Things you've learnt on your travels

Take travel insurance. So cheap for the cost you could be out of pocket. The one time I did not do this for a simple trip to NZ cost me two grand.

Kiwis are considered to be extremely sexy and trustworthy in any country except NZ, Australia and England.

And don't take your girlfriend with you to Cabarete!

And where your closest service station is to the airport. Missing those meat piesand big-m !!

What have I learnt?

The ultimate bag is max carry-on size&shape with wheels and backpack straps that hide when not needed. Nothing uglier than a backpack with 500 straps hanging off it. Except maybe old airport tags - they say "I just got off the plane, mug me" and leave you open to being separated from your bags if not ripped off on check-in at our next flight.

If you can't fit carry-on you're overpacking.* Rather buy 1 thing you forgot or find you need rather than carry 10 just in case you need them.
*Sports gear excepted.

Valium or Temazepam is 100% required for any flight 6hrs or more. Ultimate flight is drop after check in, eat 1st meal, sleep until descent wakes you, step off fresh as a daisy.

Don't read travel guides, particularly lonely planet. They just ruin the experience for you. Live a little.

If you absolutely must have a lonely planet, the first backpackers you stop at in the country will have 20 to give away free, so don't waste your money at home.

Eat street food. They can just as easily have terrible hygiene in the kitchen of the overpriced fancy restaurant up the street. At least you can see the street vendor cook it.

Squat toilets are fine. No toilet paper, no so good. Carry some if you're in that sort of country.

Don't sleep under coconut trees.

Don't hand your passport to anyone for any reason. Keep a photocopy of it with your emergency credit card in your pack. If you hire something, make a big show of taking 50 photos from every angle before you get on/in it.

Nobody befriends you at random because they love people from oz. It's a scam. Put your wallet on a chain in some countries, particularly in Europe. Never accept anything handed to you, even up to a baby. Set it down and keep walking. Never pick up anything someone drops in front of you. Likewise if you get splashed with something, walk faster, walk around with it, fix at your hotel later.

If you want to meet locals, try couchsurfing or WWOOFing. WWOOFing is amazing, there's some physical work involved but at the same time you can have unique, irreplacable experiences and experience truly local food & life.

We undoubtedly have an amazing country here. It is over-regulated but that makes it safe, and you can always go to cambodia if you just have to rocket launcher a cow before you die. Our welfare system plays a large part of that and we need to protect it and accept the minority of dole-bludgers that rort the system in return for the day to day safety & security that comes from having a reasonably equal society.

The other stunning thing is how clean & unpolluted our country is, particularly most of our rivers and coasts. That should be preserved at all costs.

Oh and if in expensive places like Europe, you can live perfectly well on the 5 food groups. Bread, cheese, tomato, black coffee & red wine.

Dave, I didnt bank on getting into trouble in the middle of PNG (jungle) but I lost all movement below my waist and had to get myself to a random village about 3kms away (supply some kids with muesli bars and the parents wont eat you!!!). Had to call a chopper in on a sunday afternoon and then taken to the png equivalent of emergency lol. Cheap insurance.

On the subject of travel insurance I caught up with a mate who'se been travelling the worlds backstreets for the past 3 years and she worked in a travel agency for the past 6 months and whilst they get around 24% commission on a policy its widely known that covermore are the best.

Pack a set of clothes in your carry on bags.

If far away from urban areas, carry a first aid kit plus an antibiotics kit.

Mosquito nets and duct tape are also bloody handy things to have.

@KB Dave, that is a pretty good list of stuff - particularly the passport and scam stuff. I was once involved in some negotiations for who should have my passport, me or a man in camos with an AK47. He got my passport... I got a local contact to go and retrieve it about 2 hours later... and just 12 days later it was returned to me

I left on a trip to America, and the flight got delayed twice, and I missed my connecting flights with a different airline. I thought leaving a days grace period between the flights would have been enough, but it wasn't.

What I learned was that airlines do not really care about you when you have connecting flights on another airline. They don't care about hotel bookings or anything else, and when you read the details, they are in their rights to offer you no compensation other than your flight.

I also learned that when you go on a Virgin Australia flight that is code-share and run by Delta, they care even less about you, as you are not a customer of Delta and not even really a customer of Virgin. I also learned that even though its rare, fog can delay flights in Sydney, and when it does the airlines are so surprised by it, it really confuses them, and they have no idea.

Travel insurance, at least mine (which is a major insurer), doesn't cover delayed flights and subsequent costs. If you read the fine print it excludes a lot of things, and I am not really sure if there is a scenario that they would cover even though the section is labelled 'flight cancellations'. You would think this actually covers flights, but they are delays not cancellations, and it excludes so many things.

What I did learn though is that a multi-trip policy can be cheaper, and good value especially when it comes to accidents in hire cars.

Things I learnt travelling last year? Russians. Fkn Russians in Europe. Don't get me started. Bunch of C U Next Tuesdays.....