Since putting our couch up on Couchsurfing.com two months ago, we’ve received over 75 requests from people to stay with us. We couldn’t accommodate everyone, but we have been able to host 14 people. Three of them were actually in the midst of Round The World trips, so we took a few minutes to get their top pieces of advice for any long-term travelers.

Tom and Jeremy started in Grenoble, France and traveled through India, Southeast Asia and China and are now spending 2 months crossing the US. Sarah started in East Yorkshire, UK and has traveled through Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii.

• The undeveloped world does not run on a timetable, so always be patient.
• Do your best not to worry about the little things (e.g. Am I going to get sick? Will the airline lose my bags?).
• Don’t forget earplugs. There’s no need to get anything fancy, just make sure they fit your ears.
• For Malaria prevention, make sure you get a good mosquito repellant (DEET works) and ask locals for more information about infected areas. Often times the doctors in your home country make country-wide suggestions because they don’t have information about specific regions.
• Don’t use your guidebook to plan out every last detail, let things come naturally and just use it as a “guide”.
• Don’t bother bringing a sleeping bag or sleeping pad unless you’re actually planning on sleeping outdoors regularly.
• If you’ll be changing climates, just pack what you need for the first climate and buy things along the way.
• Anticipate that you will want to change your dates/routing, so make sure the fees for doing so aren’t too high.
• Carefully choose the music you bring, because it will keep you going when you need it the most.
• Bring something for water purification. Despite that almost every hotel/hostel/restaurant will have drinkable water, you never know when you might need it.
• Don’t bring anything that you’d be devastated if you lost (e.g favorite t-shirt, expensive watch).
• In most countries, consider internal flights when you’re looking at buses and trains, sometimes (specifically in SE Asia), you might find the flight to be cheaper.
• Leave *some* space in your bag for buying things, but don’t forget that it is VERY easy to ship a package home from anywhere in the world.
• Don’t bring 100% Cotton clothing. Active/quick dry clothing is definitely worth the higher cost.
• Don’t bring anything white, it WILL get dirty.
• ALWAYS SMILE! You have no idea how far a smile can get you. Also, getting angry almost never helps the situation.
• Some shower areas have no good place to set down your toiletries bag, so it’s best to get one that hangs.
• Bring a lot of ziploc bags. They’re great for food, liquids, wet things and more!
• Definitely bring a small computer. There seems to be WiFi everywhere. Just don’t bring anything too expensive or heavy.
• Don’t buy your shoes at the last minute, they might end up not fitting like you expected.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Pre-Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.