Tips and tricks for travelling

None of these are clever. They are the habits that experienced travellers do automatically, mostly because at some point they did not, and it cost them a day.

Before you go

• Photograph your passport, visas, insurance and tickets, and email them to yourself. A link is useless without data; a file is not.
• Check your passport expiry against the six-month rule. Many countries refuse entry if your passport expires within six months of arrival, and airlines enforce it at check-in.
• Check the visa requirement for your nationality, not for the country you live in. They are not always the same.
• Check whether you need proof of onward travel. Airlines are fined for carrying passengers who are refused entry, so they check even when the country would not have.
• Buy insurance the day you book, not the week you fly. Cancellation cover starts when the policy does.
• Tell one person at home your rough plan, and agree a check-in schedule you will actually keep.
• Learn ten words: hello, please, thank you, sorry, yes, no, how much, where is, delicious, goodbye. They change every interaction of the trip.
• Move your accounts to an authenticator app so bank codes do not depend on an SMS reaching your home number.
• Check the plug type and voltage. One universal adapter with USB built in solves it.
• Find out what the local holidays are. Arriving during a week when everything is closed is avoidable.

Packing

• Pack two days early, then remove three things. Not the right three - the exercise is the point.
• Two neutrals and one accent colour means everything goes with everything.
• Two pairs of shoes, maximum. Heavy ones travel on your feet.
• One change of clothes in your cabin bag, even when you check luggage.
• Laundry soap sheets weigh nothing and replace three shirts.
• Medication in original packaging, with a copy of the prescription. Some common drugs are controlled substances elsewhere.
• Lithium batteries and power banks go in the cabin, never the hold. This is a legal requirement, not a preference.
• A packable day bag that folds into its own pocket, so your main bag stays in the room.
• Earplugs and an eye mask. The cheapest sleep insurance there is.

At the airport and on the plane

• Take a photo of the departure board if your flight is delayed. You will need it to claim.
• Bring an empty bottle through security and fill it airside.
• Window seat to sleep, aisle to move. Decide before you check in; it is worth more than any seat hack.
• Set your watch to the destination when you board, and start thinking in that time immediately.
• Sleep on the plane only if it is night where you are going.
• Get up and walk every couple of hours.
• Skip the alcohol. Cabin humidity is often below 20% - drier than most deserts - and it hits harder and wrecks the sleep you do get.
• Never book two separate tickets with a tight connection. They are two contracts, and if the first is late, nobody owes you anything.

On arrival

• Arrive in a new city in daylight where you can. Most unpleasant arrival stories start with a night bus into an unfamiliar station.
• Get outside for twenty minutes. Daylight does more for jet lag than anything you can buy.
• Take a business card from reception before you leave the first time.
• Screenshot your address in the local language and alphabet. Taxi drivers do not read your booking app.
• Withdraw cash from a machine attached to a real bank, and always decline the offer to be charged in your home currency. That offer is a fee.
• Break large notes early. Nobody at a market has change for the biggest note in circulation.
• Give the first day nothing important. A walk, a market, a simple meal, an early night.

On the ground

• Pick the stall with the longest queue of people not holding cameras. It has never once failed.
• Eat at the local hour, not yours. A restaurant serving dinner three hours early is serving tourists.
• Ask "where do you eat lunch on a work day?" rather than "where's a good restaurant?"
• Sit on the same bench for an hour. A neighbourhood reveals its whole schedule: school, deliveries, lunch, dogs, old men, children again.
• Walk ninety minutes in one direction, then turn around. You will find more than any list of top ten sights.
• Watch what everyone else does for ten minutes before worrying about etiquette. Copying works better than research.
• Say yes to the invitation. The best days of most trips were not planned by the person having them.
• Book the extra night on the first evening if you catch yourself saying "maybe we should stay longer".
• Keep one card and some cash somewhere separate from everything else.
• Edit your photos each evening. Ten minutes deleting near-duplicates leaves a set you will actually look at again.

Money and admin, quickly

• Two cards, two networks, two different pockets.
• Credit for flights, hotels and car rental - chargeback rights matter. Debit for cash.
• Always pay in the local currency. Always.
• Withdraw larger amounts less often.
• Never change money at the airport unless you have to.
• Keep receipts until the rental deposit clears, which can take a month.

The ones that only make sense once you have been caught out

• Return a hire car during staffed hours and get a signed sheet. An out-of-hours key drop puts the whole burden of proof on you.
• Film the hire car before you leave the bay, and again at drop-off.
• Check the last boat, bus or train time on the day you leave, then check it again at the station.
• Leave a spare day before any flight home if boats or mountain roads are involved.
• Do not put anything in a bag you cannot see on a long-distance bus at night.
• Trust the physical signal your body gives you in a situation. It is usually right, and it is always cheaper to act on than to override.

Two habits that are worth more than the rest combined

Go slower. No more than one move every three nights. Every move costs the best part of a day, and the second morning somewhere is when you stop navigating and start noticing.

Go in shoulder season. Half the price, a third of the people, and the weather does what it likes. Two out of three is a very good trade - and it happens to be the version that is easier on the place you are visiting.

And one that is not practical at all

Put the camera down for the first five minutes of anything remarkable. The best moment of most trips has no photograph, because everyone was holding something, or eating, or laughing, and by the time anybody thought about a camera it was over.

That is not a failure of documentation. That is the trip.