Planning a trip to Thailand

Well, here we are again, packaging our stuff ready to go, this time for 20 days, to Thailand. As I posted previously, that trip is completely self-made, but with a certain level of quality (we are not teenagers with a bag on his back and a few euros in their pockets).

The planning started in the middle of august, because this year my partner was working in a tourist town for all the summer, so we choosed to travel in November. The choice of Thailand was quicker, looking for a country beautiful, safe, with sunny beaches (to replace the worked summer of my girlfriend) and with a lot of diferent things to see.

Once selected the country, it was the time to see agencies (Our first thought was to purchase a travel using agency) but we are'nt as rich as other people, and the travel was out of our budged. For those more lucky with the money, I have to recommend the following agencies (in Spain) that seemed so interesting (and both has good references from my friends): Bidon5 and Muztag.

We choose to travel alone, by our own resources and using Internet as agency... so the first thing we buy was the fly. Purchasing 2 month from the departure time we have saved 1.000€, so it's so important to do it as soon as you want to travel. The second thing to buy? Well, in our case it was a travel insurance, that can be purchased online on any major insurance company, but it's not necessary to do it soon, because it has always the same price.

One of the premises of the travel is do it safe, so we contacted the foreign office of our country to know information about the country in the health and security areas. To travel to Thailand, and specially if you do it alone, it's recommended to update your vaccine card, and compulsory if you want to reach the northern provinces of the country. In Spain you need to contact the International Vaccine center, and it's important to do it soon, because it's possible to get a meeting with them with a few weeks or month before the call.

The vaccines we get from the doctor were the yellow flu (i'm not sure of the translation from spanish, sorry), hepatitis and malaria (using the famous Malarone).

Those were our first steps to plan our travel... the next day I'll talk about the day by day planning...

I hope you enjoy it!

Traveling without agency

The first time we, my girlfriend and I, made a travel without any travel agency was two years ago, going from Barcelona (Spain) to Istambul (an incredible city everybody have to visit) for seven days.

In that travel we purchase the fly and the hotel using an agency but that was the last thing we did with it, because handling a LonelyPlanet on my hand, we discovered the city better than with any one can do. Now, thinking about that travel, my memories come to me about the people, smiles, unique situations or special places we met. No stones and history comes to me, only beautifull thoughts about the people of the city and the atmosphere of that millenial city.

Now it's time to travel again, and this time we planned to go to Thailand. We are two days from the fly that will send us to the other point of the world, and this time all our travel was plannified and executed without any agency, only Internet.

In the next post I'll explain how we plannified the travel and the required steps to do it safe.