World traveler Chris Guillebeau recently wrote a post on Anderson Cooper 360 about all the things he wished he’d known before he started traveling.  While a lot of his tips – keep all receipts until you are out of the country, travel with cash, and check your credit card statement weekly for fraudulent charges – seem like common sense to me now, I remember floundering with these details in the beginning.

Some of Chris’ tips were news to me though. He says “all plane tickets are changeable, no matter what is written on them”, you just need to talk to the right person to get what you want. And here I’d just accepted the “nonrefundable” rule as written in stone. Other tips set off the “why didn’t I think of that” bell, like the idea to travel with a stash of both dollars and euros, especially as the dollar’s value drops.

Throughout my years of traveling, I’ve learned a lot as well. I’ve learned to always get explicit directions to my hotel and to carry the phone number with me (in case I can’t find it or, as has happened, arrived to find no one there and all the doors locked). I’ve learned to accept the fact that I am always going to dress like me no matter where I am, and if I suddenly try to dress uber-stylishly in Italy or perfect “backpacker casual” in Costa Rica, I am going to feel like a fraud. I’ve learned to cram all my clothes for two weeks in one carry-on, and I’ve learned that  if I can’t comfortably carry that bag around my apartment for 15 minutes, carrying it around a city for two weeks is going to be hell.

But the biggest thing I’ve learned about traveling that I wish I’d known several years ago, is just how affordable and easy it is to explore the world.

Photo credit:clappstar via Flickr