Travel tips?

bgc
2025-04-14T15:39:34Z

Hi everyone, I just came back from a trip - here are some interesting takeways I thought would be useful to share. Happy to hear from anyone about any other interesting ways to make your life better on the road.

Power: Bring a British power adapter head for airplane / train usage - often the North American style NEMA pins are very loose and this is a handy way of overcoming that problem. A very good solution is one of those power adapters for multiple countries with USBC and USBA ports in addition to being able to plug in. It was amazing on the flight to charge multiple devices at the same time.

Power: Modern power banks can deliver 100W and hold around 28K mAH (weird power unit, I know...) - even with a laptop you can last all day

Trusted Traveller Programs: Everyone knows about Global Entry, but a lesser known one is ABTC for Asia - saved me hours of waiting in line. I'm curious if there are any other good ones.

Networking: A little mini travel router is really useful to auto-connect all of your devices and allows you to use smart home devices. A little finicky in terms of setup so it requires some level of networking knowledge (e.g., MAC cloning). You can bring your own casting devices and take over the TV. You can also use it to share wifi on an airplane but I found it too clunky to want to do this often when flying economy.

Networking: Bring an ethernet cable and if your laptop doesn't have one, a dongle. Some hotels will have a more reliable eth connection.

TVs: Some TVs are set in a "hospitality mode" and have HDMI ports disabled.

Organization: Numbering all of your interal compartments with little tags so that you can make sure you have everything by just running through the numbers - this time, I left behind one bag by accident.

Finances: A Wise prepaid credit card is very convenient re: paying in local currency.

Transportation: Consider getting a transponder for whatever local toll system is in place. In the US my research indicates that the best one is the UNI from Central Florida Expressway.

Transportation: Always have an international driver's permit (IDP) - I forgot to get one ready and couldn't rent a car.

Passport: Lots of places surprisingly required the physical passport for things like tax free rebates, etc. Important to carry on person in a secure pocket.

Laundry: Surprisingly, many budget hotels come with either coin laundry or laundry machines, and many AirBnbs have ensuite laundry. It's good to book one in the middle of the trip on purpose to wash your clothes. The fancy hotels had very expensive laundry service $5 per piece of underwear...

Hotels: Travelling in Asia, I became a fan of the local hotel chains (especially Dormy Inn). Booking cancellable reservations also gave me flexibility to modify my travel plans.

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