How to Stay Safe While Traveling as a Backpacker or Digital Nomad: Top 5 Tips

While traveling as a backpacker or digital nomad, your primary concerns might be seeing beautiful landscapes, eating delicious foods, or catching some sun on the beach. However, in order to fully enjoy these things, it is important to give some consideration to safety! This post lists my top five tips on how to stay safe on your travels.

1) Research your destination in advance

When I first started traveling, I would extensively look up safety information about any country I visited. As I got more comfortable, however, it was easy to forget to do this and find myself in a new place with very little location-specific information.

It is important to do at least some basic research on the place to which you are traveling. There may be certain mosquito-borne illnesses that you need to be aware of or vaccinations you need to get in advance. There may be higher levels of theft in certain areas. Three may also be scams that you can avoid with a cursory Google search or beaches particularly prone to rip currents.

In general, traveling is way less scary than I thought it was when I was leaving for my very first trip. However, doing absolutely no research can result in unpleasant situations that could have been easily avoided.

2) Have multiple ways to access money

It’s extremely frustrating when you need money, and you know you have it, but you can’t access it. In the worst case, it could even be dangerous.

To avoid this situation, bring multiple credit cards from different providers (i.e., one Visa and one MasterCard). Bring a backup bank/ATM card. Carry more cash than you think you’ll need, and consider keeping it in separate locations. Depending on where you are, you might be able to use an alternate currency like USD in a pinch, so it is good to have extra of that as well.

As an additional tip, I often forget to update my bank to let them know that I’ll be crossing borders, resulting in my ATM card being frozen and a panicked search for wifi to get my bank to reactivate it. This is especially inconvenient when it happens during your bank’s off-hours – a common problem with time differences. Be sure always to let your bank know what you’re doing in advance to prevent this situation! (I’m still working on following this advice myself…)

3) Make sure you have travel medical insurance

It is one thing to take risks while traveling, but you don’t want to compromise with your health and safety. It is so important to make sure that you have adequate insurance against unexpected illnesses or injuries while traveling. If nothing else, the peace of mind from knowing that you are covered in case of an emergency is well worth it.

When choosing travel health insurance, make sure that you are aware of the activities it covers. Many policies do not cover “risky activities” by default. The fine print may vary, but in general, many of the activities I enjoy while traveling fall under this category, as far as insurers are concerned. It is important to confirm the activities covered by your insurer. For non-US residents, budget travel insurance provider SafetyWing recently announced its new Nomad Insurance 2.0 plan, which allows travelers to add coverage for quite a few popular adventure sports (I’m particularly excited about scuba diving and skiing!).

There are plenty of options when it comes to travel insurance, and it’s best to take a careful look at the different available policies yourself. For more about choosing the right travel insurance for you, check out this post.

4) Protect against theft

Most of the backpackers I know have had some run-ins with theft. Personally, I had my bag grabbed by a passing motorcyclist early in my traveling days, which was a quick lesson to be a little more careful with my belongings (and, more specifically, to never use over-the-shoulder bags with straps that can be easily cut).

There are some pretty basic precautions you can take to reduce your risk of theft. For one, I specifically look for hostels that have lockable storage when backpacking. I also break up cash and store it in several different locations just in case. If I am sleeping on a bus, for example, I keep my bag away from the aisle and wrap my backpack strap around my arm or leg so that I will wake up if it moves. I also make sure to back up my phone and laptop so that I will not lose important files if something happens.

That said, budget travel with expensive electronics such as cameras, laptops, or even just your phone can be stressful. You can relieve some of this stress by making sure that you have proper travel insurance for your electronics. For example, SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance 2.0 features an optional add-on that allows you to be reimbursed up to $1,000 USD per item if your laptop, phone, camera, or other electronic device is stolen.

5) Use a VPN

While traveling, I always end up using a lot of public wifi networks. While these might be fine for checking your What’s App or getting directions on Google Maps, they are not the most secure for making purchases or checking your bank account balance. A VPN (short for “virtual private network”) gives you a more secure way to use public wifi and helps you protect your personal information.

Although many VPNs are subscription-based, there are some free versions with limited features. One free VPN I’ve used in the past that seems to have fairly good reviews is Proton VPN.

VPNs do sometimes slow down your internet connection, but the privacy benefits definitely outweigh any minor inconveniences that come with slightly longer loading times – so don’t give into the temptation to skip this important part of internet safety!

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I hope these five tips provide digital nomads and backpackers with some useful advice on how to stay safe while traveling as a backpacker or digital nomad! For more tips on avoiding travel pitfalls, check out this post about the mistakes I’ve made while traveling.

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