Our top 4 alternative travel tips

After being on the road for some time there are some different travel tips that we would like to share with you. Some you may know and some you may not. If you have some new ones for us we would love to hear from you.

Tip # 1

It’s a fact of life, everyone has to do washing on the road, especially when we only have 4 of everything we are washing quite regularly. When we are house sitting we have the use of a washing machine but when we are not we have to use the bathroom basin, and believe us some of those are so tiny by the time you add a t-shirt and some underwear the water is overflowing. Suddenly our flooding of our hostel in Florence springs to mind when we were doing our washing in the bidet and got sidetracked by some Aussie blokes with a cold beer, and 5 hours later one helluva of a flood, but that is a different story.

So we have created a portable washing machine. Take one strong plastic bag with handles, add some washing powder, add your clothes, shake it up and down and hang it on the shower knobs for soaking and a few hours later rinse. It can be recycled as many times as long as the strength of the bag will hold out.

Tip #2

Everyone is travelling with more items these day and they all have their own chargers. We are travelling with laptops, iPads, iPhones and a camera. A travel tip from a fellow travel blogger back in 2013 has saved us so much time and angst. We now travel with a 4 outlet electrical power board and can keep our items fully charged more often.

Tip #3

Keep your expired credit cards, don’t cut them up and throw them away. Some hotels now are using security safes that are open and closed via a credit card. We were hesitant to use our active cards and remembered that we had an expired card, so we can swipe this card and feel secure that any data that may be stored is incorrect.

Tip #4

That same out of date credit card has another good use. We know that anywhere we travel to today there are pick pockets. Buy yourself the cheapest wallet you can find, place the expired credit card and approximately $10 of the local currency and place it in your back pocket. Your other money and valuables should be with you underneath your clothes in a security wallet. If you are pick pocketed you can be certain that you are secure in the knowledge that your information is not compromised and the cash that they have got will make them feel it has all been well worth it.

Do you have any other tips to add?