(;`･_･´) All The Things I Worry About Before Traveling Abroad

If anyone knows me IRL, I’m not a person that steps outside the door alone unless I have a very good reason. Those cases involve:

• eating because I’m starving to the point my head hurts
• going to the bank because the thing that I need can’t be done online
• going to the hospital/clinic because I needed to Listing a few to share it’s those types of scenarios.

Stepping outside already brings some mental stress, so I’m also hoping to write down this post to visualize all the things I worry about and see if I can address them.

Visa/Immigration

I don’t always decide where I get to go, so if a Visa is needed, this is always the first thing I worry about. There’s really nothing to do about this when it’s a process out of my control.

Another thing that may be related to Visa is I sometimes scare myself on going through immigrations. I did have a few incidents where the immigration officer wasn’t a nice person, but most of the time things went smoothly, and that’s what I need to remind myself of.

Plane Ticket

At this point, I am sure that I’ll be going, so it’s time to buy a plane ticket. Although it is a set decision, I always find myself taking wayyy more time than needed when buying the ticket.

I even search for seating charts online because even deciding on where to sit (if I get the chance to pick) feels like a burden for me.

Things I hesitate about:

• Should I upgrade to one level better than Economy for long flights?
  • My butt is not suited for long flights. I had been on a flight with a fever (it was not during COVID times) and I still remember I was checking the time only to see 5 minutes or 10 minutes had passed for a 10+ hour flight. A nightmare! I was already lucky to have a row of three seats to myself, or else I’d feel even more like I’d collapse.
• Should I get a Child’s meal?
  • I noticed the Child’s meal is always the same for the Airline that I fly with the most. It’s not delicious but it’s good to have something I know what to expect.
• Which Credit Card should I use to pay?
  • I should stop worrying about this one and just use the one that I’ve always used. I look around and always use the same card in the end.
• Staring at the screen to see I didn’t get anything wrong

So for a regular person, buying a plane ticket may be 1 hour max, it can take me 2-3 days because of all the hesitation I am going through.

After talking to my coach this month, I think I got this one nailed.

What really does matter when buying a ticket?

1. Date and time
2. Price
3. Credit card (I always end up using the same card anyways)

What I can defer to a later stage?

1. Choosing a seat and check Seat Guru, always an aisle seat when flying alone
2. Choosing a meal, even if you don’t choose, you’ll still have something to eat

Accommodation

There are too many options and so many different discounts that results in decision paralyzation. But I don’t think the source of stress is coming from here as looking through different options is quite a fun process. What I could do is to reduce the options I see by setting a budget.

The issue is that when I get to the checkout page, I take an extra couple of hours to look for a discount. Whether it’s to check the same hotel on different booking sites, trying to find a coupon code, or researching on which credit card to use, etc. I’m not sure what I would do yet, maybe time box 2 hours to do this and accept that if I spend more time on this, the value of my time is worth more than that.

Airport Transfers

Home country transfers

For personal travel, just use the airport transfer that comes with my credit card, it’s the best rate that I can get on the internet. For company travel, book with Klook.

Also in the emergency case that the driver doesn’t show up, Uber and other Taxi Apps can save me, so I always have a last resort I can use. Should not be too stressed about this.

Target country transfers

Uber doesn’t always work, so homework is needed for this. This reminds me of the time where I tried to search for airport transfers in Mexico. Then I read all the horror stories about people getting scammed. But the thing I should do at that time is I learned that booking a private shuttle will have a lot of the hassle. I should stop reading the horror stories, time box 2 hours to research for a private shuttle and finish booking.

When booking abroad, it’s always nice if they provide WhatsApp as a means of contact as phone numbers aren’t as useful for me.

Roaming/eSIM

If roaming is about the same price as getting the eSIM, get the roaming plan because you can still get SMS.

If getting an eSIM, use Nomad.

If receiving SMS requires roaming (USA), buy a roaming plan.

DONE.

Insurance

Always go with the same company, unless there’s some criteria that needs to be met. Medical insurance is more important than Travel insurance.

Packing

Use a checklist! I nailed this one quite a while ago. It may take me a couple days to pack, but I know exactly where I am in the process when I look at my checklist.

What to Do and How to Get There

What was the reason for the travel? Put that down into the spreadsheet and the others are just add-ons.

I don’t think there’s a shortcut to this process, but I do get derailed a lot by trying to find the cheapest option to obtain the tickets.

Here’s what I currently do:

1. Use a spreadsheet to plan out the details
2. Research online for where to go
3. Pin those places on to Google Map
4. Buy tickets (I get stuck here very easily and if there’s a combo ticket, I’ll go back to step 2 to check out the places that the combo ticket offers)

Figuring out transportation

This one feels okay if Google Maps works in that country. However, there might be situations that don’t work with Google Maps, like boat rides in Thailand and Korea doesn’t use Google Maps. For the Thailand case, I think there’s really no other choice but to ask people when you get there and hope for the best. As for Korea, we did our research beforehand and the Apps they use locally works pretty well.

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The next step for me is to create a flowchart which can also act like a checklist. When I can visually see which step I am in, at least I know where I am in this travel planning process.

Apart from the flowchart, here are the items I still need to streamline the details for:

• Visa/Immigration
• Accomodation
• What to do and how to get there

That’s it for now.

#travel