As we all know today, travel hacks are becoming quite popular for most people who love to travel a lot. Its popularity is more common for tourists and hikers who love to explore the world and tell stories about it.
Due to frequent travel, occasions that lead to travel disasters will definitely occur if you don’t have a way of tracking your travel process. This is where travel hacks come into play, travel hacks not only save you time, but it also helps to maximize your money and reduce frequent travel disaster and the stress related to them.
In this article, we have taken our time to organize 25 travel hacks that will help you organize your travel process, Trust me these hacks must definitely come in handy, providing you with a sweet travel process for all your journeys.
1. Roll your Clothes in order to create more space
If you travel a lot just like we do, you will notice that there is never enough space in your luggage when packing for an adventure (to me travel is not just a journey but an adventure).
As we traveled more often, we realized that rolling your clothes creates more space in your luggage than folding them. This will enable you to pack more clothes for your travel. Another advantage of this is that it makes your clothes wrinkle-free and also allows you to see what you have packed.
You can do this by rolling your clothes into a small tube-like shape.
2. Do not Pack Bulky Clothes
This is another important hack that will help you to have a smooth journey. If you are not going to a place where you will make use of thick clothing such as areas where the cold is very much, then do not pack bulky and thick clothes. This is because bulky clothes make your luggage too full and too heavy.
If you may need to pack a cardigan, you can try a lightweight cardigan, and other smart apparel choices such as flannel, waterproof jackets, and so on, allowing your travel luggage to be lighter and also giving you room to pack other things.
3. Scan your Passport and Email it to Yourself
Carrying proof of your identity is very important when traveling especially when you are traveling outside your own country.
Normally it is needful to carry a hard copy of your passport wherever you are going, what if in a case of robbery, theft, or even forgetfulness what would you do?
This is where your soft copy comes into play, before you travel always make sure you carry a scanned copy of your passport and other important documents in your email.
This will cover you in case there is a casualty, making access to your passport to be one click away.
Also, make sure you have your passport and other important documents as an image on your mobile device, just in case you are caught up in a situation where you don’t have internet access.
This is a very important tip because you do not know what might happen where you are going, so always make sure you do this.
4. Pack Only What You Need
Trying to make decisions on what to pack when preparing for travel might be so difficult that you end up packing what you may not even make use of throughout your stay of travel.
The best possible solution to situations like this is to sit for a while and ask yourself what you need, you can even analyze what you will be wearing each day of your stay in the hotel or in the place you are going to. This will help you to streamline what you pack from what you want to what you need.
After doing this you will find out what you think you might use in the course of your travel, you might not need it at all.
5. Make sure you Have a messaging app such as Whats app and Viber on your Device
Having messaging apps on your device will definitely come in handy when you are traveling.
This is one of the important travel hacks because it helps you to eliminate boredom and also keeps you in contact with loved ones while traveling or when you have reached your destination.
Also, this app helps you to make calls to your loved ones once you are connected to the internet.
6. Carry Extension Cables
Most times after reaching your destination, the hotel you are staying at may have limited sockets for charging, making it difficult to charge your devices, especially if you are a device freak like me that carries multiple devices on travel to keep me company.
Extension cables come in handy by providing you with enough room to charge your devices all at once.
7. Use Pen Springs to Protect your Cables
If you are like me that always have a situation where your cables especially your phone charger keeps breaking whenever you are traveling, you can make use of springs from a ballpoint pen to keep your cable intact.
To do this is very simple, get a ballpoint pen, remove the spring from the pen, fix the extended end of the spring to one of the cable ends, and gently wind the spring around the cable.
Once you are done, fasten the ends of the springs with a plier to avoid the springs moving up and down the cable.
8. Use Offline Google Map
If you are confused about the next direction to go after reaching your destination, you can download an offline google map on your device before arriving at your destination.
This will help you, especially in cases where you have to worry about data or WiFi connection on your device.
9. Download Google Translate on Your Device
The language barrier might become a problem for you, especially when traveling to a country that speaks a foreign language.
This is where google translate comes in handy, google translate allows you to take photos of text in a different language and translate what it means in real-time.
10. Avoid Exchanging Money For Local Currency at the Airport
95 percent of the exchangers that stay at the airport exploit their customers.
They do that by increasing their fee and also increasing their rate sometimes 100 times the normal bank rate.
Once you arrive in a foreign country, go to the bank and exchange your currency for the country’s local currency.
11. Mark Your Luggage as Fragile
Luggage that is marked fragile is first attended to in order to avoid damage to the contents in it.
Once your luggage is marked fragile, it will be attended to on time.
Always mark your luggage fragile even if there is nothing that is fragile in it, this will provide you with the privilege of being attended to on time.
12. Place Your Rechargeable Batteries in the Fridge
What is most annoying than when your batteries run down before you make use of them.
In order to avoid situations like this, stash them in a cool refrigerator, rechargeable batteries tend to retain 90 percent of their battery life when kept in the fridge.
13. Invest in Travel Insurance
It is always wiser to invest in travel insurance especially when you are traveling with valuables.
14. Use your Water Bottle to Create an Instant Lantern
This is among the important travel hacks that will definitely make your travel a huge success.
These tactics help to light up your entire room if you are found in a dark situation.
To do this, simply fill the jug with water, and put your headlamp strap around the jug pointing the light to the side of the jug.
Once you have done this, the light will disperse through the water, creating an ideal amount of glow to light up your room.
15. Get Yourself a Personal Tour Guide
As a tourist, getting around in a strange land can be very difficult, in order to solve this you need to get yourself a personal tour guide.
You can simply do this by employing one of the locals to show you around, this is cheaper than attending organized tours.
16. Tweet Your Travel Troubles
Research has shown that when you tweet your travel troubles, it gets solved quickly.
This is so because other travelers might have encountered your kind of trouble before and have found a way to solve it.
This will limit your mistake by allowing you to leverage on other people’s experiences.
17. Sometimes Leave the Cab and Rent a Bicycle
Not only is this cheaper, it also provides you with the opportunity to know important local joints in the city.
Riding a bike also keeps you fit and healthy.
18. Sign in to Free WiFi and Enjoy it
Staying away from the internet for a very long period of time can be quite annoying.
while you are at the airport, in a new location, or even on a flight, try connecting to free wifi and enjoy it while using it.
19. Have a Fake Wallet to Fool Pickpockets
As a traveler, you can run away from pickpockets, but you can fool them.
You can do this by hiding your real wallet in a place that is clever to you and then keeping a fake one at the reach of pickpocketers in order to fool them.
20. Prepare Your Own Airline TV
Airline TV channels can be quite boring especially if you are in for a very long flight.
To solve this problem, you can prepare your own airline TV by creating storage space on your device and downloading your best tv programs or music on Netflix, iTunes Spotify, and so on.
Don’t forget to carry your earphone so that you don’t disturb others.