Now that we have an idea of our trip, the budget it will cost us, we begin our preparations for this new family adventure. We now have to organize our absence from work, think about what we want to do with our accommodation, take stock of our papers, of the vaccines needed for a trip around the world... All these preparations are not insurmountable, it just requires a little organization and backward planning. Ideally, it takes at least 6 months to calmly organize a long trip and that's exactly the time we have ahead of us.
6 months before departure there are 3 big points to anticipate:organize your absence from work, rent or sell your accommodation and finally plan your itinerary.
Succeeding in organizing your absence from work is the decisive point in being able to go on a trip for several months. In the case of an employee, you can request a sabbatical leave, unpaid leave or even resign. In our case, my husband will continue to work as a Digital Nomad, it's a chance for him to be able to work from anywhere as long as he has an internet connection. For my part, I have informed my associates and our current replacement will take my place with our patients in my absence. I still plan to put my time and experience to good use while traveling. I'll let you know when everything is confirmed!
In the case of a rental, it's simple, you start the notice and leave your accommodation. In our case, we are in home ownership. For our part, we have put our loft for rent in a Lille agency specializing in short-term rentals. The agency manages contracts, entries and exits, cleaning...
We necessarily rely on the rental of our loft to repay the monthly installments of the current loan . If you do not want to rent your accommodation, there is also the option to postpone deadlines which allows you to suspend monthly payments for a while.
As we are going to rent our house furnished and our few personal belongings will be stored in our attic, we have embarked on a huge sorting process in order to have as little as possible to store. We sold on classifieds sites anything that would no longer serve us or that we kept "just in case". We took the opportunity to buy used equipment that we were missing:down jackets, backpacks, shoes, anti-UV tops... To do this, you have to list and anticipate your needs a little. The ideal is to buy your down jackets in summer and your sandals in autumn, the prices are therefore very low on sites like Vinted!
For this 6-month trip, we quickly decided to spend them exclusively in Asia. Yes, but Asia is big! So which countries did we want to visit? What are the entry conditions (mandatory visa, price, duration on site, etc.). What weather for what period? I surfed the multitude of travel blogs but particularly on Worldwildbrice, specialized in Asia because the author lives there. He doesn't just take pretty pictures, he has a funny pen and at the same time gives a lot of details and explanations! I recommend !!!
I started by listing the countries that appealed to us. I looked on the France diplomatie website for the conditions of entry into these countries. It is useful to prepare your itinerary to know that there is no need for a visa for Thailand if you are spending less than 30 days there or that it is possible to obtain an e-visa on arrival in India but that the Chinese visa is obtained only before the stay in a center of issuance of visas. And then with these "constraints" of visas, weather, land borders to cross, the itinerary appeared more and more precise.
One of the important elements in our eyes was that the teachers of our daughters adhere to our project and that the girls can resume their place when we return to their school. It's done ! Remote monitoring is planned with teachers and their peers. It is important to remember that schooling in France is not compulsory, unlike education. We therefore have an obligation to continue the girls' school program so that when they return they keep the same level as their classmates. On this point I am not concerned. I am going to improvise myself as a teacher by adapting to their requests and to our life on site . If I feel that they want to speak more English to communicate with other children, we will work on English. Mathematics will go through the use of local currencies. The geography will necessarily be rather Asian. There are quite a few volcanoes in Indonesia, it will be an opportunity to talk about plate tectonics, the formation of the Earth, the Universe. And they will catch up with the rest later.
R. enters CM1, she is very academic but needs time and repetitions to learn. She also needs calm and concentration, which is not necessarily compatible in a class of 27 students. We are going to use these 6 months of travel to reinforce her achievements, and as she likes to read, it will be on this strong point that we will rely to consolidate her learning.
A. goes to first grade, she has a lot of facilities. She begins to read on her own, also plays with numbers, uses a very specialized vocabulary, has a crazy English (but also Spanish) accent and has an incredible memory. She just lacks maturity (compared to her comrades, not compared to our expectations). This year outside the school framework will above all allow him to continue his development, nothing more.
I will use the "Whole Program" manuals to Boscher editions to "work on" the main subjects.
And to continue learning while playing, the Lulu la taupe site offers a multitude of small edutainment games online or to print (crosswords, mazes, graphics, etc.). Above all, this will allow me to offer the girls independent activities when I work with one or the other in a more personalized way.
I detail a little further the steps to prevent the academic inspection of a temporary school dropout.
Quite quickly we established the list of our biggest fixed charges. This gives you an idea of your debit balance. Credit in progress, property tax, housing tax, income taxes . We opt for these expenses for a direct debit, much easier to manage remotely. For income tax, with the introduction of the withholding tax it is much simpler, no income, no taxes!
We have also listed our incompressible fixed secondary loads such as the phone plan, car insurance (in "parking" contract if it does not move during our absence), house insurance, bank charges. It was an opportunity to take stock of all these charges and review our contracts that we often forget to renegotiate . We have easily been able to earn a few tens of euros per month by adapting this insurance to our current and future needs.
I also had to list my professional expenses. I am a private nurse, I have fixed professional costs which will continue to be deducted in my absence:office rent, rental of my software, health insurance, accountant, professional liability. A hell of a lot of money that I leave every month, even when I'm not working. I therefore pay myself less salary in order to fund my professional account and thus be able to pay my expenses during our trip.
Vaccinations are essential during a long trip:typhoid fever, Japanese encephalitis, rabies, hepatitis A and B. Some are compulsory depending on the countries visited (you must present your vaccination card when entering the country), others are simply recommended. We will do those recommended by the doctor at the vaccination center. Vaccines for travelers are not covered by social security. Sometimes they can be by mutuals. Depending on the vaccines, their price varies from around 20 euros for hepatitis A to more than 150 euros for Japanese encephalitis. The price varies from center to center. In Pasteur vaccination centers, the price is higher than in a public hospital. We therefore made an appointment at the Tourcoing hospital, the delays can be long, I advise you to contact them 4 months before your departure. We have chosen to make vaccines against rabies (in 3 injections, around 30 euros/injection), Japanese encephalitis (in 2 injections, around 86 euros/injection), hepatitis A (in 1 injection, around 20 euros depending on the adult or child dose) and typhoid fever (1 injection, around 12 euros).
It therefore costs us 1200 euros at 4 , not reimbursed by social security. Luckily they are covered by our mutual insurance, but this is not always the case.
Aboutmalaria and other diseases transmitted by mosquito bites, the doctor at the vaccination center does not recommend long-term treatment. The risk is that we stop the treatment out of fatigue. The recommendations are rather to wear covering clothes, impregnated with anti-mosquito lotion, to avoid going out at nightfall in rural areas and to sleep under an impregnated mosquito net . In urban areas there are no/few reported cases of dengue fever, malaria or other barbaric names. We have already been bitten a lot during our previous trips (Thailand, Mexico, Costa Rica, India ...), not all mosquitoes are disease vectors but since we are away longer, we are potentially more at risk of being affected. We will therefore leave with impregnated clothing and special anti-mosquito lotion for the risk zone.
We also take the opportunity to do a complete medical check-up before the trip: dentist, ophthalmologist, pediatrician, gynecologist, dermatologist. This is an opportunity to also take stock of the list of medicines to take for us and our children.
In general, passports must be valid for six months after the return date in order to anticipate the possibility of a visa extension for travelers who wish to continue their stay. After checking, we had to redo those of the girls and we took the opportunity to take identity photos that will be used for our visas when traveling. Please note that some countries require different colored backgrounds for official photos. We also applied for our international driving license . We don't think we need it, but we asked for it anyway. Allow several weeks for receipt.
We have visa requests to do. Most requests will be made on the spot at the border posts. However, we must apply for a visa for China before our departure. The very complex procedures are in progress, I will talk about it again in the post dedicated to our trip to China, the first country of our Asian adventures.
There are different ways to travel around the world. Either you buy your tickets as you travel, according to your desires and prices. Either you opt for a "Round the World" ticket via specialized agencies such as Travel Nation or Zip World. These tailor-made tickets are created according to your needs. You give the list of countries you wish to visit and the agency offers you a travel itinerary alternating international flights, national flights, land transport with the possibility or not of modifying your flight dates. In our case, we stay in Asia only with few internal flights. The simplest, cheapest, least restrictive was to buy the flights as you go without going through an agency. So we bought our tickets about 3 and a half months before the scheduled departure. For this we used our techniques to find the cheapest plane tickets. So we land in China at the end of October for 1000 euros for 4 . And for internal flights in Asia, reduced to the strict minimum, we estimate our expenses at 2000 euros at 4 for the 6 months of the trip. To be able to enter China we must give our itinerary, reservations and above all exit from the territory. It will therefore be one of the countries where we are preparing our journey the most in advance. For the rest of the itinerary we did it according to the countries that interested us the most by having a bit of a travel logic. Indeed we will try as much as possible to cross the borders on foot rather than flying, especially between Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.
We have sent our letter of temporary de-schooling to the academic inspectorate of our children a little more than 3 months before the planned departure (this letter is essential even if your children are in private school). Specify in this letter your travel dates, the choice you have made to continue the education of your children:IEF (family education), free or regulated CNED... Attach a copy of your family record book and do not forget to specify how you will be contacted while travelling.
In return, we received a letter from the academic inspectorate a few weeks later giving us authorization for home education.
We gave this authorization to the school and also had to send it to the town hall of our city. But the link had to be made between the AI and the town hall since we quickly received a letter from the education department of our city so that a psychologist would come to the house to see the girls before our departure.
This visit is systematic in our city as part of the IEF. It was mainly an interview to take stock of the living environment of the girls at home, at school and outside. About our travel plan and the tools we will use to continue their education. The interview will have no consequences for us.
We have listed the senders of our letters. As far as possible we ask that exchanges be done by email, it will be easier to manage on the other side of the world. For advertising mail passing through the Post Office, we send a standard letter stating that we are moving to the other side of the world. With any luck, our contact details will be deleted from their mailing lists. If within the period of 3 months preceding your departure you still receive mail, you have the possibility of requesting a temporary forwarding of your mail to a member of your family (hello Mum, Dad!). For 6 months mail forwarding , it costs 30.50 euros.
During our previous trips, we have often been confronted with the price of high commissions charged by banks on withdrawals abroad. There are several cards used by travelers to avoid these bank charges, including Revolut and N26 (Mastercard, account abroad that you have to think about declaring for taxes). However, we chose to go through an online bank, Monabanqu, whose head office is located near us. The Visa Monabanq card allows up to 25 free withdrawals per calendar year, i.e. 50 free withdrawals for our trip. As well as 50 free payments under the same conditions. A classic bank charges 2% per withdrawal or payment, which is not negligible on a 6-month trip with a projected budget of 14,400-16,200 euros (80-90 euros/day, see the article on our budget). However, there are international packages in conventional banks that allow you unlimited withdrawals and payments. There is the rate mentioned on the agreements and the rate that you can negotiate with your advisor. Remember to also check the expiry dates of your cards , do not hesitate to contact your bank to ensure that it does not cancel your card during your trip.
The last month is normally devoted to small last minute preparations.
It is essential to take out health insurance for such a long trip (otherwise it is your VISA card insurance that covers you for trips of less than 3 months). We used the travel insurance comparison on the Tourdumondiste.com site, which particularly helped us in this project. Shapka seems to be the most widespread insurance among travellers. We will take out insurance as soon as we leave. Indeed in the causes of the Chapka guarantees it is clearly stipulated that recurrent pathologies requiring treatment before the subscription of the contract are excluded. We do not want to take the risk of saving a few euros to be covered by our VISA for the first 3 months of the trip and then by Chakpa for the last 3 months.
Also think about canceling magazine subscriptions, possibly suspending the landline, changing your mobile phone plan, modifying your car insurance...
We must remember to photocopy and photograph our official documents to store them on a digital medium, in a folder at the bottom of our backpack and for a member of our family. Identity card, passports, vaccine pages on your health record, various prescriptions... You should also remember to write down the numbers in case of emergency:opposition for the bank card, health insurance, consulate...
We also do some bag filling simulations . We leave with the lightest bags possible. For this we use the list of things we take on a trip. As we're going a little longer, I'm thinking of adding just panties and a short-sleeved t-shirt to our list to avoid washing every other day! I also bought cubes. These are bags that allow you to organize storage by category (hot or cold items or by child or by group of clothes).
I also use folding techniques to fill the suitcase. Not necessarily for the space saving generated but especially to find the clothes more easily without having to take everything out.
Just before your departure, do not forget to change the announcement of your answering machine to possibly redirect people who are trying to contact you to an email address.
Finally, we will give our loved ones all the belongings likely to be useful in our absence in order to help us manage the hazards of a trip to the end of the world:duplicate house keys, photocopies of your papers, various codes and Useful telephone numbers, itinerary and drop-off points.
This last month will also be an opportunity to party with our friends and enjoy our families before the big trip!
