Independent traveling is one of the best aspects of studying abroad, without a doubt! It’s both a time to explore your host country’s culture and enjoy a wonderful break from schoolwork! But you should be careful to not underestimate the time it takes to properly plan a trip and make the most of your holiday. Thinking and researching ahead of time can really make a difference. It’s also really exciting to be thinking about your trip weeks before it occurs! These are the tried-and-true steps I use to plan for independent travel and hopefully you can glean something useful from them.
- Group building: Who to go with
One of the most important and time-consuming parts of planning independent travel is figuring out who to travel with. After all, these are the people that you’ll be around for almost a week straight! First off, if you’re thinking about traveling alone, instead think more thoroughly about going with someone else. Not only is it safer (which always makes the parents happy-shout out to Mom & Papa) it’s more fun, memorable and oftentimes cheaper if you go with someone else. You can be one other’s restaurant buddies (I personally do not like going to restaurants by myself) and
photographers! Traveling gives the opportunity to create strong bonds with other people; why not take advantage of it? You too could soon be taking fun “glamour” shots on the Great Wall of China! That being said, go with your gut on who you’d like to travel with. I was worried I wouldn’t find people who have similar hobbies, trip goals and interests as I do but I luckily found two great friends who do; and if I can do it as timid as I am, anyone can! Just don’t wait too long to decide or else you might be stuck somewhere you’d rather not be.
- Research: When and where to go
After you have your group, the next step is to decide where to go. Chances are, you and everyone else in your program have been thinking about independent travel plans since you set eyes on the study abroad flier a year ago. It’s fairly easy to agree on ideas, especially if you’ve found people who are on the same wavelength as you are. But before finalizing plans, look at your home country’s national holiday calendar to scope out the busy seasons so you’re aware of what you’re getting into and make the best of the free time that you have. Our large independent travel time largely overlaps China’s October 1st Victory Day Golden Week Holiday, which is an extremely busy tourist holiday, especially in Beijing, where we wanted to travel. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that going to famous places often brings large crowds; it’s an unfortunate fact that goes along with travelling. But even if you happen to only be available during a national holiday like I was, there are ways to make the crowds less obvious but still see the sights: online research. If you familiarize yourself enough with the place and habits, you can easily side-step many crowds. I also decided that it’s okay to be labeled a tourist for a week! Sometimes we treat tourists like they’re flies buzzing around a huge, thousand year-old, ornate Russian lamppost. But as soon as you travel to see sights, you become some sort of tourist, even if it’s self-tourism like ours. Besides, tourists often get discounts-especially student tourists! Own it!
- Booking: How much to pay
With tourist discounts as an example, everybody loves saving money while traveling. To save money in booking, knowledge is power! It’s amazing how much you can save on booking transportation and lodging if you take time and look at all of the options. A local’s insight is also invaluable; one of our native-Chinese Alliance staff workers graciously sat down with me for almost 3 hours to sort out 2 train rides, 1 flight and 7 nights at two different hotels for our Beijing-Xi’an trip. Being in China, we used the popular, user-friendly ctrip. She looked at hotel reviews and locations, deciphered which rates were the best and advised the best times to arrive and depart. She even taught me some travel Chinese and helped me use a coupon (they exist-use them!) that
brought the already low grand total for transportation and hotels to about $410 (¥2,600) per person! I can’t remember how many times I rechecked the total, but it always came out to that insanely low number. I know she worked her magic for other students as well. I made careful calculations to prove to myself and others that my math skills aren’t as horrible as I think they are. Don’t think that you have to have a magical native to find low prices, though; it just might take an extra hour or two for you to track them down. The more time you spend on booking, the better your knowledge and experience will be!
- Itinerary: What to see
After settling the booking budget, look back at where you’re traveling to and figure out what sights you’d like to see. You’ll likely have a mental list of big attractions, but you’ll probably miss out on a lot if you don’t look into the smaller, lesser-known ones. I started out, of course, asking what the other two girls would want to see. Because of that we’re now scheduled to relax at a hot springs in Xi’an on the last day! Three brains are certainly more creative than one! Looking at tripadvisor.com, travelguidechina.com, lonelyplanet.org and other sites like them can provide a lot of great overview and important information. But I always trust people who’ve visited there before first before any online travel site. Asking friends, locals, program directors and roommates can bring great, non-tourist additions to your travels. Back in the States I had a Chinese roommate who is from Beijing, and so I asked her opinion about what we should see and asked for any tricks on avoiding tourist traps. Before she told me her favorite places in the city, she chuckled and joked that I should avoid Beijing if I want to avoid tourists! I asked my Chinese roommate from this semester and she happily sat down with me and helped me sort through Chinese opinion sites that I couldn’t understand otherwise. She and her bubbly, excitable personality helped me get even more excited about seeing all of the different places! Another source I’ve recently begun to appreciate is travel bloggers-much like our own blog here! Blogs are full of honest opinions, suggestions and warnings, many of which can be as recent as last month. Each of these gave me tips about the best places to eat at, what to carry, the prime time of day to go and how long we’d be staying there; vital information if I wanted our trip to flow smoothly. I ended up typing a flexible, floating itinerary for us that we could pick sights and activities from at our leisure (see photo).
I split up the Beijing section up into 4 section: Indoor, Gardens, Walking Streets and Big Highlights. Under each sight I added basic information such as location, price, hours of operation, about how long it would take to complete it. Since most of the site names were in Chinese, I also had to add a short description to remind us of what the sight actually was! I ended up referencing it at least 5 times a day and it saved a lot of time and uncertainty.
Independent travel is a unique and special opportunity. I speak from experience when I advise that you should do your best to not sqander the moment; find what will make it shine and take hold of it. Bond with friends and natives, practice your host country’s language, fulfill a few bucket-list items and embrace the culture that’s around you. And take lots of photos (selfies definately count)! I always remind myself that I can always delete a photo but I can never take another one once I’ve left. And if I’m not in any of the photos then I might as well scroll through Google Images! That doesn’t mean you should forget to witness it all with your own two eyes, though. You came to see it in person; soak it in. So the best of luck to anyone who is doing independent travel, student or otherwise! There’s no trip too hard to plan if you take it step by step and look around you for advice, and keep in mind that each trip planning gets better and easier. Have fun dreaming up a trip for the ages!
Chinese word of the week:
独立路行 dúlì lü3xíng independent travel
路程表 lü3chéngbiao3 itinerary