Skip to content

travel.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
1673 lines (1194 loc) · 80.5 KB

travel.md

File metadata and controls

1673 lines (1194 loc) · 80.5 KB
Raw

Travel Tips

Nomads Profile GitHub stars GitHub Last Commit

Total Countries Countries in 2024 Countries in 2025 Countries in 2026 Unique Countries 2024+

Total Cities Cities in 2024 Cities in 2025 Cities in 2026 Unique Cities 2024+

Short links to this page:

tinyurl.com/hari-travels

bit.ly/hari-travels

Travel Log: https://nomads.com/@harisekhon

I've worked on 4 continents and travelled to 70+ countries and 250+ cities.

Whether Consulting internationally or visiting for a holiday, here are some useful tips from my extensive travels.

Updated regularly as I travel the world 52 weeks a year.

Countries

Countries: 75

Cities: 291

  • Countries in 2024: 20
    • Cities in 2024: 70
    • Countries: UAE, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Morocco, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Thailand, Vietnam
    • plus my extensive month long Tour of England and Wales (the latter was borderline a different country, there are actually Welsh signs I can't read)
  • Countries in 2025: 35
    • Cities in 2025: 89
    • Countries: Vietnam (continued), Cambodia, Laos, Bali (Indonesia), Malayasia, Singapore, Taiwan, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czechia, Poland, Germany, UK, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ukraine, Moldova, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia
  • Countries in 2026: 34
    • Cities in 2026: 127
    • Countries: Colombia (continued), Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Spain, Malta, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Germany, Belgium, France, UK, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Ireland
  • Unique Countries since Emigrating from the UK in 2024: 68
    • Unique Cities since Emigrating from the UK in 2024: 267

Country pages with specific tips for each country:

(a ⭐ next to a country represents it's one of my preferred ones)

Europe

Most of Europe is in the EU with 90 day tourist visa limit across all countries, which is nowhere near enough to travel Europe.

You'd need multiple summer tours as I have done.

You don't realize what big countries France, Spain, Germany and Poland are until you've driven across them!

I've driven across most of the European countries I've visited, see the Driving section below.

Outside of the EU, Albania and Montenegro are the best current European destinations for Brits, Americans, Australians and other foreigners trying to work around the awful EU 90 day tourist visa limit, . They both have access to the Mediterranean Sea. Serbia is another decent European destination but it is landlocked with no beaches.

Asia

Asia is the best overall in terms of value for money, food, weather, safety, and generally good people and resulting civilization.

Middle East & Africa

The Middle East is a mixed bag and varies greatly depending on the specific country.

The rich gulf countries are great, primarily because they are intolerant of foreign (or local) criminals or democratic decline, so they're safe, clean and highly civilized, although expensive due to all the rich people flocking there.

I have little interest in sub-saharan Africa as it is the worst civilization continent by a million miles - see my learnings from my time working in South Africa on its page below for shocking details.

North America

Caribbean

The Caribbean is expensive due to being heavily reliant on imports and not having economy of scale.

The Caribbean is not good value for money compared to many other tourist destinations in the world.

Apparently the smaller the island the worse this gets (less economy of scale).

After a while I decided to skip many of the remaining islands and move on as there are much better places in the world for less cost.

It is generally also not a foodie destination, as if you're willing to pay high western prices I can find good restaurants anywhere in the world, and have done as evidenced in the many country specific pages.

Caribbean countries with African descended populations are dangerous, including Jamaica, Haiti etc.

Central & South America

Capital cities here are not the attraction, but more transit points - the attractions are usually the coasts, nature, volcanoes, or historic archaeological sites.

Has adopted the American tipping culture, so expect to add 10% service and often menus do not include taxes, which can be another 12-17%, so factor in an additional 25% on any menu prices if you're budget conscious.

Because some of these countries are notoriously high crime, I had trackers in everything before I went.

Spanish Crash Course - you will need this for the following countries as most people do not speak English outside of the hotels and more expensive tourist trap restaurants, even many taxi drivers who are used to many American tourists surprisingly still do not speak English.

Central America

South America

Beware - Visiting Countries that result in US ESTA Travel Ban

Travelling to any of the following countries will result in you being banned from a US ESTA to enter the USA:

  • Iraq
  • Iran
  • Libya
  • North Korea
  • Somalia
  • Sudan
  • Syria
  • Yemen

Once that happens you will need to apply a a full US visa to enter any US territory, even Puerto Rico, even for a transit connecting flight - which severely limits your long distance flights which often require stopovers in US cities.

The cost of a full US visa application is closer to $200 instead of $40 for the ESTA.

From the US Gov website:

Visa Waiver Program

Booking Sites

Always compare 2-3 sites as you might think one will always get you a better deal, but once in a while it'll screw you with a much higher price than the others.

Rome2Rio - discover how to get anywhere by plane, train, bus, ferry and car. Especially useful if you're touring a region like Europe where things are not very far apart.

Agoda.com - the best site for use in Asia, and you really need to go to Asia, it's amazing.

HostelWorld.com - best for solo hostel travellers - sometimes more expensive than Agoda for the same places, but sometimes has hostels that other sites don't have at all. People are often willing to pay a slight premium to book through HostelWorld just to get access to it's unique city chat feature to meet other solo travellers to socialize. The chat is a bit sluggish and buggy, so I use this chat to collect the IGs and then start a better Insta group chat. HostelWorld usually takes a deposit (which doesn't go to the hostel and is non-refundable if you cancel), and then you pay the hostel when you arrive. This means you are slightly better off booking a shorter time on the app to pay less deposit but still get access to the city chat and then extending your stay locally with the hostel - as long as the hostel isn't likely to run out of capacity! There is a limitation in the app / website that you cannot change your booked duration once purchased, and beware that if you cancel the booking (eg. because you want to shorten the duration for example at the request of your hostel to free up the bed on their system) you will lose both your deposit and access to the chat, and the customer service support cannot undo the cancellation for you either.

Opodo - recommended by a fellow traveller. They have a Prime yearly membership (paid monthly) that gives cheaper deals - useful for people that travel a lot

Kayak.com - sometimes cheaper than SkyScanner and had cheaper flights not found on Expedia. I prefer Kayak to SkyScanner because I can filter for flights including luggage in the price and when following through to eDreams or Trip.com flights I can upgrade to 25kg luggage for ~£4, which is important because I got charged $30 for having 22kg checked luggage in Asia - 2kg over the 20kg default luggage allowance of many airline flights there. Booking.com and Kiwi.com are bad for this as they often only have an option to add 20kg checked luggage which wasn't enough

SkyScanner.net - had cheaper flights that weren't even found on Expedia, and cheaper on the same flights too

Booking.com - cheaper and more hotels than Expedia, but sucks because it only allows you to add 20kg checked luggage, which left me getting screwed for a $30 surcharge for being 2kg over on my checked luggage

Expedia - LEGACY DO NOT USE. Was my usual go to as it usually had the most options at the last minute, until SkyScanner and Kayak showed it up. Beware if you are trying to get a hotel immediately for a missed flight the app will shunt the results to the next day and you will end up booking the wrong night and then having a horrible battle trying to get it refunded. Booking.com is better for that scenario. Also, if you book the wrong date or there is any issue Expedia support are the worst ever. You will struggle to get any refund. Use them to find the hotels and flights, then go book directly with the airline or hotel and deal with them directly if there is any problem. You'll usually get a slight discount or other perk and when there is a problem you will not be stuck suffering Expedia chat support.

AirBnb - compare the cost of apartments to hotels in each area, it alternates which is cheaper depending on the country.

LastMinute.com - ok for package holidays but assumed return flights, less good for a digital nomad who is going one way and bouncing to the next place.

OnTheBeach.co.uk - good prices but nothing available for same/next day for last minute travellers like me.

Travel Checklist

Important

  • Online Check-in for flights
    • download boarding pass
  • Passport
  • Visa:
    • booked exit flight proof is required to enter in many Latin and Caribbean countries
    • digital online immigration and customs declarations are required in many countries before going through immigration
  • Phone
  • Keys
  • Airpods / Headphones
  • Laptop
  • Chargers for laptop, smartphone, airpods, power bank, electric toothbrush etc.
  • Travel Adapters and USB cables (see Travel Electronics section below
  • Hostel Checklist - padlock, towel, shower gel etc.
  • Clothing appropriate for climate:
    • check your weather app for the destination, it might be hotter / colder / more rainy than you expect - I got caught out a couple times!
  • Mobile Internet Access - important for navigation with Google Maps as well as emergencies

Optional

  • Power Bank:
    • highly recommended
    • 20,000mAh+ capacity so you can do 2 phone recharges for long trips - laptops take significantly more charge capacity than smartphones
    • 15-20W+ USB-c outputs for not just faster smartphone charging but it needs to be enough to slow the drain of laptop battery
    • I like this Charmast one because it has lots of capacity but is also much slimmer than other brick-like models so I can also slide into a laptop bag
  • Reusable water bottle:
    • for water dispensers at airports (where available), for after the security scanners where they take any liquids off you
    • steel "chilli" bottles are the best
    • avoid microplastics in your body
    • avoid getting price gouged for $5-8 for plastic bottled water at airports
    • avoid creating waste plastic
  • Toiletries:
    • you can buy toiletries almost anywhere, but you may prefer to take your favourite brands from home rather than make do with whatever you find there (especially moisturizers)
    • western brands can be very expensive in some Latin countries due to import costs and tariffs. If you're out there for long enough buy their local brands as the price difference is massive eg. $2 vs $10
    • if in Europe on a budget check Lidl and Aldi for their in-store own brands which are cheap and decent
    • sunscreen is often way cheaper to buy off Amazon than tourist shops at your destination, roughly half the price eg. $10 vs $20
  • Hand Luggage Essentials:
    • Moisturizer
    • Hand Sanitizer
    • Toilet Paper (this will save you or someone close to you at some point as some places don't have it!)
    • Wet Wipes
    • Mosquito Repellent
  • Umbrella / Rain Poncho
  • Tupperware for boiled eggs or other healthy snacks (for my gym bros)
  • Book or other entertainment for flight
  • Pre-Download Google Maps, Spotify Playlists etc to save roaming data usage

Online Check-in

It's important to check-in online to flights as soon as you can, usually this opens 24 hours in advance until a couple hours before check-in opens.

I've been left off flights that were overbooked just turning up to the check-in counter!

Download your boarding pass in case you don't have mobile data and airport wifi doesn't work.

Get a physical print out as a backup at the luggage drop if you can.

Jumbo Passports

Many countries in the world have an option to get a passport with many more pages for frequent travellers.

Although this costs slightly more, this works out cheaper over the long run if you travel a lot compared to replacing your passport more frequently.

Some countries require an entire clean passport page for their immigration stamp such as Laos.

Travel Electronics

Travel Adapters

One good travel adapter is better and lighter than having fixed adapters (there are at least 4-5 different socket types I've encountered around the world - but there are more than that - these all have different types UK / Dubai, Europe, US / Central / South America, Asia). socket type diagrams, select per country

Must be GAN to have enough power if you're going to charge your laptop off it. doc

65-70W are usually the best price point vs charging speed (~£30 off Amazon).

These are powerful enough to leave your heavy expensive Apple Mac laptop charger brick at home.

Buy 2 Travel Adapters of 2 different brands:

  • one for suitcase / room and one for hand luggage:
    • if one has higher GAN Wattage rating for faster charging keep that one in hand luggage since overnight charging is less time sensitive than being in an airport terminal or cafe
  • hedge your bets across 2 brands in case one brand is less reliable and fails
    • You don't want the same brand with same Mean Time To Failure in case they fail at the same time
    • I've found one runs much hotter than the other, implying it is more likely to fail
  • backup - in you lose one you have a backup - otherwise it's often twice as expensive to buy electronics and cables in shops around the world

Charging Cables

Pretty much everything is USB-c these days (except for legacy Apple products using lightning cables).

  • 2 x USB-c to USB-c:
    • check the power ratings, should be 60-100w for much faster charging eg. for your laptop, smartphone, airpods, power bank. These will cost around £6-10 per cable off Amazon instead of spending £20 for similar cables in shops
    • buy at least 2 of these:
      • you will likely have at least 4 things to charge (laptop, smartphone, airpods, power bank)
      • backup - one can fail (happened to me) from travel wear on the bending of the internal copper
      • due to the significant price difference I bought 4 of them as I didn't want to get price gouged in shops on my travels:
        • 1 in hand luggage (this one takes the most wear and is likely to break first)
        • 2 for room / suitcase because you'll need to charge at least 2 things simultaneously overnight
        • 1 spare left in suitcase to avoid buying expensive ones on travels
  • 1 x USB classic to USB-c cable:
    • for airplanes that have older sockets
    • USB is limited to 8W which is very slow to charge a smartphone and cannot sustain a laptop
  • optional: tiny USB to USB-c adapters to be able to reuse the same USB-c cable(s) without having to carry a legacy USB legacy cable (although it might still be safer to carry one as these adapters don't always work)

Flights

My friend has travelled to even more countries than I have and is always exploring where ever the cheapest flights take him.

I call him the "King of Cheap Flights", which has influenced me to eventually start cost optimizing my flights around the world.

So here is what I've learnt about flights travelling around the world and back again and taking way too many flights.

Flight Tips

Specific ways of achieving these tips with a mix of AI and comparison sites is further down under the Cheap Flight Booking Strategies section.

Book Ahead

Book ahead of time for better price comparisons.

Same goes for ferries if driving.

Booking Comparison Sites Can Beat Airlines Own Websites

It is often cheaper to book via comparison sites rather than directly on an airline website itself. Crazy but true.

Once you've narrowed down to the cheapest flight on SkyScanner and Kayak (always compare both sites), then go to the airline website to compare their price, it's usually a bit higher in my experience!

Cheaper Tickets via Transit Hubs

For long-distance flights to/from Europe, it's cheaper to book one flight to a major transit hub such as London, Madrid or Barcelona which benefit from the economy of scale of passengers, and then buy a separate budget ticket (Ryanair / EasyJet) for the final leg once you're in the region such as Europe.

In Latin America, Puerto Rico is a cheaper transit hub I found. Bogota is also a transit hub for South America in general but it was significantly more expensive to fly to Europe from Bogota than Puerto Rico.

Cheaper Tickets via Date Shifting

If you can be flexible about dates, check a few days either side of when you want to travel, as it's cheaper to travel on less busy days.

For example, I spent 5 days in Madrid essentially for free by waiting for a cheaper long distance connecting flight from there to Cancun, Mexico.

On the way back to Europe after touring Latin America, I flew to spend 8 days in Puerto Rico to wait to catch a cheap flight from there back to Europe. Even though Puerto Rico isn't that cheap for food or accommodation as its part of the US, the savings on the flight difference was several hundred which paid for most of the week there.

Latin American Flights Are Expensive

Flights between Latin American countries are not as cheap as between European countries or South East Asian countries, and this is something you should budget extra for if travelling around Latin America.

Baggage Fees

Watch out for hidden baggage fees where tickets do not include checked baggage, or the luggage allowance is too low eg. 10kg or 20kg instead of usual 23kg. Being just 2kg over has cost me $30 before, and having to add checked baggage can often cost an extra $100. Sometimes a slightly more expensive flight with another airline actually works out significantly cheaper when factoring in luggage add-on costs. They do this to trick you on price comparison sites hoping you won't go back to click through to check the other airline options.

Favourite Airline: Air Arabia because they didn't tell me to put my laptop away during takeoff. One less pointless rule enforced.

Flight Booking Sites

Ranked by my success in finding affordable flights:

  • Google Gemini AI - much easier to get it to find cheap flights including date shifting since it's integrated with Google Flights
    • Google Flights - don't bother using this directly, get Google AI to do the search work for you
    • Update: the second time I tried using Gemini it didn't find the cheap flights on the dates I knew they were there and I had to go back to comparison sites directly to pinpoint them homing in on the dates I already knew were the cheapest from the previous AI analysis. Even the same AI is super unreliable between runs and I would have lost £200 on the flight if just relying on AI
  • SkyScanner.net - had cheaper flights that weren't even found on Expedia, and cheaper on the same flights too. SkyScanner has the edge over Kayak in that you can leave the destination empty and find cheap flights if you're not fussed where you want to go. My friend goes to all sorts of random places whereever the flights are dirt cheap to explore, which is where I got this idea. I call him the "King of Cheap Flights" which influenced me to cost optimize my flights too
  • Kayak.com - even cheaper than SkyScanner and had cheaper flights not found on Expedia
  • Booking.com
  • Agoda.com - better for hotels than flights
  • Expedia - fewer and more expensive flights
  • Secret Flying - powered by SkyScanner

AI vs Comparison Sites

Gemini AI has direct integration with Google Flights and is better for being able to give a range of options including different destinations and date ranges to quickly find something matching your list of criteria if you're not fixed on travel to a specific location or are flexible about flight dates to save money by flying on a cheaper day or time.

This can often result in substantial savings by just flying 1-2 days earlier or later. I have used this to save hundreds of pounds at a time.

Searching through this matrix of potential options one-by-one on comparison sites would be tedious.

Comparison sites like SkyScanner and Kayak have one major advantage over AI which is that they scrape and put together unusual package combinations using different airlines and self-transfers which can often work out the cheapest, whereas AI tends not to do this. However, these come with their own drawbacks and you can often find better direct flights if you use AI correctly. Also see the Flight Gotchas sections Transfer Flight Timings and Self-Transfer below.

I have more recently been using AI to date shift and request direct flights which can be very cheap if caught on the right day so I spend less time travelling and don't have to deal with the hassle of transfers.

If you already know what you're looking for including the specific date and destination, then SkyScanner or Kayak usually work out best to find the cheapest options.

You can combine the two approaches as shown below by using AI to find the available options and then drill down into them on comparison sites with more targeted searches.

Cheap Flight Booking Strategies

I've made some crazy savings by combining these first three strategies below, often cutting my flight costs roughly in half, which equates to especially big savings on inter-continental flights.

Even for shorter flights, paying £100-200 is better than paying £200-400.

I literally booked a flight from Tashkent in Uzbekistan to Almaty in Khazakstan for a mere £71 including 23kg checked luggage - crazy cheap - which is what prompted me to write this section as I refined my methods.

Strategy 1 - Anywhere Cheap with SkyScanner

Use SkyScanner with your source and date and leave the destination blank to see the list of cheapest destinations first.

You can then pick from a few of them and see where you prefer.

My friend does this a lot.

Strategy 2 - Date Shifting with AI

If you're flexible about the travel dates, this is better handled by AI.

Ask Gemini AI to find flights in a range of dates, this is much quicker and easier than having to click through various days on a comparison site hoping to find something.

Often you will find options with more efficient or direct flights that work out cheaper, or that route through big travel hubs where there is more competition driving down price - such as Madrid to Latin America, and the savings were so big I stayed in Madrid for 5 days for free to wait for that flight.

Strategy 3 - Targeted Locations via Direct Flights and Date Shifting with AI

Make a shortlist of nearby cities or countries from your starting location.

Ask Gemini AI to find "direct flights" to any of those destinations specifically in a range of possible dates.

It would be a very tedious multiplier of effort to try to do this on a booking site.

Gemini will return you the list of real flights from Google Flights.

This'll tell you where the cheapest flights are to out your selection of cities or countries, and on what dates.

It can save you a lot of money, as well as travel time since you are finding the absolute most optimized and shortest flights possible with no transfers while also combining the advantages of finding the cheapest days and the cheaper locations, getting triple benefits!

You can then drill down on that date to that location on SkyScanner and Kayak to find the absolute cheapest price for that flight once you know it exists.

It is often cheaper to target and book a known flight via one of the comparison sites rather than directly on the airline itself.

Strategy 4 - Cheap Flight Deals from the US

If you just want to go on holiday and don't mind where, then you can use:

https://www.going.com/

Enter your nearest airport(s) and they will send you cheap deals to random destinations.

Disclaimer: I've not used this one as they do not serve airports outside the US at time of writing - Your Mileage May Vary

This is somewhat redundant compared to Strategy 1 above using SkyScanner which works everywhere, not just the US.

Flight Gotchas

Return / Onwards Flights Required for Check-In

Some airlines / countries require proof of outbound flights, and refuse to check you in (or even luggage drop without it if you've already done online check-in!), which can leave you scrambling to book an outbound flight from your destination country before the check-in closes.

This has hit me travelling to:

In Panama and Costa Rica the immigration officer did ask for my outbound flight and accommodation, whereas in Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia they asked for my accommodation details but not my outbound flight.

Regardless, the airlines will not let you check-in without an outbound flight when travelling to some countries.

Check the country's immigration rules ahead of time and get to the airline at least 3-4 hours before take off to give yourself 30-60 minutes to scour and book outbound / onwards flights if you need to.

Technically it could be outbound bus to a nearby country, or you could book a flexible flight that you could change the date later as it can be quite disruptive to force travel plans to specific dates when you don't know how long you want to explore a country (I've stayed longer than intended in several countries due to finding recommended holiday towns, seas, volcanos etc).

Luggage

Be careful with your luggage weight. I got charged $30 in Asia for being 2kg overweight.

It is usually much cheaper to just book a larger luggage weight in advance, such as 23kg instead of 20kg, or 25kg instead of 23kg.

If doing short trips, you might be better off not taking checked luggage at all as budget airlines like Whizz Air charge you a lot extra on top of the initial flight cost to have a checked luggage, and if only going somewhere for 2-3 days you really only need a change of clothes and minimal toiletries.

The real problem is if you have lots of toiletries for skincare routines etc, as it can be hard to get it through the airport security and need that checked luggage.

If going away for longer, such as travelling South America, then ditch the carry-on luggage as they often charge a similar amount extra for it as for checked luggage, and just putting everything in one large checked-in suitcase works out cheaper.

Transfer Flight Timings

Do not take transfer flights with less than 3-4 hours between them.

It is common for the first flight to be delayed by 1.5 hours and then you don't have enough time to catch the second flight. Even more so if you have to go through security again which can delay you by another 30-60 minutes.

I have gotten stranded overnight in Warsaw like this on the way from London to Tbilisi, with no replacement flight for 24 hours. And of course there is no hotel availability at 11:30pm except for £200-300+ per night hotels.

Self Transfer

Avoid Self Transfer.

This is a hack by comparison sites matching unrelated airline flights.

If the first flight is delayed, which is common, the other airline won't care or wait for you.

You will lose the second flight you paid for. They try to sell you additional insurance in this case to potentially offer you another flight but who's to say that will be the next decent flight instead of the cheapest possible.

This is how you can get stranded at airports for awfully long periods of time wearing you down.

I've learnt this one the hard way when my flight from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Antalya, Turkey, was delayed by 1hr30mins so I had no chance of catching the other flight which was only 2 hours apart. Worse still it was at another terminal that was 2km away so I even had to take a taxi to the other terminal for the other flight.

You will also lose time collecting luggage, going through a new check-in, security again etc.

Stick to the same airline transfers, they will be aware that their counterpart flight was delayed and are more likely to hold the flight to give everyone time to transfer.

Change Airport

Beware there is no CHANGE AIRPORT stopover as you'd have to travel between airports across a city or region and this makes it even more likely that you'll miss a connecting flight.

It's even worse than the Self Transfer.

Charging Your Devices on Flights

Many planes have been around for a long time such that they only have classic old large USB ports to charge devices, whereas most modern smartphones and laptops have USB charging ports.

Bring a USB-to-USB-c charging cable of at least medium length to be able to charge your smartphone - medium length to be able for it to reach to the pouch on the back of the seat in front of you where you may want to rest your phone.

Alternatively, you can just use a small USB-to-USB-c mini adapter with your regular USB-c charging cable. I have used this too.

Accommodation - Hotels vs Hostels vs Airbnb

This is usually one of the biggest travel expenses, so check in advance and avoid places with high accommodation costs, or shorten your stays there.

After a lot of travelling, I have come to the conclusion that you can judge a place by the cost of its accommodation.

In Croatia for example, you can pay £30-50 per night for a hostel, which is ridiculous as you could stay in a full private hotel room in Dubai for £55.

Also, many European cities are price gouging on Friday and Saturday nights where the costs can multiply.

Prices can get even more astronomical going as high as £100 per night during public holidays at the beginnging of May for a hostel in Budapest that would otherwise be £20.

If a place has expensive accommodation, either consider travelling to somewhere else with better value if holidaying, or shorten your trip there and then go somewhere better value for longer.

If you're travelling alone, don't waste your time & money on Hotels or Airbnbs, use hostels, they're more social and 1/3 of the price. Save your money and spend it on good food in restaurants instead. Hostels have lockers for your valuables like laptops (you may want to take your own stronger padlock).

Hotels and Airbnb vary as to which one is cheaper by location.

Check both.

The earlier you book the better deals you'll get.

Unlike restaurants where the food and prices are consistent, hotels prices and availability fluctuate wildly, so I don't believe in trying for specific hotels - search and see what is good at that time.

I have on many occasions booked accommodation in the airport lounge minutes before boarding planes but I do not recommend this. I have have private hosts cancel my accommodations the day before or even the same day of my arrival (see Morocco).

It's annoying to be booking at the last minute because you'll get the least good places for the most expensive prices.

Lastly, check Google Maps ratings, they will help you to avoid some landmine places that for some reason do not seem to be rated badly enough on booking sites.

Tourist Taxes

Europe has an epidemic of taxes and low birth rates and they even extend this to tourist tax per night that you stay in their city.

Often this adds €5 per night on top of your accommodation bill, which is annoyingly often requested at your check-in time and not included in the online booking price.

This often varies by hotel category eg. hotels have a higher tourist tax than hostels.

If you're on a budget, or just hate giving taxes to useless wasteful governments, then you might want to consider avoiding or minimizing time in places with high tourist taxes by checking the next section.

Tourist Tax Hall of Shame

Barcelona's tourist taxes were high at €7 extra per night when I stayed, which prompted me to generate this section.

Here is a table of the 50 worst tourist taxed cities in the world, in Euros because really this is mainly a European thing.

I generated this with ChatGPT so it's almost certainly wrong (as well as out of date by the time you're reading this), but just to give you an idea as of 2025 / 2026:

(if you know of a live up-to-date dynamic data source I can embed instead of this table please let me know)

Shame Ranking Country City Hotel Tourist Tax / Day (EUR) Hostel Tourist Tax / Day (EUR)
1 Bhutan Thimphu 100.00 100.00
2 Netherlands Amsterdam 18.45 10.50
3 Spain Barcelona 15.00 7.50
4 Germany Berlin 15.00 7.50
5 Indonesia Bali 9.00 4.50
6 France Paris 8.45 1.95
7 Greece Athens 8.17 2.00
8 Greece Rhodes 8.17 2.00
9 Greece Heraklion 8.17 2.00
10 Greece Thessaloniki 8.17 2.00
11 Netherlands Rotterdam 6.50 3.25
12 Italy Milan 6.44 3.50
13 Italy Rome 6.13 3.50
14 Italy Florence 6.13 3.50
15 Japan Kyoto 6.00 2.50
16 Italy Bologna 5.93 3.00
17 Netherlands Utrecht 5.50 2.75
18 United States Las Vegas 5.50 3.00
19 France Cannes 5.04 1.90
20 Spain Palma de Mallorca 5.00 2.00
21 Italy Naples 5.00 2.50
22 Germany Cologne 5.00 2.50
23 Germany Hamburg 4.80 2.40
24 France Nice 4.69 1.50
25 Germany Frankfurt 4.50 2.25
26 Belgium Brussels 4.33 2.15
27 United States New York City 4.25 2.50
28 Switzerland Bern 4.20 3.00
29 Portugal Lisbon 4.00 2.00
30 Italy Palermo 4.00 2.00
31 Greece Santorini 4.00 1.50
32 Greece Mykonos 4.00 1.50
33 United Arab Emirates Dubai 4.00 2.00
34 Canada Toronto 4.00 2.00
35 Iceland Reykjavik 4.00 2.00
36 Switzerland Lucerne 3.90 2.90
37 Switzerland Zurich 3.82 2.52
38 Belgium Antwerp 3.75 2.00
39 Switzerland Geneva 3.75 2.75
40 Italy Turin 3.70 2.00
41 Austria Salzburg 3.55 1.80
42 Italy Venice 3.57 1.90
43 Austria Vienna 3.53 1.75
44 Slovakia Bratislava 3.50 1.75
45 Switzerland Basel 3.50 2.50
46 France Strasbourg 3.30 1.20
47 France Marseille 3.25 1.08
48 Slovenia Ljubljana 3.13 2.50
49 Portugal Porto 3.00 2.00
50 Japan Osaka 3.00 1.50

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2025/02/04/europe-tourist-taxes-bans-restrictions-explained

Internet - Hotel vs Airbnb

Hotel wifi is probably the worst wifi ever, often averaging around 10Mbit/s, sometimes 7Mbit/s, I've even recorded it as low at 2Mbit/s, and they tend to have frequent random outages.

The slow speeds - especially throughput and latency variability - can ruin even your audio conference calls, never mind your video conference calls, especially if you are forced to do them through a corporate Windows Virtual Desktop which is far more network expensive and latency sensitive.

I have been bitten by this several times.

If Digital Nomadding, try to get out to a cafe with good internet for conference calls, and test their speeds (see the doc Network - Speed Test). If it's less than 20Mbit/s, find somewhere else. I've observed good places having wifi speeds of even 70-90Mbit/s and almost no contention due to low number of users.

Internet in Airbnb is either good high speed broadband or broken entirely for the duration.

At one hotel in Thailand, the room wifi was broken the entire week I was there. I had to sit in the lobby to use the wifi network there, as did others, and sometimes even that didn't work due to having run out of IP addresses from their DHCP address pool - a trivial problem to fix if they had even an average IT engineer on hand or over the phone. I spent all week hassling the reception staff daily pleading to put one on the phone for me to tell them how to fix it without success). It still wasn't working when I left there.

Hostels tend to be nearer the hotel end of the wifi internet spectrum, but not usually as bad as hotels in my experience as the younger crowd of hostels is much more internet dependent and they know this.

Parking - Hotel, Hostel & Airbnb

If driving, make sure to double check parking at hotels or Airbnbs.

If Expedia shows Parking Available include of Parking Included, that means there will be parking charges, which can be quite high.

You have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the hotel listing to find out what the charges are in the small print.

When driving, I often prefer booking places a bit away from the centers to get easier parking as many central accomodations, both hotels and airbnbs lack good parking.

Also, if you're only going into the centres in the evenings, often you can get cheap or even free parking.

Hostels are usually more central and have no parking, so that's an extra challenge to find external parking locations if driving, such as my European Summer Road Trip Tours.

Hostel Tips

Lockers

Hostels usually have lockers for valuables (check thel listing before booking).

Some have lockers with a key, others expect you to have a padlock (which they can usually rent to you).

If using hostels repeatedly, get yourself a padlock with a key rather than combination lock, because aside from the fact someone can just spend a few hours to try all combinations, when you're putting stuff away late at night, it's must easier with a key than trying to do a combination in the dark with your phone light.

You should have 2 padlocks of different sizes, one medium and one slightly slimmer as some holes don't fit the medium size, while other lockers with turn handles will open even when locked if using a padlock that is too slim. Use the bigger stronger medium-sized padlock where it fits.

Towels

Some hostels provide towels, others rent them to you, and others don't provide them at all.

If using hostels repeatedly, buy yourself a nice fluffy towel with a high thread count instead of renting them, it'll work out cheaper in the long run anyway.

Shower Gel

At most hostels you will need to take your own shower gel.

Pillows

Pillows tend to not be great in hostels.

So in Europe where I road trip, which gives me greater flexibility and luggage capacity, I take my 2 memory foam pillows.

One could make do with taking one good pillow, but if flying even this might take up valuable space and weight in your checked luggage suitcase.

WorldPackers

You can use WorldPackers to volunteer at hostels in exchange for free board, which is a great way of seeing the world when young and on a tight budget. They will typically make you work for 5-8 hours per day, doing check-ins, cleaning, making beds etc.

For an adult with a job, it doesn't make sense to burn a day to save £20 board.

Taxis

Airport taxis are a rip off all over the world. Do not use them.

Use the taxi apps for the specific country, as each country has a different selection of apps that work there, which are listed on each country's page.

Compare the different apps to get the best price, it only takes 2 minutes.

Among taxi apps InDrive is generally cheaper than Uber although often requires that you pay in cash.

Taxis in some countries only accept cash anyway, even when ordering them using apps, such as in Albania, or the airport taxis in Moldova and Malaysia.

Taxis in Thailand and Malaysia have stopped at ATMs to get me to withdraw cash for them.

See the ATM and Foreign Cash Withdrawals section below.

Wifi

Wifi Hotels

Hotel wifi is often awful, in both signal reliability and speed, even at relatively nice hotels.

Wifi Cafes & Restaurants

Preserve your mobile data and battery life by not using 4G/5G except when you have to, always get on the cafe / restaurant wifi.

Wifi Speeds

I have listed wifi speeds at various venues I've used to digital nomad around as I live on wifi.

"X/Y Mbit wifi" shorthand means X Mbit/s download and Y Mbit/s upload eg. 50/30 means 50 Mbit/s download speed and 30Mbit/s upload speed, as tested using network speed test.

Mobile Internet Access

Always ensure you have mobile internet before you leave the airport or cross the border by car / coach.

Use the airport wifi to set up one of your e-sims using the lists below, or sims at the airports.

On rare occasion I wasn't able to get airport wifi working, and that could be a problem so it's better to sort the e-sim on the wifi of your departing airport before you take off than arrive at the other end.

EU Roaming

If you're not an EU resident or don't have an EU sim, skip to the next section Mobile e-Sims.

I've used my UK sim from Smarty across all the EU countries I visited as it permits use of your plan's bundled service within EU countries at no extra charge, and the monthly contract is cheap as chips.

Now that is progress!

  • included calls
  • included texts
  • up to 12GB of your data plan
    • I actually increased my data plan because I used it for GPS everywhere, and didn't want to risk running out

There is a tweak you need to make to your phone to enable it for roaming:

https://smarty.co.uk/roaming-setup

which basically comes down to changing your Mobile Service data MMS APN to mob.asm.net in your phone settings.

My UK phone number worked across all European countries I travelled through, including:

  • Austria
  • Bulgaria
  • Croatia
  • Estonia
  • France
  • Germany
  • Hungary
  • Lithuania
  • Latvia
  • Poland
  • Romania
  • Sweden
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia

It stopped working when I got to Serbia which is not in the EU.

Going from EU to non-EU was a bit of a jarring experience.

There may be something to the EU integration project after all.

Mobile e-Sims

You can buy data plans for a certain number of days.

Follow the installation instructions and make sure to enable Data Roaming under the e-sim settings otherwise the internet won't connect.

Prices fluctuate and alternate by country so compare the top 3 providers before choosing:

  • Nomad - a bit cheaper than Airalo,, I've started using this the most
  • Airalo - I used this a lot originally, second cheapest option
  • Saily - if the price is the same I prefer this one because you don't have to install a new e-Sim each time but can actually just add data for a new country to your already loaded e-Sim. My travel buddy who also travels all year has had issues with Saily, finding it to be be unreliable and had to get refunds from them 3 times across different countries, but it worked ok for me, and I've had such issues with the other providers...
  • AloSim - took a punt and used this for Bosnia as it was the cheapest there

Others:

  • Eskimo - global data plans so you don't lose your remainder and can use it in other countries, but in my experience the price per GB is so much more experience that this isn't worth it
  • Holafly - offers unlimited data but very expensive, usually not worth it given you typically don't use more than 1-3GB unless you're watching lots of videos on 4G instead of hotel wifi

Not tried these:

  • Fonus - unlimited worldwide mobile plans
  • Silent.link - Pay-as-You-Go prepaid, anonymous (no KYC, no name or even email), pay in Bitcoin or other Crypto, account balance doesn't expire, but the per GB data rates are higher, priced in USD, and can vary quite substantially even within the same country eg. in Thailand it may be $1.32 on a couple networks and then over $7 on the True Thailand network. The e-sims above usually work out cheaper. Get Silent Link as a backup non-expiring balance in case the airport wifi doesn't work to get your e-sim above set up or the e-sim loses reception provider and you need GPS for navigation or emergencies

Google travel e-sims and add the country you are travelling to for more options.

e-Sim Auto Top-up

Some providers have an auto top-up feature which I recommend enabling just in case, to prevent you being stranded without data for navigation or ability to call a taxi via app.

You need data to be able to buy more e-sim data - you don't want to regret not enabling this later!

Emergency Secondary Long-Term e-Sim

If travelling a lot I recommmend downloading a long-term emergency second global or regional e-sim in case your first e-sim runs out of data or you don't have signal with that carrier.

Especially if you are doing things like road trips or going to locations further away from your hotel, restaurants, local tourist area etc where it is harder to get help without communication.

You can buy global or regional e-sims with long-time expiry like 2 years that you can reuse across many trips. They do work out more expensive per GB so only use them for emergency and not for your daily use.

Once in a while this will really help you by switching to your backup e-sim if you run out of data or don't have a signal with the other provider.

If travelling as a couple, you can mitigate this instead having 2 regular e-sims with different providers and just ensuring you don't run out of data at the same time as you need data to be able to buy more e-sim data!

In that case, still enable the auto top-up feature mentioned above on both e-sims to ensure you don't run out of data on one and have no signal on the other!

Conserve Mobile Data - Pre-Download Offline Google Maps, Translate & Spotify Playlists

Most of my data usage was caused by Google Maps and Spotify (you can see this on iPhone under Settings -> Mobile Service further down the page).

Pre-cache your usage when on Wifi to avoid using up too much precious mobile e-sim data:

  • Google Maps - download an offline map for your city or area under settings - you need to keep Google Maps open until the download is complete
  • Spotify - click the downloaded option on your playlists - by default this will only download on wifi
  • Google Translate - download the language (the icon to the left of each language on the language selection drop down)

Give each time to complete and check their progress before setting out and leaving your wifi connection behind.

International Calls using VoIP over the Internet

Because banks and other legacy providers will force you to call them, you can use one of these services:

  • Viber - 1 week free trial, £5.99 afterwards for unlimited calls (or £1.79 for 100 mins a month), but again does not apply to premium or non-geographic numbers like banks often use, worked on Barclays number that MoreMins was not processing voice
  • MoreMins - quick, cheap and easy, has an app, £5 for 30 days of unlimited calls, use 0800 number to your bank, as premium / national numbers like banks are often using will incur high per-minute charges. Blocked me from using Barclays 0800 number. Possible bust option
  • Google Voice - cheaper than Skype for national calls but hard to use as a foreigner, limited to 10 countries, need to use a VPN just to try to access it, disappointing usability
  • Skype - £5 for 400 minutes, expensive for national numbers like most banks and businesses use

ATMs and Foreign Cash Withdrawals

ATMs in some countries charge a flat fee of between £5-7 for any withdrawal amount - Thailand, Cambodia, Croatia and Albania spring to mind.

This means it's better to estimate how much you need up front and make fewer larger withdrawals.

Do not use your Wise card to withdraw cash from ATM machines overseas - they charged me almost $7 as an 'ATM withdrawal fee'... on top of the $5 the Cambodian ATM charged me.

My bank by comparison charged me only the exchange rate, which was very close to accurate, I checked.

Obviously don't withdraw cash using credit cards, they'll likely have the worst / highest unscrupulous charges.

Restaurants & Dining Out

Use Google Maps (see Mobile Internet Access section).

Filter by:

  • Top Rated on phone or 4.5+ Star rating on desktop
  • Distance
  • Price eg. £, ££ or £££ if it's date night
  • Prefer restaurants with higher number of reviews to reduce likelihood of fake reviews swaying / gaming the system
  • Places with soft piano music are upmarket (expensive)

Places just outside the centres are often better value for money and top quality food, but some central places are great too.

Restaurants that close earlier are usually better foodie places, often with more reasonable prices. You'll often pay a premium for places that are open later, because there are less rival choices open at that time.

Do not look at the menu pictures from 2+ years ago because the prices will be wrong with all the government inflationary money printing of fiat currency and you will get a surprise when you get there.

I leave a couple recommendations in each location on the country specific pages.

Some places don't have English menus - these are often the best places that aren't so spoilt by foreign money and tourist trap churn allowing them to lower their standards.

You will need to use a Translation App ...

Translation

If travelling to a non-English speaking country, I recommend downloading the Google Translate app:

  • Translates typed words
  • Translates spoken words into typed words and immediately translates them
  • Translates pictures replacing words into another language
    • uses Google Lens AI
  • Large list of supported languages
  • Optional: download language support when on wifi
    • didn't notice this making much impact on my data plan either way

Seasons - Timing Matters

Don't bother with Europe outside of June to August, the weather is miserable 9 months out of the year and still awful even in late May, supposedly end of Spring, as well as by September.

Mosquito Repellent

Buy a good mosquito repellent if you're travelling anywhere near the Mediterranean, Asia, Africa or Latin America - I even got repeatedly bitten in Belgium during summer time!

It is no fun being itchy all the time because these little bastards are biting you every day and night and leaving lumps all over you.

And you can't feel them land to catch them and can never seem to kill enough of them.

You need mosquito repellent. Don't miss it.

Use cream, NOT spray (same goes for deodorant)

You don't want to inhale any spray, especially if it has chemicals in it like DEET or some toxins, as we are not evolved to be resistant to that ourselves. A woman trying to be helpful sprayed me all over with mosquito repellent containing DEET in Paraguay and I got sick quickly afterwards from inhaling it and had to go to bed early.

Clothing

Look up the weather and pack clothes appropriate for that country and time of year as weight matters and I had clothes in my suitcase I never wore.

In hot countries I find tank tops and shorts are the coolest clothing to wear, but this also leaves you vulnerable to mosquitos.

South East Asia got me into tank tops and they now populate most of my suitcase - you can buy them everywhere there for between $2-$8 - yes I actually paid $2 for a Siem Reap branded tank top in the market in Cambodia in early 2025!

My favourite tank tops are the ones in Thailand which have small air gaps throughout the material - they are the coolest material I've ever worn and I have been wearing them around the world ever since.

I never want to shop at any of the malls around the world after buying clothes in South East Asia's markets.

I am also thinking about trying those long white gowns they wear in the gulf countries as they look effective against both the sun, heat and my newfound enemy - mosquitos - but they must be difficult to keep clean?

Keep 1 pair of jeans and a thin well insulated jacket as a backup for cold airplanes, heavily air conditioned venues, being caught out (such as not realizing the Andes countries of South America have cold parts due to altitude like near Macchu Pichu, Cusco etc) or freak weather such as the thunderstorms of Brazil in Rio and Sao Paulo that caught me in 2026, or the freak storm and flood that hit me in Dubai in 2024.

Health Insurance

Not used these personally yet.

Beware Foreign Police & Customs

You may not understand how despicable institutional corruption is until you've had a first hand run-in with it.

I have been shaken down, fined or blackmailed by Police in countries ranging from South Africa to Latvia to Serbia, had an invasive car search in Sweden, and was randomly stopped and questioned a couple times by the UK police on occasions I wore a hoodie (with hood down during peak daytime 9am-2pm walking along the pavement slowly in broad daylight, not hiding my face).

Do not give the police any excuse to stop you.

Carry Your Official Documents Everywhere For When You Are Stopped

Carry all of your documents on you safely in case you are stopped (see Driving section checklist).

Don't Speed

See the Driving section for more on this.

Do Not Even Jaywalk

Do not walk across road crossings during red men pedestrian traffic signs as some countries have laws against "jay walking" which the police may choose to only enforce against you as a foreigner etc. Some Police wait at major traffic light crossing waiting for gullible foreigners to make this fineable mistake.

Dont_trust_the_police

ps. don't carry guns to other countries! You will almost certainly get put in jail !!

pps. Don't even carry tools or anything remotely sharp. I've even had my shaving razors taken off me at airports - you never know how they will treat you in a foreign place and it varies significantly.

Driving

EU countries have town symbols along routes which automatically drop the speed limit to 50 km/h whether they declare it explicitly or not.

This is a local knowledge that will get you done and your license revoked if you hit 100km/h.

You don't realize what big countries France, Spain, Germany and Poland are until you've driven across them!

Driving Checklist

Police may refuse you entry or blackmail you out of money if you don't have all of the following documents:

  • Passport:
    • South African police laid a trap pulling over foreigners coming out of Sandton - primarily a rich foreigner area. My guess is they were targeting rental cars in an attempt to extort fines / bribes from foreigners not carrying their passports and even document imaginable including driving license and international driver's permit.
  • UK driver's license
  • International driver's permit (get this from the Post Office it's only around £5 but requires a passport photo)
  • Insurance certificate
    • check it covers the specific country, see note above that non-EU countries are often not covered
  • Vehicle Registration V5C paper proof of ownership
    • Serbian police refused to accept digital proof of ownership via insurance certificate
    • they insisted on physical original paper copy
    • they said it was the equivalent to "Passport for the car"

Additional EU Driving Checklist

Driving in the EU additionally requires:

  • breakdown kit (AA does one), including:
    • high viz jacket (which must be available in the passenger compartment
    • breakdown triangle
    • headlamp converters

Headlamp converters are basically headlamp stickers that change the glare direction of your headlamps to shine the other way because you drive on the right in Europe instead of the left like in the UK.

Apparently the French police are likely to pull you over and fine you if you don't have these.

EU Motorway Tolls

Socialist Europeans find extra ways to tax you and you need to buy motorway passes when driving in several European countries or face fines.

There are automated cameras so you are likely to get hit with fines if you don't buy one of these in advance.

See here for some details of which countries and prices.

https://www.autoeurope.com/travel-tips/vignette-stickers/

Specific countries purchase apps and websites are listed under each country.

Do Not Speed

Do not speed, you only need to go a meagre 50kmh above the speed limit and the Latvian police will revoke your license.

This is easy to do in towns which are set to only 50kmph speed limits whether they explicitly declare it or not.

If you see a car pushing into the back of you, do not speed up.

It may be a police car that will only put on its siren after you've increased speed to breach the +50kmph maximum penalty of €360 euros and a revoked license.

The extended time pulled over by the police not knowing if they are going to arrest you and impound your vehicle on top of revoking your license will set you back a lot more time than any speed up would give you.

It's quite possible they do this on purpose 15 minutes from the Estonia border to catch unsuspecting foreigners driving between the countries.

Let cars overtake you than fall for this unmarked police car entrapment.

Always use Waze to ensure you know when the speed limit changes when there are no explicit speed signs, as well as when there are speed cameras in case you've drifted a few kmph over the limit.

Parking

Use Parkopedia to find parking and see its pricing up front to not get ripped off. Occasionally the parking might be slightly more expensive than Parkopedia's latest knowledge.

There are apps for Parkopedia for iPhone and Android.

In the Parkopedia app, once you've selected the car park you can, share it to Waze to plan the journey there.

Do not use Waze to get to the city and then try to find parking, that's more difficult, and Waze will often send you to some random part of a city, which has little there.

In more recent times I ask ChatGPT for free parking locations ahead of time and then bookmark them on Google Maps and then share that to Waze for the driving route as Waze is far better than Google Maps for driving directions.

Long Term Car Storage

If you need to leave your car in storage in the UK to go travelling, you can find parking places here:

https://www.justpark.com/

Land Border Delays

Land borders often have significant queues and delays, both due to queues of cars and also due to long slow checks and questioning.

Ferries

As per above, police extra questioning can make you miss your ferry (it's happened to me at Calais), so allow 1 hour extra for this.

Ferries are surprisingly expensive, similar or more in price compared a plane ticket.

This probably works out a little more economical if having more than one person in the car.

You should book ahead of time due to limited slots, and for better pricing.

Use ferry comparison sites:

but also compare prices directly on the ferry sites themselves as you can avoid a £6 service fee charged by directferries comparison site.

  • IrishFerries - I've used this as they have frequent sailings at moderate prices - Calais <=> Dover, but no sailings to/from Dunkirk. Prices were higher in July than May

Car Insurance

Car insurance often includes 30-90 days cover in Europe, check each provider for details.

Beware: UK car insurance covers only EU countries and one or two others like Switzerland and Serbia, but NOT Montenegro, Albania or North Macedonia.

Not coincidentally these are 3 out of the 4 non-EU countries left in the Balkans and for good reason as they are clearly the least developed countries.

You will be forced by the police to buy expensive insurance at the border in those countries if you cannot prove you have a specific insurance covering their country.

Top car comparison sites:

International Driving Insurance

Temporary Car Insurance Cover

These are relatively very expensive in my experience so I avoid them.

Travel Days Planning

Spreadsheet to Auto-Recalculate Dates

If you want to see how to create a spreadsheet to auto-recalculate your travel dates from just the number of days you want to spend there, see the Spreadsheets page which has a section explaining how to do this.

This is super useful to:

  • track how many days you intend to stay in each place
  • track your dates to book flights and accommodation for
  • sum the days per country or region such as EU Schengen for visa purposes (tourist visa doesn't reset across EU countries!)

Digital Nomadding

See also Nomads.com which has some overlap with the spreadsheet above as described in the Remote Working & Digital Nomad digital nomad section.

EU Schengen Visa Calculator

The following basic EU visa days calculator sites are also useful, in addition to the above spreadsheet.

This one is easy to use as you just have to click your entry / exit dates:

Do NOT reload the page as it clears the dates you input!

https://schengenareacalculator.com/

This one is less easy to use because you have to manually enter the dates:

https://www.visa-calculator.com/

Emigration

Taxes

Brits leaving in the middle of a UK tax year (April 6th - April 5th next year) will have a declare a split tax year to HMRC.

It's best to plan ahead and leave just before April 5th to not contaminate another next tax year with HMRC able to claim tax off you that quite frankly the UK doesn't deserve at this point.

Read this article on my Medium for more:

Tax Advice for Emigrating or Going Digital Nomad

Avoid Tax Residency

Most countries operate a 183 days rule which makes you liable for taxes there on your worldwide income if you spend 183 days cumulatively in any 365 day rolling period.

It's even more aggressive in Europe if you maintain a property there and even more aggressive in the UK if you have relatives or property, leaving you with only 15 safe days per tax year!

You can use an app like TaxResident to track your days to avoid this.

Nomads.com also has a section auto-calculating your days per country and warning you how many you have left before you become tax resident.

The visa-days-calculator.com site also has a section where you can switch to the 183 day tax rule calculator.

Mail Redirection

Brits may want to redirect their mail overseas or get a PO Box to collect on return visits.

Car Migration

You can often import a car with a waiver on the import duty if you gain a residency permit and have had the car for over a year.