Our Trip Around The World – 1 Month Before

Last Updated on 11th April 2019

It’s so hard to believe that I’m writing this post about our trip around the world and how we’re only 1 month before we actually fly out to New Zealand. When I first started writing this series, we were at 6 months before the trip; it’s now just 1 month before and everything is becoming SO real now.

As ever, with these update posts, I’ve included all the things we’ve done in the last month to help us get ready for our trip. This month has been so bloody expensive and while we knew it wasn’t going to be cheap, I think the costs have really quite thrown us sometimes. Would you be interested in a real and honest post about exactly how much it’s costing us and what you can expect from planning a trip around the world? Let me know in the comments!

Without further ado, here’s the (last!!!) monthly update of where we are with regards to planning our trip around the world – 1 month before!

1 month before our trip commences

Had (most of) our travel vaccinations

We’ve finally started our course of travel vaccinations. I think in total we’ll have had around 12 injections by the time we leave for our trip, and we’re about half way through at the moment.

Travel vaccinations certainly aren’t cheap, nor are they enjoyable to have, but they’re so important when travelling to places such as South East Asia; it’s better to be safe than sorry and just suck up the hefty bill for them!

I’m not sure if it’s valuable information for you guys or not but just in case you’re planning your own trip around the world, or you’re just nosy, we’ve had the injections Hepatitis B, Rabies and Japanese Encephalitis (as well as a few top up injections of things like Meningitis).

Bought clothing suitable for travelling

At the time of writing this post, we’ve pretty much got every item of clothing that we (think we) need. I’m still missing a few tops that I want to get, as well as some additional underwear because I think that’s arguably one of the most important items of clothing we need to take!

With it just being 1 month before we go on our trip around the world, we’re conscious that we don’t have too long to get everything all at once. We’ve been staggering our purchases over the last 6 months or so and it’s definitely helped to soften the financial blow. This is especially true when it comes to things like buying more expensive items such as our backpacks, our hiking boots as well as other things like a first aid kit and a water purifying kit!

Stuck to a healthy(ish) diet

If you’ve been following these update posts since the start of the year, you might remember that Matt and I have been trying to eat much healthier in an attempt to be in great shape, both physically and mentally, when we go travelling.

Despite being on three different holidays since the start of the year, we’ve actually done pretty well at eating healthier when we’re at home. I’ve been sharing updates on how we save money when doing our weekly food shop, as well as the easy, cheap and healthy meals we use on a budget.

Eating healthy has actually been more enjoyable than I thought; while nothing will ever compare to my true love of food, it is nice to feel good within myself.

Paid for our travel insurance

Along with paying for and booking our travel vaccinations, our other huge purchase this month was travel insurance. Again, we knew that this wouldn’t come cheap and we’d done plenty of research in the lead up to buying it, but there really is no preparing you for seeing such a vast amount of money leave your bank account.

However, it’s another huge, important purchase out the way and it’s reassuring to know that if anything were to happen while we’re away, we’ve got fully comprehensive travel insurance behind us!

Choosing exactly which travel insurance provider to go for involved a lot of research in order to ensure we’d gone for the best one for us. It’s an incredibly important decision to make, so it’s imperative to do thorough research when it comes to buying travel insurance, especially for such a huge round the world trip like ours.

Got rid of lots of our things

As well as preparing for our trip around the world, we’ve also had to prepare for us leaving our little flat. We’ll be moving out of our studio apartment around 1 week before we fly out and we’ll be moving back in with our parents until we go.

Thankfully, this process hasn’t been too much hassle as we only rent our apartment; therefore we didn’t have to worry about selling it or anything like that.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been slowing starting to get rid of some of our things, putting stuff in storage and deciding what we really want to keep and what we need to take with us. I’m actually pretty impressed with how brutal I’ve been about getting rid of some of my stuffed; it’s been remarkably therapeutic to sort through things and get rid of any belongings that no longer bring me joy.

While we’re travelling, we’ll be keeping the stuff we might want when we get back in a storage unit and at our parents’ houses. By the time we move out in just less than a month, we should hopefully just have our backpacks containing all our worldly possessions that we’re taking with us!

Cancelled our leaving party

In my last update post about our trip around the world, I mentioned that we’d been organising a leaving party for all our friends and family, just before we left for New Zealand.

However, organising and planning a party for so many different people turned out to be a little stressful and in the end we just decided that we wanted to host a few, smaller gatherings for our different friends and family.

A huge leaving party sounded amazing at first, but upon reflection we decided that it wouldn’t be very practical as it wouldn’t leave us with much chance to talk to every single person and spend quality time with everyone.

By hosting a few small family meals and nights out with friends, it means that we get to spend some dedicated quality time with everyone, without the stress and hassle of planning a huge party!

I really hope you guys have enjoyed reading these update posts about preparing and planning for our trip around the world; I’ve loved writing them as it’ll give me something to look back on in a few years’ time to see how our trip actually came together! When we’re actually travelling, I’m thinking of continuing the series along the lines of “our trip around the world – 1 month on” so that I can show you guys the process of what it’s like to be on the road!

Would you be interested in continuing to read these kind of update posts when we’re actually travelling or would you prefer a different format? I’d love to know your ideas so let me know in the comments or on Twitter @imjustagirl_16.