Travel Vaccination Article Published in Meet, Plan, Go!

Hello friends! We have been published! We have had the amazing privilege of getting our article on travel immunizations and prescriptions published through Meet, Plan, Go! website on Monday, May 28th, 2012. Meet, Plan, Go! is more than a nationally recognized website providing inspiration and travel advice for anyone interested in taking a career break or extended travel. They offer networking opportunities across the country for like minded individuals to learn from each other. So, we are very honored to have this opportunity to share what we learned during our planning phase. Here is our article titled, 10 Steps to Knowing What Travel Immunizations You Need.

Summary of our Countdown List

INTRODUCTION: How does one go about planning for a career break? START A LIST! My indispensable 2Do iPhone app kept me on task. Now that we are transitioning from the Planning Phase to the actual Trip, I recently decided to go through and publish the list of things we accomplished over the past 6 months in the event that someone may find this information useful. I know there are things we forgot to ‘write’ down on our list, but here’s the general idea.

BACKGROUND: We are a married couple in our 40s with a furry child (aka. dog), living a relatively simple life in a quaint neighborhood of Kansas City. We have resigned from our jobs and are about to spend our savings on a trip around-the-world for 8 months. We have a house/dog-sitter and we will continue to pay our household expenses while on the road. Although we’ve been daydreaming about such a trip for a while, we started getting serious about 6 months ago.

Read further for our 6-month, 4-month, 2-month, 1-month, and 1-week checklists....

9 Steps to Knowing the Required and Recommended Travel Immunizations and Pills

Another major item on our 6-month to-do list was figuring out the necessary travel immunizations.  6 months ahead seems like a long time, but with over 20 countries we plan on visiting, there are bound to be immunizations that are required, or at least highly recommended – some vaccination series requiring at least a 6-month head start such as the hepatitis series. 

If we were 20-something backpackers, would we even care about vaccines?  Maybe, maybe not.  We certainly wouldn’t be as cautious about the possibility of acquiring a number of deadly diseases abroad, had we been 20 years younger!  Alas, the wisdom (or paranoia) that comes with age.  One main reason for taking extra precautions is Akiko’s tendency to attract mosquitos no matter where in the world, and her tendency to have allergic reactions to their bites.  Many of these diseases abroad are carried by mosquitos.  If any of them could be prevented by a few shots or pills, it seems a worthwhile endeavor.   

There are a couple of vaccinations that are required for entry into certain countries or to obtain a visa.  However, most of the time, the choice to be vaccinated is ultimately up to you.  Our advice is to at least research what is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even make an appointment with a Travel Immunization specialist for a consultation so you can make an educated decision by weighing the pros and cons.  The major ‘con’ being cost, of course, and specifically for malaria – the side effects of some of the drugs. 

The following outlines the steps that we took to research the immunizations for our upcoming travel sabbatical. 

No Backing Out Now!

We are officially committed.  There is no turning back now!  We made Round-The-World (RTW) ticket purchases through AirTreks.  Our travel agent was most helpful in finding alternate routes, cheapest routes, etc. We were only able to make actual flight reservations through the end of September, since reservations are available one-year in advance.  We will have to make the reservations for our final leg at a later time.

After reviewing the various itineraries, our 6-month RTW ticket comes to ~$4800/traveler, which includes travel insurance and cancelation insurance.

Here is a rough outline of our flight pattern.  We will experience layovers in a wide variety of destinations; experience many different airlines we have never heard of; and basically plan on lengthy travel times.  Oh well.  That's part of the adventure!

(We are taking a major detour to Tokyo first, but will be back to the States to start our official RTW journey).  Layover spots in italics.  Atlanta, Georgia > Miami, Florida > Caracas, Venezuela > Quito, Ecuador > Lima, Peru > Santiago, Chile > Buenos Aires, Argentina > back to Quito, Ecuador > Madrid, Spain > Istanbul, Turkey > Riga, Latvia > Tel Aviv, Israel....That's all we've got booked so far.  Destinations past September will include Asia.

Airlines we will be flying: American Airlines, Air Baltic, Lan Airlines, Santa Barbara Airlines.

I must confess.  I have some butterflies in my stomach from two things: our first major purchase towards this trip, and the significance of the purchase towards making this more of a reality than ever before.

Setting the Itinerary

It seems premature, but one of our first tasks is to set the itinerary for our major round-the-world destination spots.  This is very important because we want our round-the-world travel agent that we are working with through http://www.airtreks.com/, to have plenty of time to book the best available flight options.  The longer we wait, the best airfare and schedule may dwindle.  Some travelers may opt to purchase separate legs of air travel on their own.  We feel that going through an agency that specializes in round-the-world travel helps keep the airfare as economical as possible.

Up to this point, we've had a wish list of destination spots such as Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Morocco, Argentina, and so forth; however, it's an entirely different story when we need to commit to putting actual departure and arrival dates to these places.

So, we took advantage of the perfect weather on a Sunday afternoon by taking our laptop, iPhones, pen, paper, dog, and a bottle of wine outside on our patio and went to work.

6-Month Countdown

One of the first major decisions is to set an actual target date for when all of this is going to happen.  Setting a concrete date is helpful for not only planning, but also to start acting like this is "for real."  Back in July of 2011, we set our launch date for sometime in May of 2012.  That would give us almost 10 months to plan our sabbatical.