This is my ongoing bits of advice that I have learned from many years of backpacking. I still do go backpacking whenever I can. I usually will claim that I prefer backpacking over traditional hotel / resort travel, but the reality is that I am frugal and also not rich. When backpacking you can make your money go so much further than someone who is staying in a posh resort, and you are also going to meet far more "real" people.
When I was traveling and meeting these people, I was able to compile a list of memories that lead to what I believe to be sage advice for newbies to the notion of backpacking. Most of these things I know about simply because I, or someone I know did these things wrong and paid the price for it.
It is truly horrible when theft or loss occurs when you are traveling on a budget, and getting robbed or ripped off is something that is far more likely to happen to a backpacker than someone paying a much higher price at a resort.
Most of this heartache can be avoided by using a little bit of extra caution and trust me, you want to use this caution even if it causes a bit of inconvenience. I can assure you, replacing your cards and passport etc is far more frustrating that needing to walk back to your hostel to get more cash.
Even better advice would be to not carry your wallet outside of your hostel at all. As an American male, it is quite customary for me to unnecessarily carry 5 credit cards, my insurance card, my driving license, 4 club cards, a stack of receipts, and all the cash I have that isn't in a bank on me at all times. This is a recipe for disaster in a backpacking environment.
If you do travel with cards, and you should if you have them in order to get cheaper bookings using the internet, you should not be carrying them around with you to go get some street food, go to a waterfall, or go trekking in the jungle. Honestly, do you really think the animal sanctuary accepts Diner's Club?
I would normally leave my hostel with as much money as I can imagine i would need in the amount of time that I am going to be out for the day. This comes in handy for a number of reasons including the fact that it encourages you to not buy souvenirs that you do not need and will simply fill up your backpack space with. It also encourages negotiating with market sellers because you have a very limited amount of cash to play with and the vendors will be more likely to work with you than if you have a wallet overflowing with hundreds of dollars.
The main reason to not carry all your stuff with you is in case you are pick-pocketed or even worse, robbed. Neither of these things ever happened to me in over a decade of travel so take it easy... But I did once drop my wallet out of my pocket on a motorbike ride, and that was just as traumetizing.
I'm even a little apprehensive in using in-room safes because I know for a fact that the staff have an override key. Think about it: are they just going to buy a new safe every time a customer forgets the pin number that they set? They can open that safe.
Therefore, if the front desk has a safety deposit system, and most reputable places do offer this service - even the really cheap ones, you can store your stuff in a sealed envelope that has a ledger of the contents that both you and the clerk sign. There is very little chance of funny business going on here since all the places I have stayed expect this service to be requested and I have never heard of stories of this going awry.
If you are in a dorm, it is truly a fool's venture to keep your stuff on your bunkbed since pretty much everyone in the place has access to your stuff even if you think you are being very clever and hiding it in a sock - thieves know where to look and will find it.
While I am speaking primarily about cash and cards this also applies to electronics such as phones, tablet, and laptops. What a pain it is to lose one of those right? Use the safety deposit or if your dorm has a locker, definitely use that.
One of the oldest and most covert scams in the book is the "secure luggage storage" underneath buses. I have heard of it time and time again. While you are sleeping upstairs the luggage handling staff are "downstairs" rifling through packs stealing cash, cards, and electronics while one of the other handlers keeps watch (I presume, i haven't witnessed this but have heard the aftermath.)
When the bus arrives everyone is rushed to some other location and then you are sold some sort of taxi to your next destination. By the time you figure out that your laptop / card / cash stashed in your sock is gone, you are far from the bus and no one is going to be able to help you.
There is a very simple way around this: Get a smaller backpack that you carry on you or near your seat and put a small combination lock on it. Perhaps this seems like overkill but trust me, this is the most likely scenario to occur out of the 3 that I have listed. The bus staff are very unlikely to go through your bag with so many witnesses and they are exceptionally unlikely to cut a lock or cut the bag, which would be immediately noticed by you. I have never heard of anyone losing their stuff when using this strategy.
Basically, there are many dangers of petty theft on the backpacking trail and that is part of the reason why it is so much cheaper than tour packages where everything is safe. If you just exercise a little bit of caution you can avoid having your stuff took. The best way is to not have much of it on you in the first place but when you do travel from place-to-place you have to take it all at once - so just be on your guard but still have a good time. 95% of people will never encounter these situations but I know from experience how much it sucks when it does happen to you.
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