exception. When we get to New Zealand in November, it will be the height of summer and the plan is to hire a campervan for five weeks, to enable us to see as much of both the North and South islands as possible (we fly to Auckland and depart from Christchurch). For this reason, on the advice of well-travelled others, we have pre-booked the campervan on the net, paid by Pay Pal, printed out the booking. Sorted! There is a big temptation to keep surfing and booking things up because it is pretty exciting but we have resisted this. The spirit of the whole experience will be lost if it gets too organised. We don’t want to know where we’ll be sleeping after landing in San Francisco at the end of August. We’ll wait and see what we find when we get there!

2. Making a Packing List
I’m not naturally a light packer. I always take far too many clothes so this is going to be a cathartic experience. The final list looks smaller than I usually pack in a wheelie weekend case! However, I’ve done a trial pack and the skimpy, frugal list simply has to be sufficient, because I cannot comfortably carry more than 15 kg on my back. Also, since the limit is only 20 kg on some of the flights, I need space for things I’ll buy. Any hefty souvenirs, however, we’ll just ship home. We both have backpacks as well, which can strap on to the rucksacks, so that gives us a bit more weight as hand luggage. It is a bit crazy, however, I mean, like 2 x jeans, 2 x shorts, 7 x shirts/t-shirts and this is for eight months!!!! Well, can’t worry what I look like and when the clothes wear out, I’ll dump ‘em and buy some more.

Two essentials I’ve decided upon are a new waterproof camera and a lightweight travel laptop. Last year in the Caribbean, we used a cheap disposable camera for underwater shots of green turtles, parrot fish and a host of other colourful specimens. The photos were OK but not great so we’ve just bought a really nice Olympus that can stay submerged for up to an hour. Like kids with new toys, we tried it out in the swimming pool (see photos)

The other essential is my little Asus Eee PC 900. This is a great little laptop, wi-fi enabled that weighs under a kilo. The travel blog will depend on it and it will prove a godsend for downloading travel guides and checking air schedules, bank statements and so on. The Asus is a brilliant travel companion. It isn’t available yet in Spain. PC city have the Asus Eec PC but not the 900 (which is the latest version with a bigger screen). So I ordered it online from the States and it came within 5 days and the shipping only cost 35 euros. Apart from the Asus, however, , no other luxuries can be allowed. The luxuries on this trip will be sensual not materialistic: the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feel of diversity and cultural experience. So who needs a hair dryer with all of that to look forward to!

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Photos

Viv
Trying out the new camera

John
Thumbs up from John