How to Prepare for a Trip (Part 3)

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Miscellaneous preparations

Buy travel insurance that covers medical emergencies, lost luggage, and delayed flights.

Make photocopies and softcopies of your passports, visas, plane tickets, travel insurance and other travel related documents and store them separately them from the originals. Upload the softcopies to your cloud storage or email them to yourself.

Test all the important apps on your smartphone. Then, do not update your apps anymore until after you get back from your trip. The reason for this precaution is that an update may log you out of an app or, worse, cause the app to not to work anymore. For Android, open the Play Store app and, under Settings, select “Do not update apps.” Also, postpone Android upgrades when prompted. For iPhone, postpone software updates when prompted.

Sometimes, your smartphone will prompt you to log on again to your email or other app. For this reason, make sure that you know the passwords of the various accounts that you have in your smartphone, such as your email, online banking, work, social media, cloud storage, etc. If you need help with passwords, please read, “How to Safeguard Your Passwords”

Check with your phone company for international roaming promotional offers. A promo may enable you to use hassle-free calling and Internet access at a reasonable price.

While traveling to your destination, wear your clothing in layers. This could save you some luggage space and weight. More importantly, it will enable you to cope easily with changes in temperature.

Inform only the people who need to know about your trip. Don't post your travel plans on social media.

When traveling with family or friends

If you are traveling with your friends or family members, it is wise to set up a “communications center” at home. Designate one of your relatives or friends to be your emergency contact person. Give this person’s contact number to everyone who is traveling with you. Also, give your contact details and travel itinerary to your emergency contact person. Instruct everyone who is traveling with you to communicate with your emergency contact person in case they get separated and are unable to communicate with you directly. He can act as your travel group’s coordinator until the situation returns to normal.

By the way, make sure that everyone in your group and your emergency contact person are using the same messaging app. Make few test calls and send some test messages before going on your trip.

Take care of school enrollment and other important tasks. Pay tuition fees and other big bills that will fall due while you are overseas.

Related articles:

How to Prepare for a Trip (Part 4) introduces a travel kit
How to Prepare for a Trip (Part 1) focuses on luggage-related tips.
How to Prepare for a Trip (Part 2) shows how to take full advantage of your smartphone

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