deletia.co.uk

I think I have been neglecting my blogging duties somewhat…

In any case, I do have some updates. My India visa arrived and it is beautiful! That is a big weight off my mind as I was convinced my passport was going to go missing or some other terrible scenario and now that it’s arrived safe and sound, complete with visa, I’ve stopped dreaming about missing flights every night. I was going to send off for my Nepal visa next but don’t think I can take the stress again so I think I’m just going to get it at the border.

Money making has slowed somewhat. It is hard work coming home every night after a full day at work and going back on the computer to work more, whether it is ebaying or whatever. I’ve been a little lazy in the last week or 2 but time seems to be flying past even faster than ever now so I really need to get rid of belongings and make more money! I was rejected by AQA which I was absolutely gutted about. I made so sure that there were no mistakes in my test and I was pretty confident about passing. They don’t tell you why you didn’t get through either and I’m not allowed to apply for another 6 months so I may as well forget about that until I get to New Zealand. The other online job I applied for have filled all the vacancies for english speaking applicants, so basically the work online trail has dried up now. I’m just going to have to put all my efforts into working on my websites but it’s frustrating when they’re not bringing in any cash.

Just under 12 weeks until I leave now. I’ll be moving out of my house and over to my mum’s in about a month. Handing in my notice at work sometime before that, which I am not looking forward to! I need to make a list this weekend of everything I need to sort out and timescales for doing it all in. Plus maybe start packing up some books and things ready for the move.

Vaccinations wise, I have had my first two shots of Japanese Encephalitis and Rabies, at a cost of £86 (ouch). Another two of those to go. No wonder I’m feeling miserable about my lack of extra income…

I am writing this mainly for the benefit of my family as my birthday is coming up and they have started asking me what I want. As I am selling everything in sight that won’t be useful on my trip (except my books), I thought I’d put together this list of ‘nice to have’ items for my packing list.

• A nice day bag. I have one but it’s only 10 litres and it’s rather too small. I’m thinking something around 25 litres would be more practical.
• A maglite (purple, obviously)
• A pen knife
• Mosquito net
• some kind of waterproof thing to keep my money in when i go swimming because i don’t trust hotel safes
• rucksack protector because british airways destroyed my last rucksack. one that looks like a bag, not one of those weird metal cage things
• travel washing line like this one
• money for clothes and bits and pieces i want to pick myself

hmm I can’t think of anything else…

Last night was the first time since I started planning this trip that I got a little freaked out. I think this was somehow related to the night before when I’d had a dream that I’d landed in India (which conveniently looked exactly like Whitley Bay, ha!), my airport transfer refused to take me away from the airport and everything was going wrong. And also the fact that I looked at my calendar last night and realised I leave in just over 3 months. 3 months? Argh.

3 months to save as much money as I physically can; 3 months to get all my visas, sort all my vaccinations, get my travel insurance; 3 months to research all the places I want to go to, look for places to stay, have a rough idea of what I want to do when I get there.

I used to be a big worrier - I used to lie in bed late at night, worrying about all the things on my mind and not sleeping. I seem to have forced myself out of that habit in recent years and I generally don’t get worried about things just by not thinking about them. I’m not a planner and I’ve found this has worked to my advantage when it comes to travel as the more I research, the more excited I get but also start thinking about al the things that could go wrong.

And then last night, late at night, I didn’t sleep - I lay in bed thinking: “What if I get lost and don’t meet up with my intrepid group in India?”, “What if my backpack doesn’t arrive in the airport?”, “What if I don’t meet anyone I like?”, “What if I get homesick and lonely?”, “What if I hate it and just want to come home?”, “What if I can’t find a job in New Zealand?”, “What if I run out of money?” and so on and so on - you get the picture.

I’m taking it to mean that I’m either doing too much planning or not enough. I’m leaning towards the latter as everyone keeps saying “Oooh, so have you got everything organised now then?”. And on that note, I’m off to apply for my Indian visa.

As time ticks on, I am working harder and harder to try and save as much as I can for my trip so I can survive for as long as possible without the comfort of a nice monthly paycheck.

Mainly I have been trying to spend as little as possible (although there is still work to be done on the lunches and bus fares front) and selling things on Ebay and Amazon. This acomplishes 2 things at once as I am getting rid of items that would otherwise have to go into storage when I leave (who knew I had so much crap lying around?) and also bringing in some well needed cash.

Since mid June I have transferred £775.39 into my bank account from ebay and amazon sales. However, I have also spent £77.34 on fees and packing materials (amazon fees not included as they are taken out of your incoming funds before you can transfer them) and a whopping £197.50 on postage. Bet Royal mail love me! This comes out at just over £500 profit for this time period. Not bad for a month’s work!

There’s no way I will be brining in this much over subsequent months as I’ve already sold pretty much all of my ‘high earning’ items but i will be continuing to squeeze as much income I can from belongings which I no longer need before I go.

I’ve also been doing little bits and pieces here and there to bring in a few extras. It’s never going to make me rich, but every penny counts!

• I rejoined rpoints, which I’ve not really been active on since about this time last year (and I’ve lost my VIP status in the meantime, oh no!). I’ve made nearly £250 on this in total and while this is spread over a fairly long time period, if I’d saved all that up it would buy me a laptop (or a set of vaccinations, grr) so it’s not to be sniffed at!
• I applied for AQA and Texperts, both of which pay you to answer random questions that come in via text message. Neither of them are recruiting at the moment but i’m really hoping some positions will open up before I leave because I am the queen of internet research!
• I have also signed up with slicethepie. They pay you to review music and while again, it’s not going to make you rich, I’ve made £10 in the last week and trust me that is good for these type of sites!
• I installed google ads on this blog. doubt it will make me much money, but it’s worth a try!

I have a lot more to say about making and saving money for a trip (or any other reason for that matter) but I’ve decided to set up another website for these more ‘article style’ posts as I just keep thinking of more and more things I want to write about! This website is at www.travelswithmylaptop.com - there’s nothing there at the moment but there should be by the end of this weekend when I’ve had a chance to work on it. I’m also going to be working on another site which has been in the pipeline for quite a while. More news on that soon!

Think that’s quite enough for now anyway, must get back to making some money!

So on Monday I toddled along to my local GP to get my recommended vaccinations for the places I’ll be visiting and ‘medical advice’. Turned out to be rather a waste of time as the website the nurse was using to ‘advise’ me had gone down. What is the point of me taking time off work to go to the doctors when all they’re going to do is read out bits from a website? Surely I could do that myself. Anyway I was asked to make another appointment (hopefully the website will be working next time?!) and at least I insisted on getting the Hepatitis A booster there and then so it didn’t feel like a total waste of my time…

Turns out I already had all the free vaccinations I could get when I went to Thailand last year. All the others now recommended to me are not available on the NHS and therefore shockingly expensive:

• Hepatitits B - around £40 per dose and 3 doses needed over 6 months for a total price of £120. I have decided not to bother with this one in the hopes that I will not need medical attention involving dirty needles…
• Rabies - around £45 a dose and again, 3 doses needed but over the space of 1 month, resulting in a total price of around £135. I am lothe to pay for this as it sounds a bit pointless anyway - apparently if you are bitten by a suspect animal you need to go and get more injections anyway. However the vaccination gives you a few days to get to a hospital, whereas without it you have 24 hours. As I will be trekking in remote parts of Nepal (and possibly Tibet) which are known for packs of wild dogs, the sensible option would be to get the vaccination. Oh but the money! it hurts me!
• Japanese Encephalitis - around £45 a dose with the 3 doses needed over a month costing around £135 (why am i starting to get the feeling they split these into multiple injections just to charge you more?). Apparently this is fairly rare and usually only a risk if you’re going to be around animals/staying on farmland. Sounds like another candidate for just not bothering hmm? However it’s recommended to people staying in Asia for longer than a month and god knows what I’ll be doing and where I’ll be staying when I’m traipsing around SE Asia. Also if you contract this, there’s a good chance you’ll either die or get brain damage. Oh and there’s no treatment.

So yeah. If I were to get all these vaccinations, it would cost me somewhere close to £400. And I’m probably going to get the second 2 as I’ve now spent so long thinking about it, I’m starting to think it’s tempting fate if I don’t get them. Makes me wonder why I’m giving away half my paycheck in taxes every month when I’m never even ill..

Then there’s the issue of Malaria tablets. I was really not keen on taking these as nearly everyone I know has had a bad reaction from them. However I also don’t want to get malaria so… The nurse recommended me Malarone, which I found out after I got home and did a bit of research, costs around £2.50 a tablet. One tablet per day for 2-3 months in asia = a lot of money. Are these people on commission or something?? So I have decided to go with the much cheaper doxycycline, coming in at around 15p per tablet. Much better! However this has the most common side effect of making your skin more sensitive to sunlight. I swear someone up there is laughing at me.

So anyway, my last resort for now is to see if it’s a case of ‘who you know’ and my tenuous connections can get me some vaguely cheaper vaccinations. Otherwise I guess I’m just going to have to suck it up and pay (oh but that money would buy me a lovely sub-notebook computer!). Well either that or risk dying horribly - whatever!