Travel and Luggage Packing Advice

For most people, traveling is one of life’s pleasures. It is a luxury that lets a person momentarily escape from the monotony of life on to another place with a completely different environment. It is an adventure, an experience and an opportunity to learn. More than anything, traveling is also one of the best ways to shake off stress and re-energize for what’s ahead! Being far from the comforts of a familiar surrounding has its dangers and disadvantages though, and for this reason one has to be prepared for possible mishaps! While traveling, one is subject to hundreds of external elements that can make or break a trip. A way to prevent a dream vacation from turning into a nightmare is to keep an emergency kit or a “travel must-haves” list that would enable a person to survive possible misfortunes that they have no control over.

Many suffer from one of the biggest and most common traveling tragedy of losing luggage. Airline personnel are subject to human error when it comes to the process of organizing check-in luggage, and this mistake normally results to having bags travel thousands of miles away from the intended location – along with the clothes and basic necessities of the poor traveler. Many have fallen victim to having to wear the same set of clothes (underwear and all) for days until their baggage arrives. For this reason, the first item in the travel checklist is having at least one change of clothes in the hand-carry luggage. Whatever happens, the traveler is assured that they will have a change of clothes upon arrival.

Basic necessities such as toiletries and medicines should also be placed in the hand-carry instead of the check-in luggage. In doing so, one must keep in mind that liquids and gels should not exceed the over-all limit of 100ml, as per the regulations of most airports around the world.

Another important item that must be in the hand carry luggage is a photo copy of the passport and visa. While the passport is kept in handbags that are always kept close to a person, it is also the main target of petty thieves who pick on tourists. Losing a passport is one of the most unfortunate events that can happen to a person while traveling, not having a photocopy of the passport would make it worse! Without a passport, a person cannot leave a country – event to go back home. Depending on the embassy and the country where the passport is lost, the time it would take to process a new passport varies from around 3 days to 3 weeks! Having a photocopy normally helps in speeding up the process and it may save legal troubles when emergency strikes.

Another must-have is a secret compartment for emergency money as well as at least 1 ATM and credit card. For obvious reasons, having cash on hand is essential in traveling so one must make sure that they cannot be without. There are available inner-shirt belt and neck bags that are great for keeping money safe.

Being in an unfamiliar surrounding is exciting but one never knows the possible troubles to come. It is always best take the words of Murphy: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

by Jackie Acosta