hey guys kristen here and i have traveled to over 60 countries alone over the last nine years and
i've planned literally hundreds of solo trips over the course of that time let's jump into the seven
things that you should do when you're planning a solo trip all of the steps that i take to make
sure that i have a successful trip where i don't get scammed where i save as much money as possible
and also where i have a positive impact not only on myself but the places that i visit
step number one is figuring out where you're gonna go i basically always have a list of things that
i've saved on my instagram just things that i've seen over the years that were really beautiful
places that i want to go and so i often am pulling from that list but if you really are just open to
whatever i used kayak explore when planning a trip to myanmar a few years ago because i just didn't
even know where to go so i was like okay i'll just say that i'm free the whole month of january and
let kayak explore figure something out for me so usually i already kind of have an idea of where
i want to go so for today's video we are planning a trip to french polynesia i'm planning on going
in september which is next month the next thing that i need to consider is is the weather going
to be good i'll just look at various climate guides there's often tables that show you what
the rainfall is what the average temperature is and then you can make an informed decision
i love personally picking shoulder seasons that is when the weather is still nice but there's
far fewer people because they're all trying to go during the prime time and i wouldn't say not to go
in the off season either i mean i personally love southeast asia during the rainy season
it's cheaper everything is easier to book i can be more serendipitous it's going to just be a better
experience overall in terms of the lushness of the jungle another example is i went to alaska
in the winter this year and it was amazing i went to denali national park and pretty much was the
only one there wow this is like all boarded up it's all closed in the winter it is a ghost town
the gas station isn't even open so it really just requires a little bit of research on your
part to decide where you want to go the other thing to consider is is it a holiday time
that week between christmas and new year's is pretty much the most expensive time to go anywhere
also google the holidays local to that country because if you're landing there without any idea
what you're getting into you may find that you've picked a really bad time to go or you may find
that you want to build your trip around a certain festival or holiday if you wanted to see what luna
or new year is like for example in vietnam you want to google when that's going to be this year
next thing to consider is your budget and your time frame so i would plan a lot more if you have
a narrower budget and time frame when i first went to southeast asia by myself nine years ago i just
bought a one-way ticket to thailand and i did not have anything booked not even my first night of
accommodation i was rich in time but not in money so i wanted to travel slowly basing it on people's
recommendations but most people are working with a shorter period of time in a certain budget so
work that into your calculations in terms of how many places you're going to go what you're
going to spend each night on accommodation what activities you want to do next i'm looking at
things to do in the destination so i just go back to google for that things to do in french
polynesia my biggest tip for this is to find a travel blog for your information viator is selling
new tours tripadvisor i find leaves out a lot of things but here we have x days and y 10 things
to do in french polynesia if you can happen upon a good blog written by somebody who has a lot of
experience in the country that's the best resource that you can have because you're going to get a
lot more personalized recommendations you're going to get more honesty in terms of what's cool and
what's not and so i definitely recommend looking for travel blogs for your information in terms of
things to do i also go to pinterest as well i'll just put the same search term in there things to
do in french polynesia and then i can see visually certain places where it's like okay yeah i really
want to make sure that i see that i also really like just looking on instagram so i'll go to the
location search tab and then i'll put in french polynesia and see what pops up here so you're
probably going to get a lot of influencers posting stuff but you'll also get the major reposting
accounts because they're going to show you both the popular and famous things but also a few more
of the off the beaten path types of things and that can lead you to the photographer who took
the photo and then they may have a whole bunch of really good tips for you to look at as well i have
three videos on this channel all dedicated to the best places to travel alone whether it's abroad or
in the u.s so be sure to check those out next for some suggestions once i have a general idea of the
things that i want to do in a place then i have an idea of which airport that i need to fly into
there are a few different ways that you can search for flights and one way i really like
is momondo because then you can put in multiple legs of a journey so the cool thing about momondo
is it will put together a whole bunch of different airlines to give you what the cheapest option is
but then they also have a leased co2 option which i really appreciate another thing that
i like to do is just go to google flights and what you can get from that if we put in
say san francisco to tahiti is it it gives me an idea of if these are high or low right now
they've got this little graph where it shows you whether prices are low typical or high for the
trip so if you're seeing that it's high it may be because you've left it to the last minute but
also you could turn on the track prices function and then they will send you an email whenever the
price fluctuates in one direction or another you can also look at the date grid which helps you
to piece together the best possible round-trip flight so that you can save money if you've got
any flexibility in your schedule in this case i could save almost 600 by just moving my dates
around minimally another tip i have for you is to book in the country's local language so when
i was flying from berlin germany to johannesburg in south africa it was actually 50 cheaper for me
to book on the german booking website in german language next let's look for some accommodation
you guys there's a really good deal on here okay so by looking on my mondo i was able to find
and an over water bungalow on fuahine for a hundred dollars less per night than they usually
charge so i am absolutely booking this the nice thing that google will do for you is aggregate a
whole bunch of places and then give you the prices based on the different booking websites that you
could use but i wouldn't only rely on google you've also got a gota you've got momondo again
you've got booking.com you've got expedia and a lot of times it would even be better for you to
just contact the property directly another thing though that we have to think about when we're
booking accommodation is is this something that is locally owned is the money going gonna stay in the
destination staying at foreign owned all-inclusive resorts often means that most of the money leaves
and as tourists we have to be super responsible about voting with our dollars and making sure that
the destinations that we're visiting actually benefit off of our visitorship there's so many
options all around the world make sure that you're spreading the wealth around so that people who run
small businesses are able to make money as well this is the crux of sustainable tourism
next i want to make sure that i prepare for the day that i land so this is tip number seven
make sure that you are fully reading up on the scams and annoyances and that you are set from
the moment that you land at the airport so for this i would just go back to google there's a
lot of message boards where people talk about this sort of stuff on here and i really do like message
boards when i get to this part because people will talk about what kind of transport is available and
what it should cost people will talk about if there are any scams that you need to be aware
of so these are really important things to know before you land in a destination
and it only takes really like 10 to 15 minutes to do this research justice so just make sure
that you know what to look out for when you land at that airport because you can't count on that
wi-fi working and you can't be sure that people there are trustworthy it's actually one of the
best places for a scammer because so many people are landing who don't really know what's up yet
i also pretty much always get a local sim card at the airport unless during my reading i found that
they charge too much sometimes that's the case but most of the time i get my money out of that atm
there i get the sim card and then i'm already connected before i leave the airport this is my
favorite way to handle landing in a new country keep in mind if it's a sunday or not a lot of
things will be closed keep in mind the time that you're landing no matter what just make
sure that you're not landing completely without any knowledge of what you're getting into so i
basically just keep repeating this process for all of the different places that i want to go on
my sort of proposed and planned itinerary i book all the things that i need to book ahead of time
and i just make sure that i set myself up for success on day one this isn't that different
than if you were planning a trip for other people you may have noticed whether you're in a group
whether you're by yourself whether you're in a couple these are all like pretty logical steps
that you can take but you just need to be extra clear on what it is that you want because this is
your trip i have so many suggestions on this channel about places that you can go if it's your
first time traveling alone in the u.s and abroad a whole bunch of information on things to do and not
do to keep yourself safe so make sure that you watch those videos next and i will see you soon