Posted by Karbo
As you can imagine, there's quite a bit of pre-departure items that need to be crossed off the checklist before a trip like this can actually begin! As our date of departure gets nearer, here is a list of our top to-dos:
1. Contact international friends and family. You never know who may have a couch to spare!
2. Set a budget and figure out a savings plan. You don't need a lot of money to travel, but you do need some.
3. Make sure there is/are enough time/pages left on the passport. Otherwise, renew your passport.
4. Research credit cards and bank cards to use abroad. We opted to go with the Chase Marriott Rewards Visa (the only Canadian credit card that we could find that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees) and also signed up for a ScotiaBank account. ScotiaBank is part of the Global ATM Alliance, which means that we can withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide without incurring an extra fee.
5. Research and purchase a travel insurance policy. We wavered between World Nomads and BCAA and ultimately settled on BCAA. For Canadian residents, all the travel policies we found would only provide full coverage if you maintain valid provincial coverage during the length of your travels. BC residents who will be out of the province for more than 6 months are allowed to extend their out of province coverage for up to 2 years only if certain conditions are met.
6. Contact provincial health care plan to set up auto-pay of monthly premiums. We also confirmed that we were eligible for extended out of province coverage.
7. Get an International Driver's Permit. This is only applicable if you plan to drive abroad. The process takes about 15 minutes and all you need to do is to go to your local CAA with your driver's license and 2 passport-type photos.
8. Visit a travel clinic. When you go, make sure you have at least a draft itinerary of the countries you will be visiting so they can determine which vaccines you need. Some vaccines need to be taken over a period of a few weeks or months.
9. Visit doctor for a check-up and to refill prescriptions. Visit dentist for teeth cleaning.
10. Research which countries require entry visas and apply for visas. Before we left we applied for Working Holiday Visas to Australia and I also applied for a Youth Mobility Visa to Taiwan (Jason already holds a Taiwanese passport).
11. Give resignation notice to employer. Hands down - this was the most difficult item to cross-off this list.
12. Notify bank and credit card companies of travel plans and set up auto-pay for bills. You can also consider granting power of attorney or bank access to a trusted family member or friend.
13. Cancel car insurance. If you own/rent a home, you'll also have to decide what to do with your place and belongings.
14. Cancel phone plan. We changed our monthly phone plans to pay-as-you-go plans. This way, we'll get to keep our cellphone numbers, even while inactive, for a maximum of 1 year.
15. Make both hard and soft copies of all important documents. We have a copy of our own and each other's passports. We also have an electronic copy stored online in Dropbox.
16. Print business cards. Who knows who we'll meet on our trip? We used Moo and printed mini business cards with photos of Vancouver on the back. We're not the best photographers so we used photos taken by our very talented friends.
As you can imagine, there's quite a bit of pre-departure items that need to be crossed off the checklist before a trip like this can actually begin! As our date of departure gets nearer, here is a list of our top to-dos:
1. Contact international friends and family. You never know who may have a couch to spare!
2. Set a budget and figure out a savings plan. You don't need a lot of money to travel, but you do need some.
3. Make sure there is/are enough time/pages left on the passport. Otherwise, renew your passport.
4. Research credit cards and bank cards to use abroad. We opted to go with the Chase Marriott Rewards Visa (the only Canadian credit card that we could find that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees) and also signed up for a ScotiaBank account. ScotiaBank is part of the Global ATM Alliance, which means that we can withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide without incurring an extra fee.
5. Research and purchase a travel insurance policy. We wavered between World Nomads and BCAA and ultimately settled on BCAA. For Canadian residents, all the travel policies we found would only provide full coverage if you maintain valid provincial coverage during the length of your travels. BC residents who will be out of the province for more than 6 months are allowed to extend their out of province coverage for up to 2 years only if certain conditions are met.
6. Contact provincial health care plan to set up auto-pay of monthly premiums. We also confirmed that we were eligible for extended out of province coverage.
7. Get an International Driver's Permit. This is only applicable if you plan to drive abroad. The process takes about 15 minutes and all you need to do is to go to your local CAA with your driver's license and 2 passport-type photos.
8. Visit a travel clinic. When you go, make sure you have at least a draft itinerary of the countries you will be visiting so they can determine which vaccines you need. Some vaccines need to be taken over a period of a few weeks or months.
9. Visit doctor for a check-up and to refill prescriptions. Visit dentist for teeth cleaning.
10. Research which countries require entry visas and apply for visas. Before we left we applied for Working Holiday Visas to Australia and I also applied for a Youth Mobility Visa to Taiwan (Jason already holds a Taiwanese passport).
11. Give resignation notice to employer. Hands down - this was the most difficult item to cross-off this list.
12. Notify bank and credit card companies of travel plans and set up auto-pay for bills. You can also consider granting power of attorney or bank access to a trusted family member or friend.
13. Cancel car insurance. If you own/rent a home, you'll also have to decide what to do with your place and belongings.
14. Cancel phone plan. We changed our monthly phone plans to pay-as-you-go plans. This way, we'll get to keep our cellphone numbers, even while inactive, for a maximum of 1 year.
15. Make both hard and soft copies of all important documents. We have a copy of our own and each other's passports. We also have an electronic copy stored online in Dropbox.
16. Print business cards. Who knows who we'll meet on our trip? We used Moo and printed mini business cards with photos of Vancouver on the back. We're not the best photographers so we used photos taken by our very talented friends.