Lifestyle Blog

A Safe Travel Guide

There is nothing worse than having problems occur when you are on vacation, especially in a foreign land where many things are unfamiliar. These things can often ruin a vacation and leave a bad taste in the mouth for a particular location; they can even be expensive! Things can even get to the point where you can feel like a prisoner as you become reluctant to leave your room. Common sense is still the single most important tool for traveling safely when you’re in a foreign land, meeting new people, walking down strange roads, eating and drinking new things.

Nature gave us all a very effective means for survival in unknown circumstances; it’s called instinct and you must learn to trust it. It is a common mistake for many travelers to carry all of their valuables with them in the belief they are safer, this could not be further from the truth. Expensive and necessary items like identification tickets for example should be left at the hotel in their safe or the room safe if you have one; it is much easier to recover your vacation if you only lose a few important belongings instead of all of them. A handy tip is to place a small amount of money in a number of locations like bags or pockets then if you happen to lose a bag, visa card or money, you will still have something there to keep you going until it can be resolved.

Unfortunately, the convenience of having two credit cards on the same account in your own country can be a problem in a foreign land so another travel safely tip is to use two completely separate accounts; this provides a back-up should one be lost or stolen. For some time now, thieves have been perfecting the art of snatching handbags and cameras on straps over the shoulder; but by placing the strap over the head and laying it across the chest, this is much harder to do without cutting the strap. Don’t make it easy for them when you walk around by having bags and other valuable objects attached to straps next to the road where it is a simple matter for thieves on bikes to just grab at or cut the straps with a knife. We have all read about the different scams that people have fallen for and the truth is people continue to fall for them because the scammers are professionals and they’re good at it.

We can become complacent believing it will not happen or we are cleverer than them but this is how they make their living and in many cases the way that they feed their family every day. For instance, when carrying small bags (rucksacks for example), it is not a difficult job to place a small combination lock on it to put thieves off; remember they are always looking for the easy victim!