Six weeks to go!

Well we are finally getting there. About four months ago we created a list of everything that needed to be done before we left on our big trip. We are finally starting to get there in the last few weeks. Today we did the big commitment thing according to Rick.....We set up a duel bank account in order to access our money overseas. Despite living together and buying a house we have never actually combined incomes before. We have had no need to, until now when we realised the amount of fees we would be paying separately if we continued to access our accounts whilst overseas. What a rip off. It's all about saving as much money as possible. Better in our wallet than in the banks profits.

01 - International vaccination record - Megan

For all the travelers who want to know, the best deal we could find was a Westpac account which has a global alliance in most of the countries we are visiting. This means if we use certain alliance banks they will waive the $5 withdrawal fee and only charge the conversion fee(about 1%). Every other bank charges $5 every single time you use the card and then a percentage commission on top of that. Quite expensive in the long term for a 18 month holiday. The only place we don't have the fee free option is Asia and because we are spending quite a bit of time there initially, we are getting a Travelex passport card. You load the card up with whatever amount you have/want and it can be used at any place that takes Visa and Visa plus. It can be topped up by BPay if you buy it from certain credit unions, such as Suncorp, but otherwise has to be re-loaded at the point of purchase if you buy it from Travelex.

02 - Travel vaccination record - Rick

So in the previous few weeks we have also:

- Completed all out travel vaccines (8 needles each) and received our International certificate of vaccination

- Received our Indian visa (after Rick stood in line for 40 minutes only to be told he had the wrong forms from their web page and after filling in the new ones had to wait all over again - they stapled them all together anyway!)

- Received the documents for the Russian visa support and sent off our passports to the Russian embassy in Canberra (we hope its going to the right place as it seems the address in the phone book is different to the one on the web site)

- Finalised and paid for the trans-mongolian railway leg of the trip

- I went shopping and priced up all the items we still want to buy for the trip (wet weather gear, wind stopper jackets, pac safes, money belts etc)