Cleo Tran

Cleo Tran completed her first Antarctica expedition in November 2023 aboard Aurora Expeditions' Greg Mortimer, travelling as a solo passenger on a 13-day voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula. She planned the trip entirely independently — no travel agent, no guided booking service — spending four months researching operators, comparing costs, and trying to work out what the headline price actually included.

That research process was harder than it should have been. Pricing was opaque. Add-on costs were buried. Operator comparisons were scattered across forums and review sites with no centralised, honest resource. When she returned from Antarctica, she wrote up her experience and findings and joined AntarcticaCompared to fill exactly that gap for other first-timers.

Cleo specialises in the practical side of expedition planning: what the full cost of a trip actually looks like once kayaking, camping, and single supplements are added; what first-timers reliably get wrong in their operator choice; what packing and preparation genuinely matters versus what operators oversell. Her writing is rooted in lived experience rather than operator marketing.

She has a particular focus on solo travellers, budget-conscious first-timers, and travellers from Asia-Pacific planning their first polar voyage — a demographic she finds is underserved by most expedition planning resources, which are heavily weighted toward North American and European perspectives.

Cleo is based in Singapore and updates her practical guides each season to reflect current pricing and operator changes.