10 safety travel tips for women

I read an article on a Malaysian news site titled Safety for women travellers that I felt was rather over the top. The article was listing things that women should or shouldn’t do in order to stay safe if they were travelling alone.

Some of the things mentioned in the article were:

“[..]Don’t accept a room if the front-desk clerk mentions the room number out loud. Make them write the number down.[..] Don’t try and be friendly with almost everybody. When on a plane, train or bus, a great book and a pair of headphones would make a good privacy fence.”

If I felt I had to be that suspicious of everybody, then why travel at all. I don’t travel alone that often anymore, but I used to when I was a lot younger and I have, touch wood, never actually been in any real danger.

My 10 safety travel tips

The article made me think of the safety measures I do take when I travel. So here is my list of 10 safety travel tips for women (and men):

1. Take a copy of your passport, tickets and any other travel documents that you are bringing with you on your trip. Bring this copy with you, but keep it separate from the originals.
2. Scan the same documents and save them as a PDF or insert them in a document, e.g. Word. Password-protect the PDF or document and send it to one of your online email accounts, such as Google. This way you’ll have online access to your documents, should you lose both the originals and the copy mention in point 1.
3. Lock your suitcase with a TSA-Approved lock, so it can be opened by officials without them having to break the lock.
4. If you are travelling with a backpack, put it in a backpack cover, before you check it in. The cover will protect the pack from getting dirty and will also make it a bit harder for any “entrepreneurial” baggage handlers to get into the pack.
5. If you don’t trust the hotel or don’t feel safe there, consider getting a Walk Easy Door Guard, I swear by mine.
6. If you are moving from place to place, keep in regular contact with someone at home. Your plans are likely to change all the time. This will not necessarily keep you safe, but it will stop your family from starting a search for you, because they haven’t heard from you for a long time.
7. Be sensitive to culture, in particularly with clothes, drinking and general behaviour.Being away is no excuse to go wild, and even behaving the way you do at home can easily be seen as “waving a red flag in front of a bull” in another country.
8. Don’t parade your valuables around town, including your wallet, camera, hand-helds, mobiles and PSPs. I don’t know how many times I have told my 60-year-old father not to walk across Leicester Square in London with his wallet in his back pocket (he’s been lucky so far).
9. If you find yourself down some alley where you don’t feel safe, then try to look confident. Keep your head up, look like you’re in deep thought and walk out of there like you have somewhere to be. If dogs can smell fear, so can crooks.
10. Don’t be suspicious of everybody. This may not keep you safe, but if you’re suspicious of everybody you’ll offend a lot of people, and you definitely won’t enjoy yourself.

What are your safety travel tips?

Those are some of my safety travel tips, most of which you have probably heard before. Feel free to share your tips in the comment box below.

Stay safe and enjoy your travels!

Technorati Tags: Safety, Travel Tips, Women

2 Responses to “10 safety travel tips for women”

1. roger says:

   7 September, 2006 at 16:53

   I guess number 10 is the most important of all, and that means, don’t be such a paranoid, which is the main problem.

   Here are our own recomendations, by Karina..

   http://www.mobuzztv.com/uk/shows/come_fly_with_me/

   Reply
2. Anni Poulsen says:

   7 September, 2006 at 17:21

   Thanks for the link Roger, I’ll have a look.

   I agree, by all means be careful, like you would at home, but if you are going to assume everyone is out to hurt you or steal from you, just because you’re in a foreign country, maybe you’re better off staying at home.

   Reply