Uncommon Travel Tips

There are many types of travelers like the ones who likes to go to mountains, to go to beaches or who likes to do city sightseeing or everything combined. From luxurious travels to backpacking and roadtrips, but there are something we have in common: Maximizing the travel experience. In this blog, I will share some of my more or less uncommon travel tips that I find to be useful when I'm traveling myself.

Some routes can be unexpectedly very scenic, especially when there are mountains. So before I take the bus or train, I usually look up the path in advance the bus or train will go through, to not end up like the sad guy in the meme. To do so, just switch to terrain map on for example Google Maps to see which side of the train or bus will be more beautiful on your journey. Since if you're unlucky, the bus/train will be full and you will not be able to switch sides. For example in the below picture, you see a section of a route between Sargans to Zurich in Switzerland. This way you know where the road is and which side you should sit on!

Whenever you arrive at a new place and if you don't have a local SIM Card, you might not be able to get internet to open important documents. Airports for example don't always provide free Wifi and often times, a local phone number is required to access to the internet, which you don't have yet when you arrive. Even if there is free internet, the speed can be very slow, where downloading a pdf file can seem impossible. And the first place you might need your documents ready is at the immigration point. By that I'm not speaking of visa but for example a booking conformation of your hotel or a return flight ticket. Even when you're staying at a friends place or planning to camp in the wild, just book a random hotel with free cancellation, otherwise you might get problems at the border.

Another convenient thing to download are maps. You can for example do it on Google Maps, where you can download the map of any place. Doing so, you don't rely on finding free Wifi and you should also not rely on SIM Cards, because sometimes, the internet speed can be very slow or the SIM Card activation can take multiple days.

Yes, it's ironic that I recommended Google Maps so far, but admittedly it's the one I use the most often since it's the fastest. But sometimes, Google Maps can be very inaccurate and doesn't show things other maps show more accurately. One big weakpoint of Google Maps for example are walking paths. As Google Maps is primarily made for car traffic, many walking paths are not drawn, even in popular tourist destinations like in the below example of Sintra in Portugal. In these cases, I like to use OpenStreetMap, which is a more accurate map in general.

Country borders are also not drawn accurately in Google Maps, so when you're planning to hop over a border just for the sake of having visited the country, make sure to use OpenStreetMap to check, that you've actually crossed the border.

There are also maps that are generally better in specific regions, like Yandex in Eastern Europe or Baidu in China. If you still struggle to use other maps than Google, using the Satellite Map is another option to see walking paths, as long as you're not in China.

Your passport is often said as the second most valuable thing while traveling after your life. I believe one of the most common ways to lose your passport is forgetting it at the hotel / hostel, since many accomodations want your passport to scan a copy. More or less commonly, your passport will be forgotten inside the scanner. Another potential place of forgetting your passport is in the airplane or at the exchange office. These are common places where you take your passport out.

When you're for example at the border or at the airport and taking the taxi is the only way of getting to a certain place, you can cut costs by trying to find people who wants to go to the same direction as you do. You also help out others doing so and maybe get to know someone, with whom you can do stuff which makes traveling more fun.

If you're from a country, where tipping culture doesn't exist, it can seem unintuitive to pay extra at restaurants or hotels etc., but when you forget to tip in tipping culture countries, it can cause bad karma. How this karma can affect you? Let me give you an example:

In Austria, a tip of 10% is usually expected in restaurants. The reality is usually at 5%, also depends on the price and quality of the restaurant. Among the service it's common knowledge that italian people are not going to tip, whereas american people will tip 20%. (Because in Italy, service charge is often included, so you only pay what is shown on the bill.) Because of this pattern, there are possibilities that reservations with italian phone numbers or names are declined more likely than for example reservations with american phone numbers. Some waiters might also be more or less friendly towards you, which can also affect the amount of food you get. These things do exist and you could be the one to break up the pattern!

Tipping can also be seen offensive, especially in asian countries. In other parts of the world, some restaurants have service charge included, so if you're not careful, you might pay more than you were supposed to.

There are many scams that can happen at exchange offices. Here are some tips you should follow when exchanging money.

- Always check for commission. Especially when the rates are good in a very convenient spot, you should be suspicious about it. I made the mistake when I was 17 in Prague, exchanged 80€ and got korunas in the value of 65€!

- Calculate exchange rates. My personal rule is that the loss from the real value shouldn't be larger than 4%. If you can't look up the real value, my usual place of trust is Western Union. I often had losses ranging from 0-1%. (If you like to use ATMs, beware that there are fees, sometimes both from your card and from the ATM machine. For my credit card for example, I pay roughly 4$ for every transaction, so if I want to make my exchange worth, I should at least withdraw more than 100$ at once, when there are no fees from the ATM machine.)

- Always count the money by yourself! A very common scam, even when they count it for you, some of them are basically magicians and can make some money disappear in front of your eyes.

- Carry some US Dollars! When you're not from the United States and use some strong currencies like the Euro, you might be surprised that the Euro is not accepted everywhere. When you travel to some obscure countries, make sure that you can exchange with the cash you're carrying.

- Still remember to check for your passport? :) (Don't worry, many exchange offices don't ask for your passport)

If you're breaking out of your comfort zone, it's understandable to be nervous at first, worrying about too many things. These worries although should not ruin your travel experience! Because in the end, it really doesn't matter what you do... with exceptions. Whenever I'm traveling to somewhere unknown and maybe dangerous, these are the only things I care for.

Yes chances are never 0 and traveling always comes with a risk. In the end, it's up to you evaluating if it is worth the risk or not. My point here is that I believe many worries that people often carry are things about time and money, which of course, hurts to lose money or miss out on stuff. These things are although solvable mentally and there is a point of return, unlike the 3 things mentioned earlier.

When you're concerned about safety in certain countries, here is what I can tell you.

I will never be able to tell you that certain places are safe, since there is always some survivorship bias. But the most realistic scenario of anything ever happening to you are... road accidents. Which, when you travel, is pretty much unavoidable.

When you're afraid to go to certain countries, you should know that a whole country is rarely dangerous, but only certain parts of a country. And in the dangerous parts, you also want to ask yourself whether tourists are being targetted or not.

When it comes to diseases, people often die because they don't go to the doctor. Either because they don't believe in western medicine, lack of (prevention) knowledge, the costs or lack of medical treatment. Which means death rates are inflated for you and when you're only visiting for a short period of time, the probability of dying from diseases are very low.

All this explanation can also be summarized as: As long as you use common sense, you should be fine. So don't stress out and have fun!

Thank you for reading!