If you’re heading abroad, you’ll need some extra travel tips:

* Don’t forget these important papers and cards: personal ID, passport, traveling tickets, credit cards, cash, and a printed map and a little booklet of the country you’re visiting as well as a small dictionary of the country’s language if it’s a language you’re not familiar with. Put those things in a small cross bag close to your body, make it unnoticeable, and beware of muggers and pickpockets.

* Don’t take excess weight in your bags so you don’t have to pay extra money at the airport. Check the websites of the airliner and the airport about the permissible weight and the number of bags you can carry on board.

* Put big noticeable stickers on all your bags and write down your name, your address (in your country and the one you are visiting), and also your phone number (also in both countries). This is important in case they got lost and somebody finds them.

* Write down all your important numbers in a small notebook (ID, passport, insurance, and important phone numbers of relatives and friends). Don’t write down your credit card number!

* Exchange your money before leaving your country and put the cash in many places: your waist bag, deep inside your pockets, and even in your socks! Always make sure that taking money into your destination country is legal.

* Turn off your cellular phone and radio (if you carry one) while the plane takes off, so as not to interrupt the radar transmission.

* Be careful not to carry any of these items in the airport or on the plane: any kind of weapons such as daggers, knives, a licensed pistol, or even your sandwich knife; any sharp or pointed objects; organic material or food that can go rotten; chemical substances, poisons, acids, and of course, inflammable and explosive substances; also, insect killers and sprays. You can buy insect killers and sprays from your destination country.

Finally, I wish you found these travel tips helpful. I wish you all a nice trip and a happy vacation. Remember this quote by the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “He who would travel happily must travel light.”

First published: May 2011