OUR MUST – HAVE TRAVEL PRODUCTS

What you pack in your suitcase really depends on how you travel – do you take only carry on so very limited to what you take, or like me and pack everything besides the kitchen sink and prepare for every natural disaster and disease possible? Whatever your travel style, here is some of our travel must haves.

 

TECHNICAL PRODUCTS

Power Bank

We have a couple of these charged and ready to go at all times – I take a million photos and videos with my phone, plus using WIFI on holidays kills the battery fairly quick. Handy to charge kids iPads at restaurants etc too!

 

External Hard Drive

I have a Seagate expansion small portable hardrive that I take travelling for extra storage – I’ll generally transfer photos off my phone and GOPRO onto the laptop and the hard drive to keep my space free and make sure they are safe. One of my biggest fears is losing my phone and all those precious photos. If anyone can recommend a great backup program like ICloud for android that automatically saves your photos to your home computer or laptop I’d love to hear them!

 

Universal Power Adaptor

You can get some awesome ones these days that convert to 150 different countries and have USB charging points aswell. We take double adaptors also, as with 2 phones, 2 ipads, GOPROs, laptops, power banks etc to charge it becomes tricky! There’s a few backpacks with charging points that I would love to try – would love feedback if anyone has any?!

 

Spare batteries

I recently purchased the GOPRO hero 5 and it is amazing !! Having a screen makes it a million times easier to know what your shooting ! I always have two GOPRO batteries fully charged and extra memory cards with me aswell as the GOPRO batteries aren’t that great on longevity ! Same with camera batteries and memory cards.

 

Travel Documents

We have a little neoprene tablet case from Typo that we use to put in our passports, travel insurance and any documents. Immigration hates when people use the little passport holder things and they are just a waste of time!. Typo also has some great travel wallets which are great for solo travellers but we find with 5 passports to carry the little neoprene case works perfectly and fits in our backpack or handbag. If we are travelling on a trip where we have multiple destinations with lots of paperwork we will take a display folder to put each itinerary in, in order of destination so its all organised and easy to find. And always make sure you have copies of your passports in your suitcase incase any get lost or stolen.

 

KIDS

My littlest boy has a little Hot Wheels bag that we take EVERYWHERE full of matchbox cars, planes and action men. An absolute lifesaver. We take it on the plane, to restaurants, cafes, anywhere where there is a possibility that he might  embarrass us! Airasia also sell a really cute little red plane bag which we bought for him on this trip onboard, it cost around $25 and will be perfect for his cars.

Snacks – this is a given, and a lesson I learnt this trip when I didn’t take any snacks on a 3hour ferry trip – presuming instead their would be something onboard. Always take enough snacks….and double it when you think you have enough!

For the plane, now my kids are all getting older its getting much easier as they will just read, play the iPad or watch movies. The toddler will play with his cars, play my phone or, hopefully SLEEP!

Evie from Mumpacktravel has a great article on her top sanity savers for flights with babies and toddlers which you can read here

 

MEDICINES

This trip to the Philippines I took a premade antibiotic called Bactrim for the kids – it doesn’t require refrigeration, is a broad spectrum and can be premixed. Normally I don’t bother but being our first time here I wasn’t sure of the medical facilities, especially as we would be on quite small isolated islands. Now, I wont travel without it again. My son got a really bad ear (he is prone to ear infections when swimming often), and their was no inhouse doctor at the resort, only a local hospital on the island. Instead I started him on the antibiotics and he was fine within a day or two and back to swimming.

Aqua Ear is something I should have taken but forgot – handy for getting any residual water out of their ears to prevent ear infections.

Allergy Tablets – we never travel without kids claratyne aswell as adults. My daughter has a lot of allergies, and is anaphylactic to peanuts so allergy tablets aswell as her epi pen, come everywhere with us. One of my kids, or I , will guaranteed break out with some weird rash on holidays so they are never not used.

Panadol and Nurofen – I’m sure this is already in every mums suitcase but an absolute necessity, especially when travelling to a foreign country with a language barrier.

Gastrolyte – We have never actually used this as no one has ever really gotten a stomach bug, or not bad enough to need it but always a good idea to pack a few sachets.

Probiotics – I don’t travel without these – for the kids and us. For the kids I take the chocolate probiotic balls as they are much easier than mixing powders, but just be careful as they can melt if they are in a warm environment.  For us adults I take the tablets that don’t require refrigeration. We always start them a week prior to travelling.

Other things I take are Mylanta, Immodium, steroid cream (for one of our funky rashes!), mosquito spray and of course suncream. Oh hand sanitizer, a million bottles of hand sanitizer!

Getting back to the allergy subject – for those with severe or life threatening food allergies its very handy to have an allergy card made up and laminated in the language of the country you are visiting. Our cruise staff from the Philippines were kind enough to write one in Filipino stating my daughters peanut allergy which I laminated when we got home. We used it a few times on our trip and made life much easier, and although most spoke Englsh well, there were a few places we weren’t sure if they understood or were just nodding at us !

Bron from Smithsholidayroad wrote a great post about what she carries in her toiletry bag when they fly carry on. You can read it here .

 

What are your must have travel products? Would love you to leave them in the comments

 

April xo