When researching places to go, it’s always interesting to see what is “important” information to provide for travelers. I was amused finding an entire page on Taipei’s metro system dedicated solely to “Metro Etiquette,” including many PDFs on the various individual etiquette points.
We got our International Driving Permits today, which we’ll need for the latter portion of our trip. IDPs are primarily a form of identification that’s correlated to your existing driver’s license; you need to carry both when you drive in countries that accept them.
More work on our travel vaccinations this week. We just learned our local Walgreens pharmacy has dedicated a specific RX bin solely for Jen and I for our trip vaxxes (we get 5 more shots tomorrow, with 8 more in a month). We weren’t looking to become pharmacy-phamous, but uhhh here we are…? 😂😭
We’ve finally decided on our trip’s camera setup. We paired Scott’s Nikon Z5 with a new 28-400mm lens, and bought Jen a used Nikon Z50, which she’ll pair with Scott’s 24-200mm lens—a simple yet adequate solution for our wildlife safaris. We’ll also bring our Olympus Tough TG-4 + TG-6 for snorkeling.
We set off on our 100-day adventure around the world exactly two months from today. 😳
One of the big things we need to avoid on this trip is mosquitos, which carry a variety of nasty ailments. We’ve been working on our skeeter-related vaccinations, and will also be on anti-malaria meds for more than half the trip. And we’ll have bug nets covering our beds at night in the most affected areas. Even with those precautions, however, you still need to pay close attention and use bug spray.
(From Jen) - I have spent a lot of time planning out this trip. The flights, the hotel, the visas, the stuff to see/do, etc. I KNOW I have screwed SOMETHING up—like REALLY screwed it up. But…I have NO idea what that might be. Oh the stress… But that’s what travel looks like—accepting that happens.
We’re trying to bring minimal things for this trip - 100 days (in multiple climates) of stuff has to fit in a rolling duffle bag and a backpack (each). Jen spent this week figuring out what clothes she has/needs to buy for the trip. Trying to find the 3-4 outfits you wear for 100 days isn’t easy!
We’re about halfway through our travel vaccinations for the trip. To figure out what we needed, we visited Passport Health, which gave us a loooong list of shots to get for the countries we’re visiting. We managed to get many of them filled at Walgreens, which saved us a TON of money.
We’re nearly done booking all of our flights, accommodations, and tours…and we’re still generally on track with our estimated budget! Not too shabby for estimating booking costs for a 100-day trip! 🙌
One thing we’ve found about a 100-day trip is how daunting and exhausting it is planning and booking such a trip. When you plan for a 1-2 week trip, you might look up 1-2 countries for things like voltage; what type of plugs; what type of money; do they have Uber (or how to get around); what are the tipping policies for the country; what prescription meds can you bring into the country; do you need a visa, etc.
Once we decided that our primary goal with the trip was to see as much stuff as we could on the other side of the globe, we still had to narrow in where we’d target. Our main considerations: Nearly every place should be new to both of us. Again, the point is to see far-flung places that we couldn’t otherwise get to during our normal vacation time. And our plan was to save most of the “top tier” destinations for later, as those worked well as standalone trips that we could pull off during “normal” 2-3 week vacations in subsequent years.
An unexpected concern: make sure any cash you’re bringing to Africa was printed after 2013, as bills printed before then were subject to widespread counterfeiting and often aren’t accepted as payment.
When we first started embarking on a plan for taking a mini-retirement, we naturally started considering where we might go. The first plan that emerged was a tour around South America. It’s a continent I’ve never been to, contained a number of “top tier” destinations we want to visit, and would pair well with a Dec-Feb trip timeframe—which is one we often struggle to fill. That’d also allow us to divide vacation time into two calendar years, making things much easier.
Hi and welcome! We are Scott and Jen, a couple who loves to spend time traveling, well, everywhere! After having to accept that we are getting older (what are you talking about, we're both still 25), we have come to realize how precious memories are and how easily lost memories can be. So we decided to create this website mostly to document where we go and what we do in our travels (and something for our mom's to read in order keep up track of us).