Choosing a Visa OR Learn From My Stressful Experience | Tuesday Travels

There are many things in life that tend to stress me out - trivial pursuit with my Dad, my Nan critcising people's driving whilst in the wrong lane on a roundabout, my bank balance. But as of recently, I can now add 'choosing a visa and acquiring said visa' to the list of things that stress me out.  So being the helpful, considerate human being that I am here is my list of things to do to ensure that your visa acquiring experience is less stressful that mine, and even possibly enjoyable (but I'm not a miracle worker so don't hold me to that.)

1) Look Into Every Visa Thoroughly

The website to use for getting your Australian visa is the Australian Visa Bureau. It includes a lot of information about all the visa's that are on offer to you, and there are a fair few. You'll be able to rule out some straight away, for instance I could rule out a 'Skilled Migration Visa' because I am no planning on immigrating and I'm not skilled, therefore quite simply ruled out. However, I was stuck between the Working Holiday Visa and bog standard,  simple Tourist Visa. (For those who want to know I opted for the Working Holiday Visa). The website does give a lot of information about both visa's, however I still had a few questions so I emailed them. This is something you shouldn't be scared to do at any point of planning your trip, you don't want to agree to something then find out later that's it not really what you wanted. If you feel you need more information to make a fully informed choice than make sure you get it whether that be emailing or even phoning someone to find out that information.

2) Visa First, Flights Second

Don't book any flights until you've secured your visa. Mine only took a few days to come through so I didn't have to wait long to book my flights. That's not saying yours will be as quick, but either way still don't book flights. Flights to Australia are super expensive, I thought I was going to have to ask my parents to re-mortgage the house when I got my first quote, so you don't want to spend £800 (Oh how I wish mine had been that cheap) on flights then get your visa rejected and have to cancel flights or something silly.

3) Make Sure You Meet All the Requirements

It sounds ridiculous, but read over the visa requirements several times, make sure you could tick off every one of them. Again, you don't want your visa to be rejected because you haven't read the requirements for the visa thoroughly. Some of the requirements will come into play closer to when you leave for Australia, well at border control, such as making sure you have a return ticket or the funds to purchase one. The Australian government like to know your coming home, and if you can't prove you can leave the country at some point they quite simply won't let you in. Don't be stupid about it, if you're not 100% sure that you will have the funds to purchase a return ticket once in Australia don't risk it. It's not worth taking a twenty-four hour flight to be sent home before you've even left the airport.

4) Take Cost and Time into Consideration

As I said earlier I was stuck between the Working Holiday and the Tourist visa. For me it came down to how long I want to stay in Australia. The simple answer is - I don't know. For all I know I might get there and decided I want to be there three months, or I could decide I want to be there a year. With the Tourist visa I wouldn't have that option as it only lasts three months, so although the Working Holiday costs A LOT more money (you'll find expense is a recurring theme if you decide to travel to Australia) it was the better option for me.

5) Don't Leave it to the Last Minute

The main reason my visa experience became so stressful was because I left it so late to needing to book my tickets. This goes back to tip number two. I hadn't considered that I should probably make sure that the Australian's would actually have me in their country before booking tickets. When it came to booking my tickets I was asked if I had my visa, when I told them I hadn't the lovely young man on the end of the phone essentially told me to go away and come back when I'd got one. Of course I knew I'd potentially lose the cheap seats (cheap by the standards of the airline I had to book with due to my other halfs already booked flights, don't worry he got an earful), I'd secured on the phone and may not get a flight on the day I wanted because time is of the essence when travelling. Luckily my visa came back really quickly, however this isn't the case for everyone and if mine had taken a few days longer I'd have definitely lost the cheap seats and the date I wanted. So long story short, organise your visa way ahead of even thinking about a date of flying. Your visa doesn't activate until you enter Australia so don't worry about it expiring.

So those are my four tips for choosing an Australian visa. I hope someone finds them helpful, or at least finds that they make the experience less stressful, I'm sure either way your experience won't be as hectic as mine. So good luck, and enjoy the visa acquiring experience.

A Little Step May Be The Beginning Of A Great Journey | Motivational Monday #1

As the end of the year draws closer I find it's easy to set yourself lots of goals to achieve in the upcoming year, knowing full well the by February steps towards achieving those goals are likely to have been thrown out of the window, along with that terrible jumper your colleague bought you for secret santa. It's also easy to forget that goals aren't achieved over night, it takes works to accomplish things and getting to the end of often a slow process.

What I'm trying to say is, although the steps towards your goals may be small and slow, they can lead to something great. But you have got to take that first step, no matter how big or little, you can's start on any journey without the first step. Whether it be going for that first run after Christmas, putting aside a little extra money, or deciding it's time to leave the job you hate. The first step is the one that will start the journey towards what you want, so take it and start the new year headed in the right direction.

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New Year, New Start

Firstly, merry Christmas to you all (sorry it's a bit late)!

Now we've done with the standard annual greeting that occurs when we've eaten too much food and begin to plan diets that will inevitably fail due to the large amount of left over Christmas food because once again we over estimated how much we'd eat, I'll get into the nitty gritty, and reassure that you're not going mad by explaining why all my old blog posts have mysteriously disappeared.

Well towards throughout the last month it hasn't been a secret that I wasn't feeling exactly myself. I was miserable 80% of the time and spent 99.9% moping around feeling sorry for myself pretending like I was feeling fine. It all boils down to coping with a long distance relationship, and coming to terms with that. However, being miserable isn't who I naturally am and it was actually becoming more of a struggle to dwell on how miserable I was then it was to perk up and get on. So when I was reading over the last couple of months blog posts and realising that my miserable attitude was reflected in boring, mundane and repetitive blog posts I realised I needed to snap out of it and start fresh.

I.e. delete all blog posts and start from scratch. Possibly a bit of a rash decision but, determined to make this a better blog, and more enjoyable, both for me to write and for you to read, I feel it was the right one at this time. On the note of rash decisions I also deleted the Australian blog. I decided I didn't need a whole blog dedicated to that small part of my life, I will post on here about all things Aus-related and once I'm out there the blog will probably become dominated by it as I will probably have very little time to blog about anything else.

Apart from the absence of boring, repetitive posts the blog will be largely the same. From tomorrow (Monday 30th) it will continue as a daily blog (again until I go to Australia when blogging will depend on wifi availability) largely with themed days. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will continue as they have done (motivational, reads, wrap-up) but Tuesday will change to become Tuesday Travels, and Thursday will become Thursday Talks. This will be to ensure I continue to blog about Australia and other travels that come after Australia for those who are interested and also so that we don't lose the time when I can just ramble about something I want to, and also so you guys can interact with me and let me know what you want to hear from me about. I have also decided to keep it less formal, so if I decide that I don't want to be motivational one Monday but would rather post a DIY video, or on a Wednesday I'd rather blog about my favourite new lipstick over the book I'm currently reading then I will do so. But it will be daily. Promise. With a pinky.

I hope you continue to enjoy the blog and I look forward to making sure this is as much of an exciting read for you as it can be.

Until tomorrow, keep smiling, Emily :)