Traveling is an amazing thing to do. It opens your eyes to new cultures, your mind to new ideas, your perspective, and sometimes just allows you to finally relax. But the harsh reality is that traveling can be dangerous. Bad people are everywhere, new dangers are everywhere, and tourists make for good targets. If you’re traveling, it’s a good idea to have a few things in hand before you leave. Take a look at our tips to make sure you come back in one piece.

Travel insurance

Of course, the best protection for yourself and your items is travel insurance. Things go wrong while traveling, whether that’s losing something valuable, or your entire bag, getting too excited during wall climbing or skiing and having an accident, or even your flight or trip getting canceled due to COVID. All of it can be covered with the right travel insurance policy. With Staysure, you can even get cruise insurance to make sure you and your items are safe while sailing around the world.

Pockets, pockets, pockets

The most important thing to keep safe while you’re on holiday isn’t the iPad you brought to watch Netflix on, but instead your passport, money, and phone. Unfortunately, these are the same three things that pickpocketers like to nab on the street. Don’t get us wrong, if they can grab your iPad too, or your expensive DSLR camera, they will and consider it a good day, but those can be replaced and aren’t instrumental to you getting home. You’re likely to have a passport with you, which is instrumental to getting you between countries and getting you home, so that can’t be nabbed. One of the best things to do there, is, if you want to keep it on your person, put it in an inside pocket. If you’re in a cooler climate, you might want to invest in a jacket with lots of inside pockets and zipped pockets. Or you can even sew your own into your favorite jacket.

A hotel safe

If you don’t fancy risking the pickpocketers, you will need to vet your hotel room. Make sure when you’re booking that your hotel room has a safe. The problem there is that if you’re going cheaper (and chances are you’ll have to if you’re visiting a city with high tourism, like Rome or Paris), you’re likely to be faced with a safe that won’t work and just hasn’t been reported.

If you have a hotel safe, do use it, but you can avoid being met with a broken safe by buying a portable travel safe, otherwise known as a master lock. It will hold everything valuable, including your phone and passport, with a combination lock. Useful for the beach too, where pockets aren’t really an option with a bikini.

Be careful who you talk to

This can be a tricky one to get right because you do want to get to know the locals, you do want to make some new friends, you don’t want to keep too much to yourself while traveling, but just be wary of who you’re talking to. Either to sell you something or to distract you while someone else steals your phone, some locals will randomly start up a conversation with you.

One rule of thumb is to not stop for anyone on the street, especially in high-traffic areas like squares. If someone is stopping you to tell you about their English cousin because you’re English (it doesn’t matter if you’re not English, this is their line), they’re trying to distract you. Another is to avoid anyone too eager. A vendor sitting outside their shop with a smile doesn’t raise too much suspicion, but the guy selling knock-off Ray Bans following you down the coast is a cause for concern.