Our Travel Essentials

After years of travel, we have tried tons of different booking sites, transportation apps, travel insurance brands, and gear.

While we believe the best items to pack are the ones you already own, investing in good quality products and services that will last through years of travel is also important.

We’ve compiled all of our top recommendations on how to book and what to purchase to help make your travels as efficient and enjoyable as possible!

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you book or buy something through them – at no extra cost to you. We only recommend things we’d actually use ourselves. Read more in our Privacy Policy.

Travel Budget Tips

The Budget Travel Handbook – Grab your copy to learn how we plan and save for our trips, plus the rules we’ve used to budget travel for the past 10+ years!

Accommodation

TrustedHousesitters – We use TrustedHousesitters to stay for free in cities around the world in return for house and/or pet sitting.

Most recently, we stayed in central Melbourne, Australia for a month completely FREE and lived with two adorable cats.

Booking.com – This is our go-to search engine to find affordable accommodation around the world.

We like to filter for places with an 8+ rating and sort by least to most expensive to make an informed choice.

Hostelworld – Hostelworld is the best place to search for hostels around the world. We like to read the reviews on Hostelworld then price shop on different accommodation sites for the best deals.

Agoda – Agoda is one of the best sites to search for discounts on hotels or guesthouses and has a great selection of options, especially in Asia.

Transportation

Skyscanner.com – Skyscanner is our favorite search engine to compare flight prices. We use it to find flights for specific trips as well as to choose our next destination with the Everywhere search function.

Kayak.com – Our OG trusted search engine! The best part about searching on Kayak is the intuitive user interface and the ability to search across multiple dates with the +/- one to three days function.

12Go.com – The essential website for bus, train, and ferry transportation in Asia. 12Go has been a lifesaver for us when researching our routes and budget in South East Asia.

Sometimes the fare may be less expensive if you book directly at the bus station or through a local agency, but 12Go is a great website to price shop and the convenience of instant confirmation cannot be understated.

Omio.com – Omio is the best for booking trains. The ability to search for the best dates and book in one language for multiple countries makes it the most convenient.

DiscoverCars.com – DiscoverCars.com is the Skyscanner of cars. You will get results from across multiple platforms to ensure the best prices for customers.

Tours

Get Your Guide – Get Your Guide is one of the best for researching and booking affordable tours. We’ve found that the reviews are usually accurate and the price is right.

You also often can book museum tickets, entry passes, and other in-person activities ahead of time.

Viator – Viator has a great collection of tours as well, ranging from budget city tours to luxury boat trips.

Trip Advisor – Trip Advisor is a fantastic tool to compare tours, hotels, and restaurants across the globe.

Travel Insurance & Finances

SafetyWing – We use SafetyWing Nomad Insurance on our trips. We find the coverage to be sufficient and love that it renews automatically every month, so we can travel for as long as we want and cancel when we return home.

Make sure to read the small print to ensure whichever travel insurance you choose is right for you.

Wise – Wise is the best for having accounts in different currencies. It is a multi-currency bank card with NO foreign transaction fees and a user-friendly app to move your money quickly and safely.

Wise also provides both physical and digital cards so you can pay via your phone as well as take cash out at ATMs.

Packing Essentials

Our FAVORITE 40L Backpack – The Osprey Fairview 40L has been our go-to bag for the past 4+ years. It’s spacious, durable, light, and carry-on compatible.

Osprey also has a lifetime warranty, so if anything breaks on your bag it can be fixed for free. A clip broke on Julia’s bag last year and they sent her a new one, no questions asked.

The best casual + hiking shoes – These Salomon trail shoes are both stylish and comfortable. We found the grip to be excellent on hikes throughout Laos and Vietnam, and they are sharp enough to wear with a pair of pants to dinner.

The arch support is also fantastic, keeping our feet feeling good after 6+ hours on the trails.

The best casual + hiking sandals – Teva stans forever. These sandals are also wonderful in the arch support department and come in a variety of colors.

They dry quickly and have stood up to miles and miles of walking around both cities and coastal trails.

The comfiest cropped fleece – A fleece is one of our most used items – even in warmer destinations (it also makes a great pillow)! This Columbia cropped fleece has been with us for the past two years.

It’s stylish, comes in a bunch of different colors and the front pocket is so practical.

My stylish + practical day bag – Another bag Julia has been carrying for nearly 5 years. It has a laptop sleeve and a myriad of pockets – perfect for both carrying day-to-day items and for multi-day side trips.

We’d recommend purchasing a darker color (instead of light orange like us…) as sweat and dirt tends to show, but the bag also washes very well.