Biggest Life and Travel Challenge – Part 1

How would you describe yourself to our readers who don’t know you yet?

We are Simona and Jure. We like to travel around the world. We like to eat well, to have active holidays and we love animals. More about them on their blog Slovenians travel.

A couple of years ago you went on a trip around the world for almost a year. How did you take care of the finances, how did you monitor your spending and ultimately roughly how much did you spend?

True, this was our biggest and at the same time the best travel (if not life) challenge. I (Simona) took a one-year study leave and studied economics online, Jure did what he always does – he teaches English online. So we had at least one salary guaranteed throughout the trip and the awareness that a job was waiting for me at home also meant a lot. For the first four months we monitored our spending weekly and we stopped doing that in Australia because the numbers got way too high. We spent the last six months in Asia where we knew life could be very cheap. At that time instead of accurately monitoring our expenses, we used the technique of maximum daily consumption – we set ourselves the goal of trying to spend per day with max. 100 euros (food, transport, accommodation, shopping, etc.). This also worked well. In the end, we collected all the bank statements of the last year, added them up and came up with just under 30,000 euros. For someone this sounds like a lot but if we recalculate how much we would spend at home at the same time on rent, food, car, etc., it would come to only a slightly lower number.

Where were the costs higher than you thought they would be and why?

In South America we were surprised by the prices of transportation, as buses are quite expensive. We also did not expect such high prices in the Atacama desert. Unfortunately we had some outdated information and misinformation about cruising the Galapagos, which forced us into plan B – to live on one of the islands and go on excursions from there. When we arrived in Miami, the American reality hit us pretty hard and we rather escaped to a cheaper cruise in the Bahamas (yes, it sounds unreal, but a five-day cruise was cheaper than accommodation plus food in Miami). We will not waste words on Australia – it is expensive, we knew that and we will not complain. We were surprised by not so high prices in Japan because we thought it will be way more expensive, but it is possible to travel quite well and cheaply. Malaysia also seemed cheaper to us than we expected.

Did you have to cancel any travel plans due to the current situation around the world? How did you solve that?

So much time has passed since our long trip, that is why we wanted to embark on another multi-month journey in 2020. My long-term wish is to travel by Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing, after which we planned to explore China for about two months. We wanted to go on the road in the second half of March but we left this idea immediately after New Year's (thank God before we terminated the lease and I, Simona, left the job). So we wanted to go to Georgia and Armenia during the Easter holidays. And now that too was impossible. We also had a planned visit to Istria in April, Italy or Malta and Greece in May and for June we bought tickets for England, the Philippines were also in our plan. Everything is cancelled so we are satisfied for now with exploring our beautiful Slovenia and its neighbouring countries.

Next travel mission after coronavirus?

We do not dare to make any concrete plans because we do not know how things will unfold and so on. Visiting our friends in England will not be possible. Since we don't want to strictly decide just for one destination, we will wait for the outcome and then decide where we will travel first.
If we can dream, we would go on a longer trip again and make some travel wishes come true: travelling by Trans-Siberian railway (in winter), diving in the Philippines and Indonesia, visiting the new Indonesian islands, the Pacific Islands, exploring the Silk Road, having an ayurvedic experience in India and Nepal, and climbing to one of the mountains there, skiing in Japan in February and visiting Japan in autumn, taking a road trip through the national parks of America and Canada, walking across the west coast trail in Canada, Mexico and Central America, and last but not least going to Africa, about which we could talk and dream for hours and hours.

Where do you arrange health insurance for travel? Did anything major already happen so it really came in handy?

We have health insurance arranged with a German insurance company because insurance is very expensive in Austria. In Slovenia they did not offer us anything suitable because we have a permanent address in Austria. Fortunately we only needed real medical help once when Jure had a surfing accident in Sri Lanka. His board then injured his arcade and he needed stitches. Unfortunately, the health system in Sri Lanka is still not developed much and Jure’s wound became fairly inflamed. A doctor in panic even wanted us to go home, saying that Jure needed a cosmetic surgeon for this injury and so on. Luckily we have our good friend Tamara who is a doctor with experience in exotic countries. She wrote us which medicines to buy (in many places antibiotics are available without a prescription), how to clean the wound and to send her photos daily. Everything got better without complications and problems.

What are your top three winter destinations?

We love to ski and for us so far the best are Austrian ski resorts – our favorites include Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, Zillertal, the ski resorts in Salzburg and this year the newly discovered East Tyrol. We definitely have to point out the most unique winter festival we visited – the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival in China. The city is in severe and dry cold for several weeks every winter, allowing them to build an ice city on one side and amazing snow sculptures on the other. If you ever travel to China in winter (January), a visit to this festival is definitely recommended and memorable. But beware, it is really cold, even during the day it does not get warmer above minus 20 degrees Celsius.

How well are you aware of thieves? Have you been robbed anywhere already?

Luckily we have not experienced any major thefts yet. From us they stole things like condoms in South America, body lotion in Asia, flip flops in Laos and some money in Burma. We carry passports and bank cards with us, we always have 100 euros hidden somewhere, we carry a camera with us and we leave our computers at least temporarily hidden in the hotel. We can just be grateful nothing valuable has ever really been taken from us.

To be continued…