alwayswandering-lost

[alwayswandering-lost]

Update: July 30, 2022

So unfortunately, things have not gone exactly according to plan. While Dubai was a lot of fun (see my last post for details!), I haven’t been able to keep up with my savings requirement like I wanted to. Since March, I’ve only managed to put aside another $1300 towards my travel fund - a far cry from the $1250 every month (or $6250 since March).

And, disappointingly, my best friend decided he needs to focus on his career instead of traveling. I knew it was a big ask, but it was still difficult to decide if I wanted to do all this without him. I think I’ve decided I won’t (and won’t be able to) go as big as I wanted originally, but I do still want to travel as much as I can before I settle into a serious academic job hunt.

The easiest to do immediately after graduation will be the road trip leg. If anything, this will actually be easier to do without another 6-foot-talk human traveling with me haha. I’m trying to decide how I want to build out my SUV. I think at the moment I’ll have a double-walled cooler on the floorboard of the passenger seat (instead of a powered fridge like many van builds I’ve seen, since that would require a separate house battery connected to my car’s alternator), a twin-sized mattress topper (rolled up and stowed when driving so my dog doesn’t get all his hair on it ahaha), and a cubbyholed bookcase in the backseat with separate cubbies for cooking supplies, car maintenance items, shoes, emergency supplies, dog supplies, etc.

After that, I found some cool opportunities out in Honduras that sound like fun and will be useful for a future (non-academic) career path in diving. If I have enough money after that, I’d love to make it out to the South Pacific islands and New Zealand/Australia. Europe would be so baller, but it’s significantly more expensive (especially Northern/Western Europe) than other parts of the world. And knowing myself, I’m more interested in the natural phenomena of the world, but Europe seems more geared towards history and culture (which is still very cool!! I would love to engage in it! Just maybe not right now immediately if I can’t afford to do both Europe and South Pacific).

Anyway. Still working, still planning, still trying to remain flexible and okay with whatever the future holds moving forward. Stay tuned!

[alwayswandering-lost]

Dubai 2022

So we just got back from Dubai! It was such a beautiful and wonderful experience.

I actually won 2 free plane tickets to Dubai by winning a sweepstakes set up by StudentUniverse, a site dedicated to finding lower airfare for students and faculty members. Historically, I haven’t had much luck finding airfare cheaper with them than I can find on Google Flights, but I think the premise is admirable.

Needless to say, I convinced my best friend to take off the better part of two weeks and fly halfway around the world to hang out with me in a foreign country for a bit. I’m thankful we both had such understanding jobs (plural, for both of us) that allowed us the time off for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m also grateful that we both already had a good amount of money in our savings to spend on such a lavish last-minute trip.

We got a condo in the Dubai marina that we found on Airbnb. It was on the 77th floor and had some beautiful views of the cityscape, Persian Gulf, and marina. We especially loved the balcony for sunrise breakfasts and relaxing at the end of the day with some tea and/or desserts. For 10 days, I believe it ended up coming out to about $2200 USD, but it was well worth it.

We got a rental car, and I was quite nervous considering I’d never driven in a foreign country before and had heard less than spectacular things about driving in Asia and the Middle East. At the end of the day, it would have been impossible to do everything we wanted to do taking public transportation alone - the United Arab Emirates is absolutely a car-dependent nation, and Dubai in particular is so huge and spread-out that taking a bus or the metro will easily double or triple your transit time. We did have a minor fender-bender in a parking lot, but otherwise I didn’t find the drivers in Dubai to be excessively aggressive or insane (at least, they weren’t worse than drivers in most US cities!).

Among some of the cool things we did that I would consider “can’t-miss”s: Dinner at Al Muntaha at the iconic Burj Al-Arab, Skylounge at At the Top in the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building!), Expo 2020 Dubai (though sadly, this one is ending in just a few short days), Deep Dive Dubai (the world’s deepest pool for diving), the Dubai mall, sunrise breakfast at the View on Palm Jumeirah, the Dubai frame, and a nighttime stroll around the Dubai marina.

Overall, we had an amazing time and I would thoroughly enjoy going back in the next few years. Dubai is such a rich, vibrant, international city that I’m excited to see how far its innovation can go.

[alwayswandering-lost]

Financial stress :(

It’s unfortunate that I worry so much about how much money we’re going to have saved by the time I graduate. At the moment, we’re a little under halfway to our goal, if we’re pooling the amount we have saved. Which means we have 14 months to come up with the other 54%!

I’m considering WWOOFing or working part-time as an English tutor/etc. for part of our journey. I’m really concerned we’re not going to have enough money saved up to do everything we want to do, and I love the idea of being immersed in the local culture rather than skimming over and doing the touristy stuff. He says he’d rather skip the Europe leg of our trip, but I’d personally like to keep it if we can. It’s someplace I’ve always wanted to go and, yes, it might be more expensive than Southeast Asia, but it seems like such a quintessential backpacking trip that you can’t just skip everything each country has to offer because you’re broke.

The other option is to have a roommate for the rest of the time I’m in the States. I’ve never lived with other people before, but I’d be able to put aside another $500/month towards my savings - that would be huge. That alone would put me at my savings goal! But there’s also the personal and social ramifications that come with that that I’m not sure I’m prepared for - learning to live with another person, sharing chores and responsibility, worrying about ruining our friendship by living together, etc. It’s a lot to ask!

I wish I could think about anything else. I try not to let it get me down too much, but it’s hard when this trip is my main motivation these days (even though it probably should be finishing my dissertation and enriching my graduate training...oops). If anyone has any tips, it would be greatly appreciated, and I’ll update as soon as I find something besides intense and detailed budgeting that works for me :)

[alwayswandering-lost]

Hello world!

So! First official post about the BBB (Big Backpacking Break). I get the feeling this blog is mostly going to serve as a journal for me, but I’m choosing to go public with it in the event it could help others who are looking to travel more. Hopefully you (whoever you are) can learn from my mistakes and successes as we go along.

As a short introduction, I’m currently a PhD student a little over a year away from graduation. I came up with the idea to visit all 7 continents in a year because I was struck with this idea that I was 21 (at the time) and, though I was undoubtedly accomplished academically, I felt like I hadn’t done any living. My future career as an academic loomed in front of me and while I found it exciting - who doesn’t love the idea of job security, flexible work hours, and pursuing your passion project? - I also felt stifled by it. Decades in the same lab, the same university, doing the same work with the same people stared me in the face and, honestly, that terrified me. The idea that I would just jump straight into a career with the idea that wherever you get tenure, that’s where you’ll remain for the rest of your life made me realize I had to do something BIG before that happens.

I’ve spent probably a hundred hours working on the BBB itinerary and researching everything you can think of: the various locations me and my best friend will be going to, of course, but also equipment, flight routes, travel visas, foreign currency exchange rates, credit cards, local customs and etiquette, and much, much more. (Time that may or may not have been better spent working on my research haha.)

I’m sure someday soon I’ll make (a version) of the BBBB (the Big Backpacking Break Bible) public so whoever reads this can see everything we’ve taken into consideration for budgeting and planning purposes. For now, I’m going to keep it private for safety concerns, but I’m really excited for the day I get to show it off. I’m quite proud of the spreadsheet, to be honest - it’s a great reflection of my dedication and thoroughness in planning.

As it stands now, we’re still very much in the planning-and-saving phase. To visit all of the places we’ve decided are most important to us in the time frame we’ve allowed, it looks like between transportation costs (planes, trains, (boats,) and automobiles, oh my!), food, hostel/hotel costs, and miscellaneous spending money, we need to have at least $30,000 USD per person saved by the time we leave. Considering I’ve only been saving for a year and only have another year to save, that’s about $15,000 USD I need to make in addition to what I need to pay my other bills a year. Which is difficult! I live alone in the city and I pay all my own bills (i.e., I don’t rely on my family to pay for anything for me). I currently work 3 jobs while doing my PhD to try to come up with $1,250 USD extra a month to put towards my savings. It certainly doesn’t help that everything continues to get more and more expensive. Last year, I fell just short of my goal and ended up saving $10,112 saved since March 12th, 2021. I’m trying to remain optimistic.

It’s difficult adjusting to a much more grind-centric lifestyle - there’s little financial room for those “treat yourself” moments everyone enjoys and while I’ve chosen jobs that pay (somewhat) well that I also happen to enjoy, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find people who would rather work than stay home and watch TV or relax with friends and loved ones. I often get discouraged thinking that my goals are so far away and I feel so stagnant right now, but I try to keep at it since I know the payoff will be huge.

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Right now, my update is that I’m currently researching what to do about my car. See, the BBB is starting out with a 1-2 monthlong road trip around the continental United States and Canada and I need to figure out a way to fit two tall adults, a 60 lb dog, and all of our gear into my small hybrid SUV. I’m thinking we’re going to need a tent, an air mattress (or mattress topper, at the very least), a cooler, a portable electric camping stovetop, one backpack each, and a storage bin for our dishes/dry food.

(Something that I think you’ll come to learn about me the more I post on this blog is that I worry about the minutia way far in advance. I like to think it makes me more prepared than I would be just flying by the seat of my pants, but who’s to say.)

If you took the time to read all of this, sincerely - thank you. If you have any questions about where we’re going and what we’re doing, or any suggestions for things that will make any leg of this easier, I welcome them with open arms :)