Hi, I'm back with another rant. This time, I want to write down my expense when I went on a backpacking vacation with my best friend. Here I'm going to share some of the things that happened before and after the trip.
POINT 1 PLANNING
Half a year before the trip, around August, my friends and I talked about going for a vacation together. Bestie Blue (I'm using their favorite color instead of giving initials or number okay, both of them are my bestie, none of them is best or worse than other) suggested Semarang as our destination. Bestie Red said she's up to anywhere we would want to go to as long as it is a vacation, Red just wanna have fun. I told them that I'd like to explore more than just Semarang, which is why we added Yogyakarta as our second destination.
So, it was decided that we will be going on this trip on May for it is the low-season where most of the prices are lower or discounted.
But there is a problem, Red wanted to go using her car. Blue and I don't really like the idea of going with another addition such as her driver, meanwhile between the three of us Red is the only one who can drive, that would be extremely tiring. So, Blue and I agreed to use train, but Red said she needs time to decide if she would go or not.
At the end of year 2016, Red decided not to go, so it's just Blue and I. We started making our itinerary. Listing down the places we wanted to visit and how we budgeting all the expecting expenses. In between our own schedules in college, we still got time to meet for a discussion, and we also used google drive to share documents for working on our itinerary planning.
RESULT OF THE PLANNING
WHO (will be going): Blue and I
WHEN (will we go): May 15th 2017 - May 21st 2017
WHERE (will we go): May 15th to Semarang
May 18th to Yogyakarta
WHY (we chose the destination): Semarang because Blue knows the city
Yogyakarta to use the opportunity of the trip
WHAT (to do there): Visit the historical places in both cities
HOW (are we going to travel): Use train, bus, local transportation, walking.
POINT 2 BUDGETING
Budgeting is the most important thing while planning a trip, especially when you're going backpacking.
So, after finishing our 'must visit list' and 'what to do there', we decided to limit our budget for under IDR 1.000.000
My mom helped me by giving me half of the budget, because my saving was still under 500k, so it was the real help when mom said, she will give the rest of the money I need.
The point of budgeting is to know what our limit in spending our money, we need to calculate everything before doing the trip itself in order to avoid problems while we're away from home.
POINT 3 ITINERARY
The second most important thing in planning a trip is the itinerary. This part will help us manage our days on our trip, it's a schedule to remind us of what we would do. If it is not on the list, you better not do it or you'll have some extra spending with your budget.
We used google search to look up for prices and what's in there we could do, this helped us estimating our expenses.
POINT 4 PREPARATION
Preparation is the time needed to make sure that we are safe in every conditions. Clothes, undies, warm wears, hat, sanitary pads, toiletries, medicine, spare money kept on secret pocket, book and pen, tickets, chargers, and SD cards.
POINT 5 PATIENCE & COMMITMENT
This is also important to keep in mind.
- Patience.
Since you are going away from home with another person with different personality, you will need all the patience you can have in whatever situation occurs.
- Commitment
You made the itinerary, you made the plan, you stick on it to the end. You need the commitment to follow the itinerary made for your trip to go be a success one. If you decided not visit malls, then don't go to a mall at all.
POINT 6 THE UNPLANNED
I learned something big from this trip in a hard way. There will definitely be something unplanned happen while you're away. This is something that will happen no matter how perfect your plan is.
For example, I obviously did not plan to break my shoes that I had to buy a new one while in Semarang. We also planned to use train from Semarang to Yogyakarta to save time and budget, but ended up using travel bus which is more expensive and take longer time to arrive in the destination.
POINT 7 UNDERSTANDING
There is this thing called conflict, especially when fatigue hit the explorers.
When we used the travel tour bus from Semarang to Yogyakarta, I honestly told Blue that this exceeded my budget. Having to spend 70k instead of the planned 10k is a big difference for me, not to mention I just had to buy a pair of shoes. But it seems like Blue couldn't get the simple phrase, because when we arrived in Yogyakarta, Blue decided to get a room at the nearest hotel because Blue was tired. So instead of going to the planned '70k a night' inn, we paid 190k in total for the hotel stay.
There is also another problem. Maybe because I am used with using public transportation where ever I go, I felt it is too expensive to use online taxi everywhere we went.
POINT 8 HONESTY
Last but not least, it is honesty. When there is a mashed up of personalities, there will be conflict right? But every conflict can be solved with a talk, an honest talk. Between friends, I admit, I was disappointed that we didn't talk it out after that, but instead we went on silent treatment for almost a year.
Good thing that in this friendship we still have Red. Even though it was only through Instagram DM, we are now talking again.
Honesty is really important to keep everything fine. Next time, when there is another trip, where ever and when ever it would be, with whoever it would be, if you feel something is not going right, talk it out, be honest, don't shut, and most importantly don't fight.