Each Sunday, a community of travelers from all around the world meets on twitter for an hour to partake in Sunday Brunch Travel Chat. Our last chat for the year revolved around “travel resolutions”. Question 5 was:
Share one piece of travel advice you learned from 2013 to help us become better travelers!
Here are the answers from the top travelers on twitter!
@treepottravels
Make your own decisions about a place, never rely soley on another persons opinion.
House sitting is a superb way to reduce the cost of your trip and immerse yourself in the culture of a location. Channel more of your travel fund into exploring the destinations you visit.
Food is expensive, so go into town and bring some food/snacks back.
Always carry a few snacks when you travel that meet your dietary needs. You can’t always count on places you are traveling through to have what you need.
Travel with a fake wallet with a few dollars and some old expired credit cards should you ever get robbed or mugged.
Carry fake credit cards
Put socks in your shoes to save space AND prevent your shoes from losing their shape in your luggage !
You don’t have to go far from home to find travel adventure. Take advantage of being at home, even while working.
Always carry cookies and a sense of humor because you can never control travel.
You can’t control travel!
Airlines charge seats at different prices. When searching for two seats you will be charged the highest seat even if one person’s seat is lower. If travelling with a partner check the single price before committing to the couple price.
Keep your eyes & heart open – you never know when an amazing moment will happen.
Hire a motorbike or scooter and experience the flavor of the local life, away from the well trodden tourist trail.
Hire a motorbike or scooter!
Travel at your leisure and make sure you have the last word on where to travel. At the end of the day, this is your journey.
Eating yogurt regularly a week or two before your trip can fortify your immune system and can help prevent one from getting sick while abroad .
Stop going to where you’re supposed to go and only go to where you want to go.
Always carry baby wipes & toilet paper.
Travel with a variety of sizes of plastic bags. Useful for dirty or wet laundry, snack items, electronics and camera stuff and many other uses that may come up spontaneously when you need to store something immediately.
@itsinmysuitcase
Don’t create needlessly complicated itineraries. And arrive at the airport more than 20 minutes in advance.
@pnpgoesglobal
Keep old kitchen spice jars/tins (the small ones of course, that fit in a spice rack) digital photo cards. They are waterproof (mostly) and just the perfect size!
Get LOST, it’s fun!
It’s fun!
Enjoy the experience and take the best out of it, even when it’s painful. All experience pays off.
Take photos of luggage tags on the belt as your bags gets whisked away for international travel. You can then easily identify it if bags gets lost, with the the luggage codes visible.
Try to connect with locals wherever you travel.
@sucrelife
Volunteer when you can…it brings that extra level of joy to your travels!
Volunteer.
Make sure you tell your credit card companies and your bank that you’ll be using your card abroad. It sucks to have your cards frozen!
Handling money is one of the most dirty things you can do. One can get carried away with germ caution.
Noted!
Eat a big breakfast at the start of the day to save money on snacks and the need for a big lunch. Oh, and pack light, pack light, pack light! Did I mention packing light?
It’s a simple one, but be open and courteous throughout your entire trip – from the airport to the destination!
– You’ll get further by being nice to airport staff
– How to be the Perfect Passenger
Book accommodation before arriving at a red light district at midnight. (Sounds like this one could be from experience!)
ALWAYS carry warm clothes. Learnt the hard way in Norway, Indonesia & Thailand.
Rugged up in London!
@itsinmysuitcase
Enjoy the moment and try finding those special places. They are always there!
Use Google streetview to see area where your potential hotel/b&b/rental is. What’s it like?
If you hide anything valuable at home before you go, like your wallet, email yourself where you hid it!!
Learn a few super basic recipes with cheap ingredients. Pasta and pesto. Baked chicken with some spices. A few salads. They’re great for cooking in hostels and fantastic for sharing meals while couchsurfing.
15 Comments
Thanks for the recap. Sunday’s chat was a lot lf fun. This helped me to catch up on the tips that I missed during the chat. @nomadwallet ‘s red light district tip was hysterical.
Ive been thinking about posting recaps of the chat for a while now; I’m really glad I did this one! @nomadwallet’s was my favorite as well! Laughed so hard!! Happy New Years!
These are great! I would add: visit post offices. Really. I find that I learn a LOT about a place by its post office – such as in Nepal, where you cannot buy stamps because people will apparently steal them of your letters. Or in Phnom Penh, where there’s a weekly calendar on the wall so you can see just how often mail goes to different places.
Great tip! I had never thought of that! Cool little tid bit to know that they steal your stamps in Nepal lol I love random little facts like that!
Will definitely be heading into a lot more post offices when overseas :)
Great tip! I went into a post office with a local friend in Montmartre (Paris) last month and it was soooo different than a US post office (people were helpful!) and it is a place where locals go, so you definitely get to see ‘real people’.
Love these! And I live by travel with cookies – never know when you’ll get hungry!
So true!! I usually have a stock of Subway cookies – they’re the best!!!
I second the invaluable advice of travel with cookies. Fantastic roundup of tips that every traveler should follow. Happy New Year!
Have a wonderful New Years as well!! Traveling with cookies seems to be the #SBTC favorite :D!
Great and fun tips!Happy 2014 with lots of travels:))
To you as well! Hope the new year brings brand new adventure!
These are great! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Zori! Safe and happy travels for 2014!
Hi! Some great tips, the one I liked best is “Keep your eyes & heart open – you never know when an amazing moment will happen”. There is always so much to do and see when traveling and often it is the unexpected that we benefit from and enjoy the most. Great tips.
One of my favorites too – I totally agree!! Unexpected moments are generally those we cherish the most!!