DigitalNomadTravelTipsPub.md

Planes

Luggage

To avoid having to put a bag underneath your seat for flights where overhead bin space is at a premium

1. Put on a light jacket with a lot pockets and put all the things you will want to use at your seat in those pockets. This will keep you warm and allow the following
2. When boarding the plan put your personal item and carry on in the overhead bins as soon as you see space. As long as you put them somewhere before your seat you'll be fine when it comes to get off the plane. Enjoy not having your personal item clutter up your seat area!

Electrical

The electrical outlets on planes can be a big pain in the ass because they always seem to have loose connections with your plugs, especially the two prong ones (at least for US plugs). To remedy this just get a three prong adapter like this. The ground plug will help it say inserted into the plane outlet and you can always bend the non ground plugs out a bit for a better fit. As a bonus you can now plug more things in without having to use someone else's outlet! As an extra bonus your electrical travel adapter now does 3x as much!

General

• When you get to your seat, plug in whatever you're going to plug in to the electrical outlet before other people get seated. The outlets are sometimes difficult to see without getting your head down by them which is hard to do when other people are seated.

Lodging

Hostels

• ALWAYS have ear plugs and a sleeping mask with you. If you're a light sleeper you will get woken up constantly if you don't have them. I have used a bunch of different foam ear plugs and I really like these. If you're going to be gone for a while stuff as many pairs of these as you can in your luggage. You can normally get a week out of a pair.

• Before booking ask the hostel if there are lockers to lock up your things and if so how big they are. Ideally you can just find pictures of the lockers on a booking website. Try to only stay at places where you can lock up ALL your things. I've have multiple things stolen from hostels so don't leave anything unlocked at any time.

• Get a combination lock to lock up your things so you don't have to worry about always having a key with you. I've used a directional lock like this but judging from peoples reviews of them being unreliable may be better off with a dial one

• Look for hostels with the beds built into the wall vs ones with free standing metal bunk beds. They won't transfer movement like the freestanding metal bunk beds, they aren't creaky so you wake up when people go to bed, and they generally will have curtains built in so you can shut out light.

• While certainly not required it's nice to have a good desk / table to work remotely from at the hostel if you need to jump on a late night call, the weather turns crappy, or if you're travel there was delayed such that you don't have time to scout out a coffee shop to work from. If these places are the hostels will generally have pictures of them. Mostly they are in the kitchen seating areas so if you're on a lot of calls be prepared for background noise and or annoyed looks as people want to chat with other hostel guests.

Working remotely

• Try to arrive in new locations on Saturday at a decent time so you can get a good nights sleep and spend your Sunday scouting out a good place to work during the week. HAVING TO SCRAMBLE TO FIND A SUITABLE PLACE TO WORK WILL RUIN YOUR EXPERIENCE!

• When scouting out places to work being your laptop and connect to the WiFI to do a speed test. Fast.com is site to do the speed test. Anything over 15 Mbps should be fine if there are a decent amount of people there. If there are very few people there then look for higher speeds so you're covered if remote worker traffic picks up during the work week.

• Also if you're picky about comfy seats and or ergonomics make that the first thing you check out. I've found high top tables that allow you to switch between standing and sitting are ideal. As long as your elbows are bent at 90 degrees and the top of your screen is at eye level you're good.

• Get a laptop stand like this so you're not craning your neck all the time. Using these will require you to use a separate mouse and keyboard but it's totally worth it to spare your body the strain. Personally I love this mouse and keyboard combo if you're into ergonomic keyboards / mice.

• Invest in a good backpack to being with you while you're working. I have used this one for years and I love it. There are probably better options out there if you search travel blogs for their recommendations but be willing to spend some money for a good one because you will using it A LOT.

General tips

Phones

• Bring two phones with you, ideally with both being dual sim phones so you can use both a local sim card (for fast / cheap internet access) and your current sim card (so you can still get text messages on you main phone #). Bonus points if both phones have eSIM support (most recent IPhones, Pixels, and Galaxy S20/21) because then you can transfer your main # to the new phone if you lose it or it gets stolen.

• If you need to buy a phone while in another country then check to make sure the 4G / 5G bands it supports match the bands that are used in your home country so you can use it when you get back. You can use https://www.kimovil.com/en/frequency-checker to do this.

• If you're working remotely and you have to use 2FA for work then consider using Authly as your 2FA provider. They have a backup feature where you can download your 2FA configuration on a new device if need be. This is nice when you lose your phone so you don't have to deal with making an international call to get your 2FA reconfigured.

• Consider choosing a service provider like Google Fi where you get affordable high speed data in other countries so then you don't even have to worry about getting local sim cards.

• Make sure your photos are being backed up to the cloud via ICloud, Google Photos, or some other service. The last thing you want is to lose some amazing photos because you dropped you phone in the ocean.