A Short Guide for New Long-Term Travelers

This post is a quick guide for people that are about to start travelling and stay in new places for some time. These are some things I learnt from my own travel experiences and want to pass on to you.

Other tips are welcome, this short guide is open for your own contribution.

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Before you leave

Read up all you can about that country, the area and the city where you are planning to move. A good start for me is Wikipedia, then Wikitravel and other sites. Try to find out if English is spoken at a basic level at least. If you are planning on settling somewhere, it's needless to say, knowing the language a bit before you get there would be very useful. Also translation apps will help you on the way to learning a new language.

A common misconception is that basic English is spoken in countries on the beaten tourist path but this could not be more false when you think of South America, where Spanish and Portuguese are the only languages spoken by most people.

Be money wise

You will need to transfer a reasonable amount of money when you move between countries and plan to stay a few months, so international money transfers become an important part of your plan. Banks will charge you the most, usually as a fee and a low exchange rate.

If you can easily open a bank account in the new country, try to find specialist companies that operate international money transfers to sent most of your funds from your home country bank account to your new one. Before you choose your provider, get actual quotes from the best and compare. Ask companies to provide you with a full breakdown of the costs and the rate for the day that you contacted them. Most of the cost will be in the currency conversion rate, so do your maths and find the best solution. Remember, a rate difference of 0.05 might not seem too much but multiply this by the amount you want to change and you will see it adds up. Some example companies are TransferGo, TransferWise among others. If you live in the UK, have a look at this comparison.

Alternatively, If you don't mind holding considerable amounts of cash on you to exchange for local money, bring USD for South America and South East Asia and EUR for all of Europe. Sometimes local exchange rates are favorable compared to your home ones, again use the web to compare rates beforehand.

Get best prices on flights

Research the best flight tickets early in advance. Sometimes flights search engines might not have all the companies in their system, especially if your planning to change continents, so it's easier to check what flight connections exists from the airport you are planning to go to and whatever city is close to you and search those flight companies sites directly.

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After you arrive in your new country

Use a taxi app to order a cab easily, just by tapping your phone when in a city you don't know and where you can't speak the local language. I know an app called EasyTaxi saved me from being in trouble in Brazil more than once. Downloading offline maps on you phone can also proves useful when out of signal.

To travel with less cash on you once settled in, try to get a local prepaid debit card, that you can top-up at a bank and use in shops, restaurants, etc.

When moving to a new area, spend some time walking around the main shops, do some comparisons to find the best one for your needs, same goes for restaurants. As always, it's really helpful to ask the locals first and then go and check it out for yourself.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0