Travel tea and tips time!
My cousin once left his passport at home in Lekki and remembered just as we got to the airport…after struggling through over 2 hours of traffic to get there. Thank God for okada and that someone was at home to bring it sharply to the airport! The struggle was seriously real. Luckily, he made it out of StruggleGeria for the summer.
A more recent one that happened to me last month, while backpacking through South Africa (posts on that coming soon, I pwomise!) I left my laptop’s charger in a small town called Storm’s River. Having it shipped would have cost an arm and both legs, and the local tech shops there must have thought Dangote is my father with the prices they were quoting. Jejeli, I used my phone for communications and bought a used charger in computer village when I landed in Naija. But it still sucks having to lose things and having to replace them.
Anyway, I’m not perfect, but here are 5 things I make sure to pack before jetting off on yet another holiday.
Let me know if these tips help you!
International passport/ ID Card: #Duh. Need I say more? For those traveling within the ECOWAS region, be a sharp person and use the ECOWAS passport, get that stamped instead of wasting the pages on your Nigerian passport. We travelers know the Nigerian passport is a struggle to get (even as Nigerians in Nigeria) and the cost to renew or extend the pages is odikwa long! If you are traveling within Nigeria, biko, only take your Nigerian driver’s license or similar.
Chargers: Worst thing to leave behind are my chargers. I actually have a massive basket that is filled with every type of usb cable ever created, so paying $10 – $100 for something I have in excess at home, hurts my Ijebu soul. I tend to travel with way too many gadgets, so I always travel with an extension box and a travel adapter that fits into any socket. Also, amen to traveling with at least 2 power banks!
Really Good Phone or Camera: What’s the point of traveling all the way to Cape Town and not share every video and picture with your family and friends on social media? In my case, I like to make my friends gag with jealousy on my instastories; so my phone, armored with a solid local data plan, gets the job done.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BtYBsZdl57S/
Kindle or a Book or Audible: For my fast readers, before jetting off on vacation, I try to load my kindle (e-reader) up with light and fun books to last beyond my travel time. When I was younger, watching as many in-flight movies to make sure the money I spent on the ticket was thoroughly used was my way of life. But nowadays, I either sleep through half the flight or play music on my phone while I ‘flip’ through the pages on my kindle. In rare cases, I buy a book at the airport if I’m in the mood to actually flip through tangible pages. Having a book to read is also a mind saver for awkward layovers that keeps you stuck in the airport. I also recently got into Audible (audio books) and listening to business help books are much easier to digest than reading them, in my opinion.
Bank Card and a Credit card: For any trip you go on, definitely take cash, a bank card, AND a credit card. You don’t want to be stranded in a foreign land because you were having way too much fun…even when your FCMB card offers you up to $5,000 spending/month. For those that know that $5,000 is not enough, then get an FCMB Foreign Currency card to “enjoy L-I-M-I-T-L-E-S-S international spending.”
Visit https://www.fcmb.com/summer-plans to get started.
#Sponsored, with true tea ;).
