5 Essential Travel Tips

Travel Tips: Things I Would Never Travel Without

When it comes to travel tips, it may be a cliché, but you can pretty much assume that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

I mean, yeah, it’s a cliché, but like most truisms, it’s based on truth.

Part of the joy of traveling is of course learning to embrace the unexpected. Dealing with all the things that life on the road throws at you is half the fun: we adapt, we shift our expectations, we improvise.

But having said that, there are certain travel essentials, ways to make it easier on yourself when you’re far away from home and likely to have limited knowledge of local shops.

And it’s also going to be cheaper if you don’t have to make emergency purchases, without a doubt.

Items like socks or adapters – and essentials like beer – are of course usually pretty easy to find, no matter where you go. But for the dirtbag traveler, avoiding extra, unnecessary costs is vital. (You want to keep that beer budget intact. Don’t need to be wasting that money on frivolous items like, you know, food.)

At any rate, these travel essentials can not only make it easier on yourself, but also on your thin-ass wallet. Here are a few travel tips that I’ve found come in really handy when I’m on the road. (Products linked are not an endorsement, merely to demonstrate style and price.)

1. Bluetooth headphones

Yes, I realize we are talking dirtbag travel tips here, and bluetooth headphones sounds like one a them fancy city folk devil devices. Nevertheless, Bluetooth headphones will change your life. You can find a pair of perfectly serviceable Bluetooth headphones for $20, and believe me, they are well worth it. The hassles you avoid by not having to deal with tangled cords, ear buds forever getting yanked out of your ears, or damaged by getting caught on things is priceless.

Plus you can listen to music or podcasts and adjust volume, change tracks, pause, mute or stop all from a button on your ear rather than hauling out your phone every time you need to adjust something. That is super helpful when your hands are full dealing with your bags or paying to get on the metro or any one of a million other situations you find yourself in while traveling. Not only that, even when you’re not listening, Bluetooth headphones are a great prop to help you avoid unwanted conversations with lunatics and Mormons and the like.

2. Earplugs

While we’re on the subject of ears, why not mention earplugs? On the plane you will inevitably be seated next to some mewling brat at some point, and good earplugs are a lifesaver. Plus, no matter how closely you peruse the Airbnb or hostel listings and reviews, you can never really know what the neighborhood’s noise situation is going to be like until you get there yourself. And one travel tip I strongly recommend is shelling out a little more for the gel type of earplugs. They cost a bit more but save you money in the long run because they last forever, unlike the cone-shaped foam ones that get squeezed to death pretty quickly, in my experience. On top of that, you can use them for swimming – six months later I still have an entire box of three pairs I bought last summer in Montenegro and I was in the water every day. (Yes, they aren’t pretty, but hey, I am a dirtbag after all, right?)

3. Cash

So I rolled in to Belgrade, Serbia around 10pm after a really cool all-day train ride through the mountains from Montenegro, only to find that the tiny little train station – which, granted, is being upgraded and moved – had no ATM. Plus, it was way the hell out on the edge of town, so there were no shops or banks with ATMs nearby, and thus I had no way of getting local currency like I had planned to do upon arriving. That meant that I couldn’t pay for a taxi even if I had been able to find one. On top of that, once I got to an ATM after I managed to contact my super awesome host (who actually drove out there to pick me up) we discovered that my bank had shut down my debit card because I forgot to inform them I was traveling to Serbia.

Fucking oops.

Plus it was Saturday night, and the bank’s customer service lines didn’t open again until Monday morning Mountain time. So several lessons learned all in one neat package: luckily I had euros and found an open currency exchange, so I could exchange them on a Sunday, otherwise it might have been a very hungry and sober Sunday and most of the day Monday due to the time difference. Bring extra cash even if you plan to exchange or simply withdraw money when you arrive where you’re going, because you just never know.

4. Snacks/Breakfast

This one is a pretty common travel tip, to bring snacks with you, not only to avoid starvation, but to avoid exorbitant airport and airplane prices. I always try to bring stuff like peanuts, an apple, or a peanut butter sandwich, and to be honest I go pretty heavy on all that because I get fucking cranky when I’m hungry.

But I take the snacks thing a step further and try to already have something for the next morning as well. I hate waking up in a strange place starving, and then right off the bat having to go out and forage for food. Yes, of course there’s always a restaurant around that’s willing to take your money if you’re truly famished. But I’d rather save my precious funds by eating simple stuff I prepare myself for breakfast and lunch, and only occasionally spring for a nice dinner. For starters I always bring my little Italian coffee maker and a Tupperware container of coffee because I am not fit for human contact without a cup of real coffee. Another easy-peasy way to make sure you have at least something to line your stomach before venturing out is to bring some oatmeal in a Ziplock bag. Most Airbnbs or even hostels are going to have hot water and sugar, and if you have some fruit to go in there, even better.

5. Wet wipes

Wet wipes are an absolute lifesaver of a travel tip that will make you feel so much less dingy and gross. Yeah, you’re going to sweat, yeah, you’re going to be waiting for buses and trains and cabs amid the dust and exhaust of stations and street. But if you can occasionally wipe your face with a cool, damp wet wipe, it can change your outlook 100 percent. Plus if you run out of hand sanitizer – and dear god, don’t do that – a wet wipe is a decent workaround. Never assume there will be soap in the bathrooms where you’re going!

Also, as far as wet wipes go, let’s not get into it, but the bathroom, guys.

(I’m talking about pooping. And your taint. You know, the place where you get stinky. I hope that was subtle enough.)

I’ve got a bunch more of these that are less gross, but I don’t want to make one single, insane, long-ass list, so I’m going to break it up into pieces. More to come, and if you have any ideas for travel tips of your own, or thoughts about these, please leave a comment or send an email!

Cheers,

K