10 Little Things You Absolutely Need to Take Care of Before Traveling Abroad, So Your Trip Goes Smoothly and Comfortably
Meow meow, hi everyone, welcome back, it’s me, McDonDon! I just recently realized while getting ready for a trip abroad that there are a ton of little details that, sure, you don’t strictly have to take care of, but if you put in that extra bit of effort, your trip will go a whole lot smoother, and you’ll get to come home to a comfy, clean house when it’s all over. So let’s dive in!
Trip Prep 1. Cut the power
Okay, I know this one looks kind of obvious and everybody already knows it, but I don’t just mean unplugging your plugs. You should flip off your main power switch. Doing this has two upsides. One is preventing electrical fires, especially when nobody’s around for so many days. By the time your neighbor notices your wiring has caught fire, it’s usually already really serious. The second is saving electricity. I’m sure you all know that anything left plugged in keeps drawing power, right? If you shut off the main switch, you can cut that wasted power down to a minimum, and over time the electricity you save actually adds up to a pretty significant amount. But one last reminder for everyone: don’t shut off the main power to the area where your fridge is, or you might come home to find mushrooms growing in your fridge!
Trip Prep 2. Finish off your leftover food and empty the trash in advance
I’m talking about fresh food here, meaning all the stuff that’ll go bad before you get home. If your household doesn’t eat out much and there are a lot of mouths to feed, I strongly recommend you start working through your fresh food about a week and a half out, or on your last day your stomach (or your food-waste bin) is going to be overflowing. Plus, doing this keeps you from coming home to all kinds of creepy-crawlies popping up before your eyes. Emptying the trash works the same way as what I mentioned earlier, because trash is exactly what our buddies the ants and the cockroaches love most about the snack wrappers you’ve finished. The method I recommend most is to take out whatever trash you can the day before you leave, so on your last day you can breeze out the door carrying just one little bag of trash.
Trip Prep 3. Do your laundry early
I still remember not paying attention to this on past trips, and by the time I got home some of my clothes had gotten moldy, even smelled so bad the stink wouldn’t wash out, so I had to use them as rags. You probably don’t reek badly enough to turn the clothes you’ve worn sour, but doing this will absolutely keep you from melting down over a mountain of unwashed dirty laundry when you drag your exhausted body home.
Trip Prep 4. Pack some emergency comfort food
Sure, one of the big points of going abroad is to really enjoy the delicious local food, but after breathing in foreign air for a while you can’t help but get homesick for Taiwanese food. Or, after you accidentally get ripped off at a tourist spot and buy some tiny, not-even-good food, you’ll definitely want a few bites of Taiwanese instant noodles to soothe your wounded heart and wallet.
Trip Prep 5. Buy your internet in advance
The most inconvenient thing about being abroad is not knowing your way around, not knowing how to order your food, and not understanding what people say. Your phone can fix more than half of those problems, but all those features need the internet! Whether it’s navigation, translation, or looking things up, a phone without internet is basically just a black brick. The method I recommend most is to get a roaming plan from your own carrier. Yes, the cheapest way is to go to a local carrier’s shop and buy a SIM card for travelers, but that route runs into problems easily. Like that one time my card didn’t work after I popped it in, and I spent the whole afternoon dealing with the staff while the rest of my itinerary got thrown into chaos.
Trip Prep 6. Bring slippers
Bringing slippers has two perks: first, it heads off your own laziness, and second, it guards against rain. At first I was stubborn and figured it wouldn’t be that big a deal, but then on the second day of the trip my sneakers got soaked through, and no matter how long I wiped them all night they wouldn’t dry, so I had to wear wet shoes all day. There’s also the fact that once you get to the hotel you often have to head back out to a nearby supermarket or grab dinner, or run little errands like getting water from the water dispenser, and having to take the time to put on shoes back then was a real pain. If the hotel provides slippers, fine, but if you’re unlucky and didn’t bring your own, you’ll honestly just want to bury yourself.
Trip Prep 7. Two credit cards from different banks
A credit card means you don’t have to carry a ton of cash while you’re out and about, and you don’t have to worry about hunting down some outrageously expensive currency exchange in the middle of your fun. I’m sure everyone brings one along. However, if you only have one credit card, it’s easy to get stuck in a bind when the bank freezes the card, especially since when you’re out traveling you’ll inevitably buy some luxury goods you’d never splurge on normally, and a large overseas transaction is the most likely thing to trip the bank’s sensitive nerves! So if you can, I’d suggest bringing two credit cards from different banks, in case one gets frozen out of the blue and you’re stuck spending time on the phone with customer service.
Trip Prep 8. Download the subway map or other offline materials
Sure, you’ve already got internet that works in most places, and yes, those are absolutely the must-have elements of any trip. But as someone who’s gone abroad, I have to admit Taiwan really is a lot more convenient than other countries. Take map navigation alone, for example. In Taiwan you basically never have to worry about navigation being off, but while navigating in Busan, South Korea, my marker would constantly jump around, or it would flat-out tell me there was no way to get to a place. I have no idea how many times I got messed with. You can download offline maps and offline translation ahead of time. The error rate will be a bit higher than when you’re connected, but something is better than nothing, right!?
Trip Prep 9. Switch your map app to English ahead of time
Okay, I find this tip pretty handy, but why English and not the local language? Because you usually can’t read the local language, whereas everyone picked up at least a little English as a kid, and almost every city in the world uses English as a secondary language on its road signs. As long as you’re familiar with how the navigation system works, all you’ll need to do is check whether the English on the street signs matches what’s on your phone.
Trip Prep 10. Take an extra day off before and after
This one should be pretty easy to understand! Taking a day off beforehand is because you’ll definitely need to pack, and if you still have to work the day before on top of packing, your sleep is bound to come up short. And during the trip you have to fully focus on soaking it all in and staying safe, which is not something an exhausted body can handle. The best way to avoid that is to set aside a day to pack slowly: bring what you need to bring, buy what you need to buy, and don’t be banging on a shop’s door at night begging them to sell you something when you’re flying out the next morning. As for coming home, the extra day lets you ease your mind back into things and get all those bags big and small from the trip sorted out. Usually once everyone gets home from work they can’t be bothered to deal with the luggage, so don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ll find time to handle it later. You’re not that diligent! So, take my advice and properly book a day off to face it all, and reminisce a little about the wonderful memories you made on your trip while you’re at it.
Alright, that’s my 10 little tips that can hugely boost the quality of your travels. Tell me which ones you found useful! Come let me know down below! I’m McDonDon, and over the next few days I’ll keep sharing travel takeaways and recommended local eats, so if you want to see more, hurry up and hit follow! See you next time!