I

have never traveled alone, never visited countries outside Asia and Oceania region, and never funded my trips outside the Philippines. However, those reasons did not stop me from realizing a possibly life changing trip. My United Kingdom self-funded trip this coming July 21, 2012 all started with just wondering then led to planning which required committing. The hardest part is executing.

One of my 2011 resolutions was to make sure I travel at least one local and one international trip every year.  When I heard May last year that my aunt from Australia was planning to go to London  for an important reason, my head took me to dreamland immediately!

Dreaming Melai: Wow, London can be an amazing new place to discover. Let’s go there!
Reality Checking Melai: You’ve never traveled that far.
Dreaming Melai: Why not? Olympics is also happening there that time. It will be festive!
Reality Checking Melai: Come on, UK has high cost of living. Air fare is not cheap either.
Dreaming Melai: So? Use your money skills and figure it out.
Reality Checking Melai: Okay!

It was a short debate with myself. Dreaming Melai was occupying 90% of my brain and giving me doses of happy hormones. Reality Checking Melai eventually joined the fascination and helped in the planning stage for UK trip to be real.

As you can see in my notes, it’s obvious I know little about UK. I didn’t even mention anything about royalties! I just had this sudden urge to let my adventurous spirit go wherever it wants to go. I know it’s not going to be easy and it will require something big from myself. No worries, I had one year, one month, and one week to figure things out.

Based from what I wanted to do, I roughly estimated that I needed a hundred of these: 

Reality Checking Melai: *Gulp* 
Dreaming Melai: We can do it!
Reality Checking Melai: You sure? That means saving Php2,000 every week from now on until July.
Dreaming Melai: Chicken.
Reality Checking Melai: Fine. But we have to list things that we need to do to do that.
Dreaming Melai: GAME!

And so, I published in my Facebook account my action plan and commitment to achieve my UK trip.

I learned from my previous Sales Management Training work that if you tell people your goals, it’s harder to back out. And so, I committed to the world to realize my UK trip.

I mentioned the execution is the hardest part right? How much exactly did I save and the exact costs? Was I tempted to spend the money I saved? Did I still have resources to go out and spend time with friends? What were my challenges and triumphs along the way? Those questions my friend will be answered on the second part of this entry. If you have additional questions, please do leave them here. I’ll be more than happy to answer them.