Here are some of my best tips. They are just my opinion, but they have served us well throughout our travels. This is what I can think of at the moment; I’ll try to update the post if I forgot anything important. It’s long and mostly words, but I threw in some random pictures along the way. Also, I’ll do separate posts on money saving tips.
Stay Organized
Especially if you are taking a longer trip…I had an excel workbook with a sheet for every destination and a couple for general stuff (flights, hotels, etc.). Again, you need to stay organized or you could be faced with some major issues if you accidentally mess dates up or forget to book something.
As a check when booking vacation rentals/non-chain hotels, I always give the date, year, and day of the week. That way, if I screw up the year when looking at a calendar (or anything else), the person booking will hopefully catch it by noticing that the day of the week is off. It also helps to keep them from making a mistake.
Print out every hotel, flight, rental car, etc. reservation. Don’t feel like it? Too bad – do it. You never know when you will need it. For us, the biggest occurrence was trying to enter the airport in Bali. To get in the airport, you needed your ticket; to check in, you needed to get in the airport. You can see how this could be a problem. Fortunately, they accepted my printed out confirmation. There were also several other countries that wanted to see proof of onward travel, but that is pretty standard.