The Three P's: Planning, Packing, Panicking

I started writing this post sat in my bed, curled up with a heat pad and insufficently dosed up on the strongest painkillers I could find. With just over 12 hours befor I leave home for London Heathrow. I thought it may be useful to go through the three things everyone goes through before leaving for holidays, or work trips, and my personal experiences with them.

Anyone that has travelled before will know exactly what I am talking about, when it comes to planning, packing, and ultimatley panicking.

Planning

The first stage to any good trip requires a little bit of planning, especially the longer ones where you will find yourself having to budget for them or if you're like me, having to work as well.

Rule 1: Use People and Their Personal Experiences

My planning for my NZ adventure, had been well thought out, with the exception of using a company to assist in finding a job and assisting with documents. A complete and utter waste of my time and more importantly my money. If you want to plan a Working Holiay, I suggest you find facebook groups that are based on working holidays for that country. They are full of people that have been exactly where you are now, they are open to any questions you may have, and are the perfect people to guide you as they have first hand experience.

Rule 2: Keep An Open Mind

The best thing I did in terms of planning my adventure was doing all of my own personal research and keeping an open mind. The whole point of this or any adventure is to try new things, food, experiences. Go for the experiences you'd never thought you'd try or want to do and do it... at least once. You never know you might end up loving something you thought you'd hate. I'm at least going to try a snowsport of somesort whilst I am over in the South Island. If someone suggests going somewhere and you don't think it's your vibe, go anyways, it is still an experience! You are only going to regret the things you didn't do, not things you have done.

Rule 3: Remember, Nothing Ever Goes to Plan

The most important thing to remember when planning, is that normally things will go tits up and half of the activities you wanted to do today you didn't end up doing because you got side tracked or over ran on an activity. Just live in the moment, and plan for another day. The best memories are the ones you don't plan.

Packing

You are a very brave person if you can think or even manage to get away without packing, either that or you have been travelling long enough it is already done and you simply don't need to worry about it.

Top Tips

1. Toothpastes are under 100ml: Most Toothpastes are under 100ml anyways so don't waste your time buying travel sized when you can just bring your normal one anyways.

2. Packing Methods: Learn different packing methods or tips from others and put into place the ones that work for you. Compression bags, vaccuum sealed bags are always a good idea and certainley help for longer journey time.

3. Buy When You Arrive: Only pack what you can't be without. Save a little extra cash to buy essentials once you have landed ie. Shampoo, Conditioner, Razors etc. It is easier to buy once out in your destination, and you get to save on space and weight in your luggage for whatever else you want to take from home.

4. Greaseproof Prevents Creasing: If you have time and space, a trick I learnt from my G.U.E.S.T. (Guided and Unified Excellence in Service Training) Course was to place greaseproof paper in between every fold you make on an item of clothing in order to prevent creasing. The perfect solution for all those who need an iron pressed suit but simply won't have time to Iron after arriving.

5. Bring Cash: I don't care that everywhere always uses card nowadays. Cash can help you get out of tricky situations when your so called reliable debit card decides to decline. Take about £100 - £200 worth in cash, this is also dependent on how long you are staying. At an absolute minimum take £80 and a max would be £300 if you are able to be a bit more bougie.

Panicking

My favourite part of this article... panicking. There are three stages to panicking. You have your departure panic, flight panic, and post-arrival panic.

Departure Panic: This can happen at any point up until you are boarding that plane/boat/train. This will be a did you pack that specific thing you wanted to pack, you may have even taken extra care and attention to pack but you are still doubting yourself. It could also be that mild panic of realising you have forgotten something. In my case a brand new softshell jacket I had bought for work.

Flight Panic: This can happen from as soon as you check in on your flight, and have dropped off your bags all the way through to landing at your final destination. These can include but the list is not exhaustive:

1. Checking-In: Are you at the right airport, terminal, entrance, have you got the right brand, are you there at least 2 hours before your departure, are your bags the right size, are the bags within the weight limit?

2. Going Through Security: Have I managed to somehow sneek illegal items with me, are my xyz legal to take on a plane, are they legal in your final destination, what will security stop me for, will they stop me for having paracetemol, how strict are passport control going to be when I get there, what documents do they want, do I have all the documents?

Post-Arrival Panic: This will happen as soon as you land at your final destination. Do you have your passport, where is your boarding pass, have you done a traveller's declaration, have you sorted a traveller's pass, where is your visa, do you have proof of funds, have you got everything you need, what is transport going to be like?

My ultimate panic of my trip to NZ was a moment of utter stupidity, after being frustrated by the Emirates Cabin Crew and their attitude towards me at their connections desk, I had gone to go and check which gate I needed to be at... still not up it was 04:15 (UAE) and I still had another 15 to go before it would show up. I decided to finish the last of my fanta orange and chuck it in the bin. Realising I had my boarding pass in one hand and fanta in the same hand, I moved my boarding pass into my right and went to chuck in my fanta... or so I thought. I hadn't. I just chucked both my boarding pass and fanta into the bin. Took me about 5 minutes when I went to get my boarding pass out, I realised what I had done. Now if you know me I like getting to where I need to be early. So when my gate shows I am normally a gonner and heading straight for it. So previous emotions began to build and overwhelm with my new ones. I went to go and sort out a boarding pass at their self-service desk and like most technology when you need it... smelt my fear, and refused to work. So I go back up to the first connection desk who were the nicer of them who informed me I wouldn't be able to sort one out until 05:15. I had already seen my gate was the otherside of the long corridor for gate B. I could hear my dad's voice echoing in my head "some gates could be as far as two miles apart". At this point I am completely and unequivicollay overreacting thinking it'll take me hours to get there, and reason with myself that it shouldn't take that long to get a boarding pass. How I was wrong with that. This dude managed to make it the most longest excruciating process I had ever been through. Everything was done slower than that Sloth off of ZooTopia. Eventually I did get my boarding pass and all was well again when I got to the gate with plenty of time to spare... 2 hours +.... Whoops.