Travelling hacks for light and cautious travellers

Travelling light 

First of all, let´s make this clear - I don´t consider myself a light traveller. I am not that person who has just a small backpack for travelling the world. Nevertheless, I prefer to fit everything I need into a backpack, even if I don´t always succeed. There are a few reasons why travelling with just a carry-on bag is better:

1) You really take only these things you need and not anything extra.
2) Check-in bags may get lost or arrive with a delay. This happened to my father once when his luggage arrived in Brazil a week later than he did. Imagine this situation, everything you need to start your carefree vacation is... lost!
3) Especially when moving between different places along the journey, a simple backpack is much easier to carry.
4) Cheaper - no extra fees for check-in baggage.
5) Better for the environment - every extra kilogram of baggage uses extra fuel.
6) Much faster check-in and check-out in airports

When it comes to packing light there are some life hacks that I have discovered and wanted to share with you, guys. 

1) Water-free shampoos and soaps instead of shower gels. Why carry water? It is anyway there where you go and you can ease the weight of your bag significantly.

2) 2 in 1 washing for men, especially the mini versions - somehow the industry thinks that only men want to use 2 in 1 shampoo and shower gel. That is why I am bringing the 2 in 1 small shampoo and shower gel bottles for men if the water-free options are not available.

3) Just smaller versions of EVERYTHING! Do you need the big bath towel or could handle it with a bigger handtowel that is made of lighter cloth instead? Maybe you don´t need extra pair of jeans but could take a pair of leggings? Maybe you have a tester of your favourite perfume or BB cream and don´t need to take the whole bottle?

Lastly, remember that you probably want to bring some things from where you go so don´t fill your luggage to the brim. Less is more.

Things that are worth bringing (regardless of travelling light)

1) A thin scarf when travelling to the south. This applies mostly to women. A good scarf can have so many applications. You can cover your head with it when hiking under a scorching sun. You can tie it around your hips when you need to enter a church or temple and are wearing something short or are feeling uncomfortable between a group of local men. You can use it as a blanket when cold in airplane. Once I invented a top out of my scarf because my shirt was ripped off completely when visiting a waterfall (I fell into the water, it was a fun story). So yes, I always carry it with me.


2) A portmone can replace a big wallet effortlessly. Could you leave unnecessary cards home and take a smaller portmone instead?

My favourite travelling hacks for travellers on a budget

I have understood a few things about how to spare from the seemingly irrelevant costs that add up a lot of money. Here they are!

1) Instead of buying water from airports bring an empty water bottle and fill it with water after the security check. Make sure that the tap water is drinkable of course. Nowadays many of the airports have bottle filling taps near toilets, you can find them after a brief search. Because you are not allowed to bring your own liquids, the costs for water can be extreme! A 500 ml bottle cost 3 € in Helsinki airport and 7 € in Hong Kong airport and that was the year 2014! I made my mistakes then and haven´t had to look at the water prices since then 😁 For the times when I am not sure about the tap water safety, I bring some coral-mine silver packets with me. Silver makes the water antibacterial.

2) Bring your own meals for the time in airplane and between connecting flights. Yes, it might be three or even more meals for a long flight with many connections. But similarly to the water, food is also overpriced in airports and on planes. If you have a ticket that already includes meals, that is great of course. There is a common misbelief that it is not allowed to bring your own food on airplanes. I have never had that problem. Just remember that you can´t bring more than 100 ml liquids (including semi-liquids like cream cheesw). I prefer to buy some packed meals instead of home-made dishes, just to be safe. 

3) Hostels can be great. I was initially frightened by the idea to sleep in a hostel with 5 strangers in the same room. There are actually really nice hostels available and you can make good new friends. Just read the reviews beforehand. Also, consider that a more expensive apartment can be cheaper than having a cheap apartment in a poor location and renting a car or spending two hours on commuting.

How to choose the best (and cheapest) plane tickets

Choosing the right plane tickets is a quite tricky challenge and often drives me crazy. The cheapest plane tickets may actually not be the cheapest because they include hidden costs. 

The ticket could be 100 €, but then you have to pay 80 € extra for check-in baggage and 20 € for departure costs. Because you hesitate when seeing a higher price, the system rises the plane ticket from 100 to 110 €. Then 40 € is spent for a night in a nearby hostel because the connection lies for the nighttime, add 15 € for taking a taxi to the accommodation and back. Because of long connections, you have to eat an extra meal which is 20 €. The connection goes through a country that requires Covid test and adds another 80 €. Your 100 € ticket ends up costing you 365 €! This quite literally happened to me once and ruined my desire for travelling for a couple of months. For that reason, avoid cheap airlines if possible. The expensive ones might not be that much more expensive but really make you feel like a client and save a couple of your nerve cells.

A few words about the algorithms on the sites that sell plane tickets. Try not to check the plane tickets many times because they might actually become more expensive the more you open the page from the same IP address. This is a clever and annoying trick to make you feel that the tickets are running out and you have to buy fast. It also happened to me that from the time when I pressed "buy" to the time when I filled in my personal details, 5 € were added to the tickets. That makes me angry, personally. I have also found that one plane ticket was cheaper from my computer but the price for the connecting flight was cheaper from my mother´s computer so I literally worked on two computers to simultaneously to get the best price. 

A few more hacks about eating and health

There is something more I want to share with you. One of the hacks is about health when travelling to a far and foreign country that has significantly different cuisine. Travellers often suffer from stomach diseases because the native microbiota in their stomachs is not the same that is for the native population of the country. For preventing having an unpleasant stomach issue some experienced traveller once recommended eating local yoghurt as soon as he arrives at the destination. Local yoghurt includes the local probiotic bacteria and prevents contamination with unwanted microorganisms. I have practised this suggestion and so far everything has been fine. I don´t guarantee that it works 100% but there is nothing bad about eating a local yoghurt or other similar product, right?

Sometimes you rent a place to stay for a day or week. The place also has a kitchen and you arrive there with some food that you want to prepare. You have brought vegetables, meat and grains. The place also has some expired cooking oil and salt from a previous traveller (because you forgot the oil). The cook cooks dinner, tastes it and asks "Does anyone have any spices". Because, yes, everyone forgot about spices and herbs. The dinner turns out bland and boring. 
Do you know these small spice packages that are included in frozen vegetable packages? I never use them (because I have enough spices at home, thank you) but I keep these for travelling. It feels silly to buy a big pack of herbs just for a day or week. The small (ca 3 g) packs are a very convenient solution and take up no space in your luggage. 

That is all from me! Do you know some other good tricks? Share them in the comments :)

PS: If you wonder from where you could have a portmone then KoorWood sells portmones that are handmade in Estonia https://koorwood.eu/et/toode/portmone-krediitkaardihoidja/ Thought that a small promotion for my boyfriend´s company would be great since I used the picture without his permission 😀 (Although these are my thumbs on the picture but who cares about the model´s copyrights) 😀
Coral-mine silver can be bought here:


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