Billie Besos

Okay, so there are not going to be any actual beaches featuring in this post, but I thought it was a relevant, travel-related title. I’m back and I’m sure you’ve really missed reading my lengthy waffling posts…

Anyway, I can’t believe I haven’t written a post on here for over two months (!). Well actually I can, because I haven’t been travelling since the last post I wrote, and this was designed to be a travel blog so I guess that makes sense. I did have a lovely week’s *holiday* in Portugal with two of my friends at the end of June, but this was a bit more luxurious than what I had been used to. It wouldn’t have filled a blog post but I did post a couple of insta pics of this trip because Portugal is so photogenic.

Pretty Portuguese scenes

I had hoped to write up a few of my brainstormed blog posts that became quite numerous throughout my South America trip, but I somehow haven’t got around to doing this. And sadly, I haven’t had as much motivation to post about my adventures when in reality I’ve been back at home working. That being said, I hope I will take the time to write up some posts including country reviews and comparisons, recommendations, advice etc.

Enough about what could have been. I have decided that NOW is the time to write a new blog post. It seems like a good time considering I am embarking on yet another adventure this Saturday!!!!! (eeeeek). I want to write about some of the things I’ve taken from my solo trip and that I am going to apply to my next one. They are some things that I would advise anyone to take into consideration when planning travels. This time around it’s already going to be a completely different trip because it’s much shorter than my last one (only one month) and I’m going with people (my bestie, my sister and her bestie).

First of all, I am adamant that I pack enough dresses for this trip as I ended up spending quite a lot of money on them in South America through lack of careful planning… especially as this trip will be quite similar to the first few weeks of my last one (basically a lot of beaches!) and I found that I literally wore dresses every day.

Dresses on dresses on dresses

I also stupidly forgot to pack a waterproof even though I knew I was probably going to be hiking to Machu Picchu, visiting the Bolivian salt flats, going to tropical climates… yeah this wasn’t a smart move. Seeing as I am going to be visiting Thailand on this trip AND it’s supposedly monsoon season there, I decided I would kit the four of us out with these gorgeous rain ponchos. What’s fashion anyway?

The way I carry my money is also something that is really important. Previously, I had most of my money on my Monzo which was the best way to travel, hands down. This made it so easy (and cheap) to take money out and I wasn’t charged for using my card in shops or restaurants. I also made sure to have a back-up debit card with me in case anything happened to my precious Monzo, and kept my cards in different locations (i.e. one in my big backpack and one in my small one). I also found that it was pretty easy to take out money out there as the exchange rates are soooo much better when you arrive.

One major difference between how I’m packing for my Asia trip vs how I packed for South America is that I am DEFINITELY going to pack LIGHTER. That’s what’s risky about having a 65-70L backpack… you’re oh so tempted to fill it up. So I literally had it bursting at the seams before I had even started my trip which was not only backbreaking but also completely unnecessary and made it pretty difficult to pick up new items/gifts along the way. I have sworn to myself that I will leave some room in my backpack this time… I am only going for a month after all.

The face of someone who didn’t pack light

I also think that, on reflection, careful planning and booking things in advance can be cheaper, and a good idea if you have limited time. On my last trip, I had all the time in the world and sometimes things even worked out cheaper if I booked them on the day. But, in the case of this trip where we are really limited on time, we have planned out a rough itinerary and have booked a lot of things in advance (thanks to my super organised friend Lucy) which will probably have made it cheaper for us.

Other little things that I have realised are essential travel items are:

– Headphones with a normal fitting (not the stupid apple charger shaped one!) because it turns out many forms of transport that play movies etc. in certain countries do not have the same fitting as the newest iPhone headphones. Who knew? *sigh*

– LOTS of first aid. I mean literally, loads. From paracetamol, to plasters. I definitely did not bring enough medicines with me and found that I spent SO much on weird tablets for different things and I now have a collection of strange Peruvian herbal medicines that I’ll probably never use again.

– Extra suncream because I’m pretty sure suncream is well and truly EXTORTIONATE anywhere out of the UK. And I’m not joking. Just for the cheapest suncreams I found myself literally paying £15 so I might genuinely just fill my backpack with suncream this time to save experiencing such trauma again.

– A properly charged portable charger. This is an item that I let sit in my bag for weeks uncharged and it would have been SO useful if I had just used it properly.

And one big tip. It is called backpacking for a reason. Yes, it’s quite nice to have a suitcase because you can have all your clothes nicely laid out in front of you. But this is what packing boxes or even CARRIER BAGS are designed for. My sister was extremely tempted to bring a suitcase on this trip but I hope that these screenshots of a video of my American travel buddy Eliza will prove her otherwise.

Here’s Eliza, having to CARRY her suitcase across a beach

I’ve got to give it to her though, she did do pretty well travelling for two months with a suitcase (and to be fair, she wasn’t planning on actually travelling so I’ll let her off). And she did give me other useful pieces of travel advice such as ziplock bags being the answer to everything. They are just great. You can sort your clothes into them. You can store medicine in them. You can keep food in them. The list goes on.

And so that concludes my post. Watch this space for Asia updates!

Besos xx