Travel Visa Requirements

Embarking on our world tour in the near future brought up the question of visa requirements for the different places we may be traveling to.  Matt found a great reference via Wikipedia that may be helpful if you decide to embark on your own journey. 

One location noted "Immigration offenses, such as visa overstaying, are punishable by caning."  Yowsa!  You can believe we will be following the rules in this country.

Update on Wednesday, February 19, 2014 at 6:20AM by DINKS Travel

Please note - The Philippines requires a return ticket to the United States or to another country (as we luckily read online before we arrived).  We created an updated entry in Wikipedia for this.

Update on Saturday, February 22, 2014 at 6:43PM by DINKS Travel

We believe we found even a better site for Visa requirements while having to do more digging on what's necessary to keep us from being slowed down during our travels.  Try - http://www.visahq.com/.

WHERE WOULD YOU GO?

Today, Matt's high school French teacher (Hello Mme Brubaker!) asked for more information about our plans.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we will keep this post brief and let the above graphic do the talking.

We have not created a set agenda for our adventures.  Our approach is to remain flexible and avoid over-planning in an attempt to retain a reasonable level of spontaneity.  Have you ever wanted to go to a train station or airport and choose an unfamiliar destination from the departures board?  We hope to do that on this trip.

Now that you have an idea of the general geographic regions we intend to visit, please comment and let us know if there are "must see" sites, cities or experiences that we should pencil into our informal itinerary!

Less than 2 Weeks!

Happy Holidays everyone!  Tis the season to celebrate with friends and family and we have been partying it up!  We would like to give a “shout out” to our friends and co-workers for awesome parties / outings, thoughtful gifts and well wishes.

Preparations are coming together.  It’s been a lot of work, but satisfying to know we will soon realize our goal.  Since our previous blog posting, we sold our secondary vehicle and condo, moved, finished all travel vaccinations, secured our international drivers’ licenses, and completed all travel related purchases.

And you may have noticed this website is officially up and running!  Woohoo! 

TripAdvisor's 10 Destinations on the Rise

TripAdvisor's 10 Destinations on the Rise offers a great idea generator for the upcoming trip.  We noticed a few destinations already included on our list of "must visits" and some new considerations as well. 

For those targeting specific regions, the article offers an option towards the top which reveals TripAdvisor's picks for the top 10 destinations in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, and the South Pacific.

Departure Preparations - Travel Insurance

Most traditional insurance companies do not extend coverage to overseas locations, so a supplemental travel insurance policy is highly recommended and can be sourced at a reasonable price.  We researched this topic and recently identified a website that provides convenient side-by-side plan comparisons.  Entering basic information at http://www.insuremytrip.com/ identified InsureAssist as a quality insurance provider to fulfill our needs.    

We secured the InsureAssist TripMed Multi-Trip policy which covers a full year of world travel.  The following convinced us that this was the right plan:

• $500,000 medical coverage cap (many plans cap at $50,000 or $100,000)
• $500,000 emergency medical evacuation cap (more than sufficient)
• A+ rated insurance underwriter – Nationwide (an insurance agency we used in the past)
• Additional coverage for things like trip interruption, lost / delayed baggage, accidental death, etc.
• Very competitive price ($496 total for two people for a full year of coverage)

It should be noted that this policy contains a unique clause limiting each trip outside of the United States (and US territories) to no more than 90 days.  This is not a problem for us; we intend to return home to see family and friends every quarter or so.  While back in the United States, we will be covered by our traditional insurance provider.

It is comforting to know that we will be covered in the event of accident or illness no matter where we are in the world.