The Essentials - Georgia Budget Travel Must Haves

My recent trip to Georgia the country turned out to be successful, thanks to the blogs I have skimmed and read way back January I was able to plan it ahead. For now, I will be sharing my own experience and how I was able to survive the trip travelling solo. :)

From Dubai to Georgia - What You Should Bring

One good thing about being a resident of the UAE is getting easy access to several travel destinations in the world. A Filipino passport holder AND a Dubai resident can go to Georgia VISA FREE for up to 90 days (source: Visa HQ). All you need to secure is the validity of your passport and some blank pages and you are good to go.

Holiday Factory is legit, and they are extremely cheap.

I booked my vacation through Holiday Factory - a 3nights and 4days package that includes air tickets, hotel accommodation, and transfers. Short stay yes, but the city destination Tbilisi is quite small you can explore it for hours. Prices for the package varies, it cost higher if you opt for a 5 star hotel. Since I have already planned my tours and I knew before hand that I will be going out of Tblisi a lot during the day, I opted for the 3 star hotel (Grand Palace). This cost me AED 1099 plus the single supplement of AED 200 and the entire room was mine, ha!

Note that since the package is cheap, the flights that you will get is super early in the morning (12mn flight from Dubai to Tblisi and 4am flight to Dubai from Tbilisi). Technically, you will only have 3 full days to yourself BUT you can always opt to extend your stay for an additional AED 150 per day, not really bad.

When I arrived at the airport, I only presented my renewed passport, IDs, my travel voucher which I have printed and I was able to get through immigration right away. Tip: They will be asking you how much your pocket money will be so make sure you have enough (enough means minimum AED2000). 

Once you have arrived at Tbilisi airport, the immigration will also ask you for travel documents, make sure you provide it to them including your resident visa in the UAE (this is very important). When you get out of the immigration, pick up your baggage and go straight to the departure area where you will see a Holiday Factory sign, the representatives are waiting for you along with the others who also booked through them. See, I wasn't really alone after all!

Currency - What type of money should you bring in Georgia?

The currency in Georgia is called Georgian Lari (GEL). It is not really far from the currency value of UAE Dirhams but I will advise to buy a few hundred dollars first (in USD) and have these exchanged at Tbilisi Airport for GEL. USD to GEL have higher equivalent rather than AED to GEL.

USD 500 is more than enough to survive for 5 days. I barely used USD 300 (approximately 700 GEL), I was even able to go for lunch and dinner somewhere nice and was able to book 3 tours for 3 days - taking home a lot of things from the local stores too.

Take note of the places you want to visit - bring a MAP!

Taking down notes of Instagrammable places in Tbilisi, leather journal from Surat Journals

Before I set foot to the beautiful Tbilisi, I bookmarked the places I want to visit which are Instagram friendly. Where did I find these things? Google and Instagram. You also need to take note of their street names, some of them are really close to each other especially in Old Tbilisi where all of the best 'grammable' cafes and structures can be found. You can definitely save up for taxi fares if you walk through the streets and you will also get the chance to explore secret places.

Instagram Tip to Tbilisi, Georgia and beyond: If you want to go places around the city or outside Tbilisi, a few accounts that you need to follow are: GeorgiaTravel , InstagrmGeorgia, WowTbilisi, TbilisiPhoto, and photomaker_d.k - these accounts are amazing!

You will thank me for including this thing on the list - POWER PLUGS and SOCKETS in Georgia.

This is something that I missed on my research, all facilities in Georgia the country use a power plug/socket which is type C or F - meaning it has 2 rounded holes. In Dubai, we have three so I quite struggled a bit on my camera power and ran out of battery on the third day. Thank heavens I have a spare type C plug, this saved my iPhone for the rest of the days. As a travel tip, make sure to bring a universal adaptor so you will never ran out of power. And make it two!

Bring this type of adaptor when you are travelling to Georgia.

Let's say you already arrived in Georgia and you're trying to find a store that sells this type of adaptor, go to the Freedom Square underground. There is a small electronic shop that sells type F adaptor (the one I'm holding from the previous photo) for 3GEL. Sadly, I discovered this a few hours before I went back to Dubai. Lol.

Clothing and accessories for your Georgia winter travel

Thick scarves, hand gloves, winter hats, and socks are the winter essentials in Georgia

I travelled late March in Tbilisi and geez it was cold. The weather is between 9 to 11 degrees in Tbilisi, out of this city is colder. In Gudauri, you will experience about -1 degrees even. Aside from thick clothing and warmers and coats, you need to have scarves thick enough to cover your neck, hand gloves, winter hats, and thick socks to keep you warm.

It also rained when I arrived in Tbilisi and although a pair of rubber shoes are good to have in your luggage, I will strongly suggest to wear leather boots to keep your feet warm from the freezing weather of Georgia during winter.

I hope these things helped. In the next few days, I will be posting more of the picturesque landscapes of Georgia to show you how beautiful the country is!

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I travelled to Georgia solo from March 20 - 23. This post is not sponsored and was paid from my own money, opinion and photos are my own.

Related posts of my Georgia Travel Moments here:

Gori and Uplistsikhe

Mtskheta Historical Monuments, Monasteries and Cathedrals