Our dream trip across 12 countries – how much did it cost us?

On by Kaśka&Michał Posted in Australia, Asia, Bez kategorii, Burma/Myanmar & Laos, China, The Philippines, Indonesia & East Timor, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh, Thailand, Uzbekistan & Tajikistan, VietnamTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

Having finished our 6-month journey, during which we visited 12 countries  (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Australia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, China and Nepal), we often get questions regarding the cost of such a trip. In this post you will find information that will help you to realize that you don’t need a lot of money (which does not mean you need very little of it) to make your travel dream come true. Of course now we can call ourselves smarter and advise you which country you could skip right away if your budget is very limited; and this does not mean that it must be Australia, which many people associate with gigantic travel expenses! Sit back comfortably and make yourself decide after reading our tips whether a long travel is something you could go for taking into account various destinations and travel costs:)

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Indonesian words which will help you communicate in the villages of West Papua

On by Kaśka&Michał Posted in Asia, Indonesia & East TimorTagged , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As promised , the following post is devoted to basic Indonesian vocabulary that will be of great use for you if you want to explore West Papua on your own without a guide (the guide could cost you up to 500EUR for 4 days only)  and go trekking to villages of Baliem Valley. Bahasa Indonesia is really one of the easiest Asian languages. There are no declinations, it sounds very simple as if  there was no grammar at all, and the pronunciation shouldn’t be a problem if you know a little bit of Spanish (for us, Polish people – it’s also very easy).

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West Papua: trekking to villages in the Baliem Valley – DIY with a daily budget of 7-8 EUR per person!

On by Kaśka&Michał Posted in Asia, Bez kategorii, Indonesia & East TimorTagged , , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments

Being in West Papua and not experiencing a direct contact with local people or tribes living in the remote villages somewhere in the jungle or mountains would mean not being there at all .. we were anticipating this for a long time and our dream finally came true: we managed to reach Papuan villages and meet local people. We did it without a guide, porters and without a non-essential travel permit, thanks to which we saved about 400-500EUR! We followed the trail through the picturesque mountainous Baliem Valley starting our trekking in Kurima heading to Hitugi, and continuing to Userem, Yuarima until we reached Yogosem, a village situated at an altitude of 2500m above the sea level. This would not be possible without learning the basics of Bahasia Indonesia (without learning the language you cannot communicate with local people and will not get to know their culture well), plus our determination and stamina turned out to be be paramount in that experience too 🙂 (the most strenuous trekking path from Yuarima to Yogosem took us about 3.5 hours and all the time we were to trek the steep trail up, and at the end of it we literally had the opportunity to stand in the clouds :)). We didn’t meet any white people on the way during our 4 day trekking and in fact we felt ourselves to be the main attraction for the locals, especially in Yogosem. In this post you will be provided with more details regarding our 4-day adventure including the info how we got to Kurima, and where we slept and ate with locals for 7-8 EUR per day per person! 🙂

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