When I took my first solo international trip to Iceland in 2015, I came up with a meticulous plan on where to stay, what to see, and booked tours for nearly everyday. Fast forward to 2017, I left Los Angeles with one backpack and no return ticket! On my indefinitely long trip, I learned from experiences why traveling without making plans or minimal plans really is the best way to travel.
Situations will vary depending on the type and length of trip you’re taking, but here are my insights & tips on why you should travel without plans and how to do it!
Save Money and Budget better
I have read travel bloggers claim that they lost money by traveling without plans. However there is another side to that coin.
Save money on flights: I planned and booked a flight in advance from Indonesia to Thailand prior to arriving in Bali. I was meant to stay in Indonesia for one full month, but about 2 and a half weeks in I started feeling anxious and ready for the next leg of my journey. I ended up throwing that flight away (a loss of 40USD). IF I didn’t plan so far ahead, I could have avoided the waste.
Save Money on Accommodation: There are actually last minute booking deals. The hotels want their place to operate near full capacity, so sometimes when there are rooms left a couple days before they can slash the price down a bit to attract customers. I found this to be true with bookings.com.
HOW?
For flights – Sign up to receive alerts on your phone about a particular route/destination you’re thinking of heading to next. (use apps like Hopper & Google flights) They will let you know if the prices are expected to rise or drop.
However, I’ve always found cheapest flights on Skyscanner. There is a cool option to set your intended destination as “everywhere“. I did this when I was in Indonesia to see which country I can fly to next for the cheapest price. (This is great when you have flexible travel time)
➠ Find the cheapest flights on Skyscanner
Once you find the lowest price, compare it with local trains and bus prices to figure out which method is the cheapest and most efficient option for you.
Never miss out on an adventure
I think the title says it all! You are bound to meet like-minded travelers on the road especially if you are traveling solo.
➠ Read my post : Useful Tips for Solo Traveling
Maybe you’ll meet your new bestie on the road and they’ve invited you to join them for free on a road trip around Iceland! But wait, you can’t, because you’ve already booked your accommodation and tours ahead of time.
HOW?
Book just 2 nights of stay before arriving in your new destination. because I like to take a breath and get a feel of each new place I arrive in, I don’t recommend just showing up without ANY accommodation. In fact I have met travelers scrambling to find a place in the middle of the night, NOT FUN.
Freedom
Imagine you arrive in a hotel that you’ve booked for 5 nights, and once you set foot into the lobby it is NOTHING like you expected. You want to cancel your reservation and move to another place, but most likely you’ll be charged a penalty for late cancellation. (More money down the drain) The same thing goes for flights, if you’ve mapped out your entire itinerary you’ll be stuck because we all know how expensive flights can be.
HOW?
I have never had an issue adding more nights at the same place. If you do decide you really love it there or you want to stay longer just ask the accommodation to extend your stay. And if not, trust me you can find another place!
Get the most out of your experience
No matter how much research is done, you don’t REALLY know a place until you get there. I arrived in Iceland with EXTENSIVE research and planning yet some of the best places I visited were actually shown to me by the locals I met there.
How?
I recommend just brushing up on the internet so you get a vague idea of the popular spots people like to visit. I know some people “hate touristy places”. But I believe They became popular for good reasons. The trick can be selecting to visit early or late in the day to avoid crowds. Sprinkle your itinerary in both popular spots and off the beaten path gems.
Get a general idea but leave out the specifics. Get in touch with your go-with-the-flow spirit! Let the universe and new friends guide you to amazing and unexpected places.
Here’s a photo of the Secret Lagoon that I wouldn’t have seen without the guide of the locals I met!
Watch my travel vlogs on YouTube:
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My fun of travelling begins by hearing and reading about a certain place. This is when the enticement starts. Once triggered I open up to more stories and start creating mental images. Let me tell you this can be a more or less subconscious process with a lot of associating impressions. This takes place in a fragmentary way over a longer period of time. At a certain point my focus takes over and I start consciously collecting data. Is this where planning begins? Curious as I am, I tend to collect data about geography, culture, language(s), history, connections with other cultures, etymology. Also questions about the climate arise. Are there seasons? What is the best time to visit? What is there on offer? What to buy, where to buy it? Where are my perceived highlights, my must-visit-sites? How do I translocate, what is there on offer? Are there roads, railroad tracks, airfields, where are the hubs? Do I go by boat, train, plane, bike or automobile? And how do these connect?
And maybe last, but certainly not least I start to wonder whether I know someone at my destination. Is there a connection to this place in my network? Sometimes this connection was already there when I heard the stories that triggered me in the first place.
My personal experience is that travelling with locals and staying with them have given me a different, enriched perspective than on the trips I didn’t do that. Mingling with the local people one learns to appreciate their language, their food and their culture and get an expert insight in the meaning of their life. Mentally one travels faster and more intense. One goes off the beaten track, not too touristy, discovering the life of the locals.
This is how I have travelled through Surinam, visiting the parents of my friend who I had met in The Netherlands. Once I had decided to go I was too late to obtain a direct flight. So I travelled by train from The Hague to Paris and flew with Air France to Cayenne the capital of French Guyana, a neighbouring country. From there I travelled by group taxi through the jungle to Saint Laurent. In the middle of the jungle we passed by Kourou where the Ariane program launches European satellites. (Actually we crossed by driving over the launching platforms). The next day at Saint Laurent I crossed the Marowijne River and entered Surinam at the village of Albina. Finally in Suriname I met my friend, love is a great driver. There we ended up visiting awesome estates owned by public utility companies and even did some tracking to a gold mining camp on the Saramacca River deep in the Surinam jungle. It was the business of my friend’s uncle and to get there we had to travel by car and boat.
Later on in life I have met my yokemate in an airplane on the way to Mae Hong Son on the border between Siam and Burma…
Wow! such amazing travel stories! Thank you for sharing:) There’s such a unique magic when one lands in a brand new place, and even more as we take our time to learn about the places. I think the constant desire to explore more will never end.