For Healthy Travel

30 Tips

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© 2019 Simon and Cindy Collins

Things Worth Knowing

Before You Go

Be Prepared

The old Boy Scouts motto is excellent advice for travellers. When planning your holiday, research potential health concerns in the countries you’re travelling to.

Of course the amount of preparation needed absolutely depends on where you’re heading. If you’ll be trekking through the jungles of Uganda, you’ll have more to think through than if you’re taking a self-drive across Europe.

So here’s a few things you might want to consider before you set off.

Your Doctor Knows Best

Let’s first get this little disclaimer out of the way. The information in this guide should absolutely, positively not be taken as medical advice!

Always consult your doctor before you travel, especially if you’re heading to developing countries for an extended period or have existing medical conditions. They know your medical history and can offer advice that’s tailored for you.

The suggestions in this guide have helped us stay healthy while travelling. But everyone’s different, so speak to your doctor before you leave.

1

Talk to a Travel Doctor

Find out from your doctor if any infectious diseases (e.g. malaria, yellow fever etc.), are prevalent in the areas you’ll be travelling to. If possible, consult a specialist travel doctor who can provide expert advice and potentially cheaper vaccinations or preventative medication.

Be aware that some countries have strict vaccination requirements for travellers. For example, to enter Uganda you must provide a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate. Always email yourself a scan of your certificate, in case you lose the original.

2

Ask Your Doctor for Antibiotics

Depending on your medical history, your doctor may be happy to provide you with a prescription for emergency antibiotics, to use if the “blocking and waiting” approach doesn’t work. We have some with us for emergencies.

Of course antibiotics should be used only when absolutely necessary and always complete the full course to avoid bacterial resistance.

But they’re worth having with you because the alternative is potentially expensive or inadequate treatment in an unfamiliar country.

3

Check out the Air Quality

Some big cities have very poor air quality. For example, Beijing, Delhi and Mexico City frequently have seriously high levels of smog.

If you suffer from asthma or other respiratory illnesses, do your research, talk to your doctor and make sure you’re prepared.

In Mexico City I was fine for the first few days but then the pollution suddenly triggered my Asthma and I needed my inhaler. Although I rarely use it, if I hadn’t brought it with me, things might have been a lot worse for me.

4

Read About Local Scams

You might wonder what this has to do with your health but most travellers get scammed at some point and if it’s serious enough it be really stressful and mentally tiring.

Even being scammed for a small amount can really make you hate a city or even the whole country! We still remember the guy who told us the Grand Palace in Bangkok was closed for the day, just so he could take us to his shop instead!

While you can’t avoid them all, these days it’s pretty easy to Google for local scams before arriving. The good news is that scams aren’t as common as you might expect. If you’re prepared for them, most are easily avoided by walking away.

5

Learn about Local Customs

Unusual local rules and customs, or unfamiliar languages are a frequent cause of travel anxiety that can really affect your mental well being while travelling.

On arrival at Ho Chi Minh airport, we didn’t understand the visa application process. They took our passports away without further explanation. Seeing your passports disappear out of sight is a traveller’s worst nightmare!

Prevent this sort of anxiety by researching as much as possible about local rules and customs, especially ones with a potential language barrier, such as arranging visas, booking taxis or checking in at the airport.

6

Take a Safety First Approach

When booking adventure experiences such as zip lining, bungee jumping or hot air ballooning, do your research to find a reputable company. If you can’t find one that fills you with confidence, give the activity a miss.

Developing countries often lack the laws and safety standards that we’re used to. It’s not worth risking your life by failing to do your due diligence.

Finally, check that your travel insurance will cover you should something happen. Many won’t without extra charges.

7

While You ’re Travelling

StayingHealthy

Staying Healthy on the Road

Staying healthy while travelling can be surprisingly difficult. There are plenty of temptations along the way and in fact you’re probably looking forward to indulging in some of them in order to relax and enjoy yourself!

Like most things in life staying healthy on the road is about finding the right balance between rewarding yourself and keeping those temptations in check.

Here’s some tips for finding the middle ground and keeping your body healthy on holiday.

Try and Eat Healthy

It can be hard to eat healthy when you’re travelling. You often can’t find the type of foods you’re used to and there’s alway the temptation to eat out every night and gorge on local delicacies!

One trick is to avoid the hotel breakfast buffet and order a la carte if you can. Buffets are often full of tasty but fat and carb loaded foods.

Many hotels offer an omelette station as well as their buffet. We’ll often have a omelette before taking anything else. It fills us up and makes us less likely to over indulge on the buffet.

8

Keep Your Body Hydrated

It’s amazing how many people (including me) don’t drink enough water. It’s so important to stay hydrated, particularly in hot, humid countries. You’ll feel much more alert and you’ll tire less easily.

We also tend to drink more diuretics on holiday, such as soft drinks, coffee or alcohol. That means it’s doubly important to drink more water on vacation.

We always pack electrolyte tablets. They dissolve in water and replace salts lost from sweating during the day or from diarrhoea caused by food poisoning.

9

Keep Your Skin Healthy

Whether its the dry recycled air on your aeroplane or too much time spent in the sun, dry skin is something we all commonly face while travelling.

The first way to combat dry skin is to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water. The second way is by applying a moisturiser. Coconut oil is a great natural moisturiser with the added benefit that it smells amazing!

10

Get Plenty of Sleep

Getting enough sleep is critical for your long term health and it’s especially important while travelling. Constant travel can interrupt your normal sleep patterns.

It’s important to make sure that you still get sufficient shut-eye. Part of getting enough sleep while travelling is training yourself to be able to nod off in unusual places and at strange times.

To help with that, consider getting yourself an eye mask, a travel pillow or a decent pair of earplugs to help with that.

11

Pack Lightly

You might not think that how much luggage you take with you could affect your health while travelling but have you thought about the strain that lugging heavy backpacks or suitcases around puts on your body, especially on your back?

Do yourself a favour and take only the essential items when you travel. A saving of just a few kilograms could significantly reduce the risk of injuring your back or your neck.

Also consider getting luggage with decent wheels, to avoid carrying your bags everywhere.

12

Get Outside and go for a Walk

Some aspects of travelling can be both boring and emotionally draining, such as waiting around in airports or sitting in a jam packed minibus for two hours when you’re not quite sure where you’re going.

But a great way to destress afterwards is to simply take a long walk. Even just a half hour stroll gets your blood flowing again, relaxes your mind while giving you a chance to explore your new surroundings.

Wandering around Hanoi’s old town after we arrived was easily the best part of our stay there, much more so than any other site seeing we did.

13

Find Yourself Some Fresh Air

Together with getting enough sleep, breathing fresh air is critical to staying healthy while travelling. At least once a day, find somewhere you can sit back, relax and breathe in some nice clean air.

Sometimes it may not seem like that’s possible but even the biggest, dirtiest cities will have pockets of fresh air hidden within them.

Sometimes that might mean catching a train out to the suburbs or a tuk-tuk to the nearest beach. It doesn’t take much fresh air to clear your head and revitalise your body.

14

Indulge Yourself Now and Again

Travelling can often be draining. To avoid travel burn out, indulge yourself now and again. This could be something as a nice meal at a fancy restaurant or pampering yourself with a spa treatment.

If we plan an action packed vacation, we’ll often set aside a couple of chill out days at the end to just relax and unwind before we fly home; usually on the beach!

You can still do this without blowing your budget. Just spend less in other areas. We’ll maybe buy less souvenirs, walk back to our hotel instead of taking a taxi, or skip lunch the next day.

15

Learn Basic First Aid

Part of travelling safely is being prepared for when things inevitably go wrong. Luckily that doesn’t happen very often, but when it does you need to be able to deal with it on the spot.

Take a basic first aid course to learn how to respond to a medical emergency. Basic courses cover such things as how to tell if someone is breathing, how to position them to breathe freely and how to give CPR if they are not breathing.

Hopefully you’ll never need to use what you learn but it could save someone’s life!

16

How to Avoid Getting Sick

Food Poisoning

The Traveller ’s Scourge

Probably the most likely threat to your health while travelling is food poisoning, the travellers’s scourge! You’re bound to get it at some point, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

That being said, there are a few things you can do to minimise your chances of getting food poisoning. Here’s our tips for staying clear of it.

Eat Vegetarian

Many restaurants in developing countries will overcook their meat to make sure it’s safe. This leaves it tasting pretty dry and ordinary.

Meat left sitting around at room temperature and then undercooked, has the potential to give you food poisoning.

So why not eat vegetarian more often? We did this recently in India and it may have helped us avoid food poisoning. Plus, India has some amazing vegetarian dishes which are cheaper than the meat dishes anyway. WIN WIN!

17

Be Careful with Tap Water

In many developing countries, tap water is not safe to drink without sterilisation.

To deal with this, either buy bottled water to drink or attempt to sterilise the water. Most hotels in these countries will include at least some bottles of filtered water in your room charge.

We use filtered water for drinking but use tap water sterilised with Aquatab tablets for brushing our teeth.

To reduce our environmental impact, we prefer hotels that provide water refill stations, rather than disposable bottles.

18

Use Hand Sanitizer Before Meals

Bring a small bottle of hand sanitiser with you when you travel to kill off any dodgy bacteria you may have picked up during the day, before you touch your food.

We also bring antibacterial wipes with us. They’re quite handy for sterilising utensils that don’t look very clean or wiping public toilet seats before you use them.

We often drink from the can unless the restaurant provides reusable eco straws but we make sure we clean the top of the can with these wipes before drinking from it.

19

Use Review Sites Religiously

To find reputable bars and restaurants, use review sites such as TripAdvisor to find the best ranked restaurants in your area. Then scan recent reviews for any mention of food poisoning or poor hygiene in general.

If you see repeated mentions of either, try somewhere else instead. But use your common sense as even the best restaurants have the occasional case of food poisoning.

Review sites aren’t perfect and they can be gamed but they’re a lot better than nothing!

20

How to Battle Through it

Food Poisoning

Tips for Dealing with Food Poisoning

If you’re travelling through developing countries, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll get food poisoning at least once. Quite often it will just be a minor stomach bug that is nothing serious. But you’re on holiday and you don’t want to be stuck inside!

Luckily, unless it’s acute food poisoning, you can often fairly quickly block the symptoms, letting your immune system fight the bug in the background.

Here’s some tips for blocking the symptoms of food poisoning enough to get on with your vacation.

Detox with Activated Charcoal

Activated charcoal is commonly used on people who have swallowed a poison. The fine charcoal particles have a very large surface area and can soak up a lot of toxins. The powder is not digestible, so it passes through your system, taking the toxins with it.

There’s some evidence to suggest that activated charcoal can help with food poisoning by absorbing the bad bacteria if you take them early enough.

Although the science is not 100% clear, it’s worth a shot and these days you can buy the tablets at many pharmacies.

21

Take Imodium to Block you up

Imodium helps block you up, which can be a godsend if you’re up for some sightseeing but don’t want to get caught short looking for a loo. It’s also extra handy before bus rides or flights, because there’s nothing worse than feeling crook with nowhere to go!

The downside is that Imodium prevents your body from flushing out the toxins that are causing you grief. Still, that’s often a tradeoff worth making.

Don’t continue with Imodium if you have a bloody stool or if it doesn’t kick in quickly. You probably have something more serious. See a doctor!

22

Eat Bland Foods for a While

Eat bland, low fibre food such as toast and bananas for a few days. They’re gentle on your stomach, easy to digest and act as binding agents to firm up your stool. Also reduce the volume of food you eat, while keeping up your fluids.

Rice has similar properties but can often be a cause of food poisoning itself. So avoid it, unless you’re preparing it yourself fresh.

Avoid meals that are hard to digest such as those containing lots of fat or protein, spicy ingredients or gas inducers such as garlic or onions.

23

Take Probiotics to Heal Your Gut

Probiotic yogurts contain cultures of good bacteria that can help get your gut back into balance.

I’ve found that if I have a small bottle in the morning, straight after a bland breakfast it really helps settle my digestive system down.

Other drinks with fermented cultures, such as Kombucha, work the same way but are harder to find. In South East Asia at least, it’s quite easy to find probiotic yoghurts in convenience stores and supermarkets.

24

Staying Sane on the Road

Mental Health

How to Keep Your Mind Happy

Travelling is great for your mental well being. It lets you discover how other people live and the challenges they face. It highlights the things we all have in common that bind us together as human beings.

Travelling helps you grow as a person and strengthens you mentally by challenging you and pulling you out of your comfort zone.

But travelling for more than a few weeks can be emotionally draining, especially in countries that are very different to your own. So here’s some tips for keeping sane while travelling.

Don’t Travel too Fast

Moving around too much when travelling can really wear you down. Changing cities every two or three days for a couple of weeks starts to get draining. Your mind is overstimulated and struggles to process everything you’re seeing.

In the past, we’ve often planned a two or three day beach break at the end of our trip. That way, when we headed home we actually felt like we’d had a holiday!

Now that we’re travelling full time, we make sure we stay longer in each city, so that we don’t get burnt out.

25

Accept What You Cannot Change

Travel anxiety is often caused by seeing something disturbing that you can’t do anything about it. If you’re not careful it can tarnish your opinion of a country and its people.

For us as animal lovers this is often caused by seeing animals that are suffering, while the locals seem indifferent to their plight. We feel helpless.

One way to still have an impact is to volunteer with and promote local charities that are making a difference. That way you can be part of the solution, even it it won’t happen overnight.

26

Find a Regular Morning Routine

On longer trips, moving around constantly begins to affect your enjoyment of the holiday. For us, this often starts around five weeks into our vacation.

We start to miss the comforts of home and our usual routine. As much as we enjoy leaving our comfort zone, doing it for weeks on end takes its toll mentally.

One way to combat this is to develop a regular morning routine, one that you can do anywhere. Whether it’s meditation or a morning jog, such a routine provides some constancy in an ever changing environment.

27

Carve Out Some Alone Time

When travelling with your family, you end up spending more time with them than you normally would at home.

We all need to be alone sometimes, to unwind or enjoy experiences that others don’t appreciate. Without this time off, it’s easy to get on each others nerves and end up arguing over petty things.

Even something as simple as a hour’s walk in the morning by yourself can do wonders. It will clear your head and let you enjoy the time with your fellow travellers more.

28

Do Some People Watching

If you’re too tired to take a walk straight away, plonk yourself down in a nearby cafe and just watch life going on around you. It’s amazing what you’ll see.

While walking around Pushkar in India, we were constantly hassled by touts. They were so pushy that it made us hate the place. But after a while we found a quiet roof top cafe where we could have a drink, relax and watch daily life on the street below.

Now my memories of Pushkar are less about the touts and more about the cheeky cow we saw stealing cabbages from an angry street vendor!

29

Lean on Your Fellow Travellers

If you find yourself in a stressful situation where you’re not quite sure what to do, don’t forget to ask your fellow travellers for help.

Unless you’re alone in the wilderness or dessert, you’re probably have at least one other traveller nearby. Most will be glad to try and help.

At best they’ll be in the same situation as you and you can tackle the problem together. At worst you’ll be back where you started. Either way, reaching out is almost always a great idea and a good way to make new friends while travelling.

30

Happy Roaming

We hope you found some of these tips useful. While most of them are just common sense, they are sometimes easy to forget when you’re on the other side of the world in a strange place!

If you have your own tips for healthy travelling that you didn’t find here, please send them to us at hello@freetworoam.com so we can add them in.

We hope to meet you on the road someday. Until then, happy roaming!

Simon and Cindy