Before You Go

You don't have to book everything before you go. I only ever book my first two nights - one for jetlag, one to get oriented. Travelling without lock in plans gives you a lot of freedom to jump on good opportunities when they arise!

Nonetheless, here are some tips for travelling and things to plan before you go:

Safety

Depending on where you are travelling, certain areas may be highly disaster prone, facing civil unrest, natural disaster, a disease outbreak, homophobic or unsafe laws, violence, or any other range of things.

The Australian Government has an excellent free website you can check before any trip called Smartraveller.gov.au where they update daily travel advice regarding safety of travel to any country, as well as overall advice levels for the country and individual regions within the country, which are as follows:

Exercise normal safety precautions
Exercise a high degree of caution
Reconsider your need to travel
Do not travel

Anyone can access this incredible source of information for free. Please be aware that any visa and passport information is for Australian Passport Holders only.

Current Affairs in the Country You Are Travelling To

You should check whether a country is safe and stable twice before you go: first before you book your flights, and second before you depart. To do this, simply Google the country and select "News". If there have been any big events (such as cyclone, flooding, civil unrest, violence, volcanic eruptions, terrorism) that have happened recently, there will be news articles about this. It is important to check that the country you are going to is safe, as knowingly travelling somewhere unsafe (i.e., if a category 5 cyclone has just torn through, or civil war has just broken out) it may void your travel insurance.

For example, in January 2025 I had a trip booked to go to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An outbreak of violence saw the M23 rebels seize the city of Goma (on the other side of the country), 700 people lost their lives, Kinshasa was put in a lockdown, and the whole of the DRC was upgraded to "do not travel" by most international advisories. It was no longer safe to travel, me being there could putm myself and others in danger, and any insurance I had would be voided by ignoring the warnings. This was an easy decision to cancel the trip, but it highlights the importance of checking for travel warnings before booking any trip, and again before departing on any trip!

Emergency Numbers

It is so important to learn the emergency numbers of the countries you are travelling to, so that if something goes wrong, you can call for help.

I learnt this the hard way in one of my earlier overseas adventures while living overseas. I was being chased by a man who was trying to get me into his car late at night, and I needed to call the police, but I couldn't remember the number. My internet reception wasn't working fast enough and I didn't have time to stop and google it, so I ended up calling 911 while I ran. The call routed through an American provider, and they transferred me to the local police station where I was able to inform the police of my location - this took around 3 minutes though, and had the situation been any worse, those 3 minutes could have been vital. The police were great, and I managed to lose the car and stay safe, but this was a great lesson in preparedness. Always learn the Emergency Number of the country you're going to.

911 is the main number for the Americas, and 112 is the main number for Europe, but many other countries have their own numbering systems - such as 000 in Australia. There's actually an excellent page on Emergency Numbers on Wikipedia that lists out the numbers for each country - so check this before you leave!

Below picture courtesy of the Emergency Numbers Page on Wikipedia

Visas - Advice from an ex-Embassy employee

I actually used to work in an Embassy and Consulate, and it was my job to process visas and passports (size note - best job I ever had 😁). I have seen more people than I can count apply for the wrong visa, get scammed, get incorrect visa information from an unofficial site, get turned around at the website, or have no idea how to do a visa application. The reason for this is that people get confused by the unofficial sites online and get incorrect or outdated information. The first step to eradicating visa stress is to know how to identify how to avoid unofficial websites and find the correct information!

For most countries, you apply for visas through their official government websites. To find these pages, you could start by searching the .gov domain and the country domain code. For example, Visa Malaysia ".gov.my" or Visa Ecuador ".gob.ec" or Visa France ".gouv.fr"

By putting .gov (or the equivalent in that language), you ensure that the results showing are from official government websites. By putting in the country domain code (such as .uk), you ensure that the results showing are from websites registered to that country - meaning that you aren't getting outdated information from out-of-date sources.

You may be tempted to use another website in your native language, but you then risk being given out of date information - and you'd be surprised how quickly visa conditions can change in some country. However, there's an easy way around this: Google Translate Chrome Extension. This allows you to translate any page immediately and understand it in a language of your choosing.

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