By Nico Prins
If this is the first trip you are ever going to take abroad then you need to read this. If you are a long term traveller, then you will recognize the signs, in fact you will have made many of these same mistakes yourself. Here is a list of seven things that any first time traveler should avoid.
Sleeping Bag
Well, you are a backpacker, so you definitely need a sleeping bag for all those adventure holiday experiences you will be having as you travel the world? Wrong. You will be sleeping in hotel rooms and dormitories. The only time you need a sleeping bag is when you go camping and you didn’t bring a tent. Throw it away and while you’re at it, get rid of the…
Backpack
Just because you are backpacking around the world doesn’t actually mean that you have to buy a backpack. It’s big, it’s heavy and to be honest, it means that you have brought too much stuff. Empty your bag, go back through what you think you need and only take what you actually need, which includes…
Shoes
The moment some of us land in a foreign country with an exotic sounding name like Thailand, one of two things happen. We buy ridiculous t-shirts with the name of the local beer printed on it and/ or, we forget to wear shoes and enter expensive restaurants wearing nothing but a sarong. Don’t! Put your shoes back on your feet, wear a t-shirt, and if you are a man, get out of that skirt! Honestly, if you are feeling that laid back, why did you decide to buy a…
Backpack Protector
When was the last time that you saw a woman walking down the high-street with wire mesh around their handbag? Nope, me neither, which is weird when you think about it, because the average handbag has a purse and a mobile phone in it. The average backpack on the other hand is filled with week old smelly clothes. What the backpack protector is good for is making it impossible for you to open your bag in a hurry. It’s actually really frustrating, but you should be used to that by now, because you bought a…
Waist Wallet
Which is possibly the most pointless invention in the world, because it is completely impractical. You want to pay for the bus, hang on a minute, I just need to reach into my waist wallet… There’s a reason you don’t wear one in your every day life. Not only is it completely impractical, but it tells every criminal within a hundred yards that you have all of your valuable personal belongings around your waist. That’s not really a problem though, you probably haven’t even noticed you are walking into the wrong part of town, because you are reading your…
Guidebook
The single heaviest item in your hand luggage and in the age of smartphones, probably one of the most pointless. Instead of walking around flicking desperately through your huge book trying to find the right page, buy a local simcard and just use google. It’s amazing, they have internet all around the world. In fact it’s so fantastic that you might actually be hallucinating, which is possible because you’ve been prescribed…
Anti Malarial Medicine
This is the one time I’m going to hold back from taking the piss. There are places in the world where you do need to take anti-malarial medicine. It is also true that there could be malaria in the place you will be visiting. However, having lived in many cities where there is malaria, I can tell you that doctors do over-prescribe anti-malarials’. So make sure you have good health insurance, but use your common sense and try not to take anti-malarial medicine for months on end.