The Gentle Art of Travel

Ben Lovejoy

Contents

Title page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Foreword

1. Researching your destination

2. "Don't take a camera!"

3. "This isn't the 17:52 from Liverpool Street"

4. Short sharp trips

5. Protecting your health

6. "Let's visit a war zone for Christmas"

7. Gadgets for travel

8. "Is that an air traffic control screen?"

9. Apps for travel

10. Choosing luggage

11. Packing in 12 minutes flat

12. "You can't do that"

13. Finding great flight deals

14. Getting the best seats

15. "Silent night"

16. Staying in 4-5-star hotels on 2-star budgets

17. A word on overnight return flights

18. "The Dubai adventure"

19. Travel documents

20. "To Moscow with mobile phones"

21. Getting to the airport

22. "Pretending to be a police car"

23. The four secrets to getting upgraded

24. "HR needs to meet with you"

25. "Be nice"

26. "We'll be your flight attendants"

27. "That's what it takes to get a Premier card"

28. DIY upgrades

29. VIP lounges

30. "No entry"

31. Making yourself comfy on board

32. "Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

33. On board health & wellbeing

34. "Broken leg class"

35. Minimising jet-lag

36. Getting a good night's sleep

37. "The lonely bean"

38. 10-word phrasebook

39. "One of those, please"

40. Getting around

41. "Can I help you?"

42. "My camera speaks fluent Japanese"

43. Safety in unfamiliar locations

44. "We'll be six feet behind you"

45. The cheapest way to get cash

46. Buying things overseas

47. "That then, this now"

48. "Sir ..."

49. "It's a car roof"

50. Travel photography

51. "The tripod story"

52. Staff travel, the hidden extra travel class

53. "Jump Seat Class"

Afterword

Title page

The Gentle Art of Travel

Ben Lovejoy

Airbook Publishing

Copyright

AIRBOOK PUBLISHING

www.airbookpublishing.com

Copyright © Ben Lovejoy 2016

Ben Lovejoy asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in Great Britain 2015 by Airbook Publishing.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-9931922-2-7

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Airbook Publishing.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Acknowledgments

Since the biggest chunk of the travel I’ve done was on business, I should start by thanking Janine Braier, who was responsible for the career change that led to it. I returned to writing afterwards, and don’t miss the 4am starts, but I am hugely appreciative of the travel opportunities it provided to me.

Many thanks are also due to Adrian Elkin, without whom I would never have reached some of the places I’ve visited, or returned to others.

Hugh Mehta, Jeanie Seto, Sabine Ecker, Laura Horwith, Efrain Ribeiro, Winfried Hagenhoff and Mike Penford for their company on what remains one of the most memorable journeys of my life: travelling around Cambodia with Unicef.

To Patrick & Liz, whose own travels ensured that some Christmas visits were spent wearing shirt sleeves by the sea rather than a thick sweater in a windswept Yorkshire valley.

The list of those whose company I have enjoyed, briefly or otherwise, on many other trips across the years would be too long to include here – and it would be unfair to single out some but not others. So I will say a big thanks to all those friends and colleagues who have travelled with me; and the many friends around the world who have taken the time to share their home cities with me, take me on tours, make recommendations on where to go and what to see, and in many cases shared their homes with me too.

Dave Langridge, Oli Orchard and Tom Rush for proof-reading the first draft of the book and giving feedback on both content and typos.

Finally, thanks to all those individuals who have played their part in making my trips more enjoyable. From the cabin crew who went the extra mile in delivering great service; the hotel receptionists who served as a source of local knowledge; the overseas colleagues who helped me make the most of the few short hours I had free on business trips; all the way through to the random strangers I got chatting to along the way. That travel enriches the spirit is in no small part due to such encounters.

Introduction

There can be few activities in life where the gap between the image and reality is quite so great as it is for business travel.

It’s an image the travel industry works very hard to maintain. We’ve all seen the airline ads, portraying an experience of flying that probably hasn’t existed since the 1950s. The pampering in the air, the limo whisking us effortlessly through miraculously empty roads from the airport to the luxury hotel, where an entourage of staff escorts us to our room and takes care of our every need.

The actual business part, if they bother to squeeze it in at all, is of some relaxed senior executive taking seconds to make important decisions while surrounded by flunkies. Then it’s straight out onto the hotel’s 40th floor rooftop bar to admire the sun setting over the fabulous cityscape while sipping a cocktail or two.

The reality can be … somewhat different. The 4am starts to get to the airport in time to catch the first flight out. The ‘hurry up and wait’ experience that almost defines airports. Flights spent head-down in a laptop rather than sipping wine whilst enjoying the in-flight movie. The broken sleep and even more broken social life. The five-country trips where you spend the first couple of minutes after the alarm goes off trying to remember which country you’re in. And where your entire experience of a country is a taxi from the airport, a hotel, a meeting room and another taxi back to the airport.

The reality distortion field can be almost as pervasive when it comes to leisure travel. The lay-flat beds and limos are swapped for that breathtaking sunrise on the island beach, the stunning mountain vista and marvellous local restaurant where the real locals eat, each of which you somehow have all to yourself – except for the incredibly hot partner gazing adoringly into your eyes, of course. Those ads skip the budget airline flight full of drunken yobs and the crowded hotel packed with screaming brats.

Yet, with experience and planning, it’s possible to close the gap between image and reality to a greater degree than you might imagine – and that’s what this book is all about.

The gentle art of travel is the book I wished had existed when I first started spending more of my time out of the UK than in it. It’s about sharing the secrets I learned in two decades of frequent travel to a total of 69 countries. It’s about all of the large and small things you can do to have travel be something that enriches your life rather than something that threatens your sanity. It’s about how to travel without breaking sweat. It’s about how to make modern travel … a gentle art.

Foreword

There are a few things to note before we start.

First, while I’ve done my best to keep things in a logical sequence (for example, figuring out what gadgets and apps you want to take with you before moving into the secret to packing in 12 minutes flat), there is inevitably a little to-ing and fro-ing along the way because life is never as neat as a to-do list.

Second, ebooks are not a great format for photos given the variety of devices on which they might be viewed, including mono e-ink screens. For this reason, I haven’t attempted to include photos, but you can see lots of examples of the things of the things I talk about here:

http://www.beautifullytold.com/travel/

Third, I’ve illustrated some of my suggestions with relevant stories from my own trips. These always follow the sections they relate to, and the titles are in quotation marks, so you can choose whether to read them in sequence or skip them when you just want to get on with planning your trip, and enjoy them when you have more time (perhaps on that long-haul flight).

1

Researching your destination

For business trips, my typical free time per city ranged from two hours to half a day. The maximum I ever got, when a trip included a weekend, was a day and a half – and that was a real luxury!

I learned two things from this. First, if you’re determined and well-organised, you can actually see a great deal in a very short time. Second, the key to achieving this is research.

We live in an incredibly privileged time where research is concerned. Any factual information we could ever want is just a Google search away. Sites like Trip Advisor offer access to reviews on everything from hotels and restaurants to excursions. And if we want input from a local, putting the word out on Facebook invariably turns up a friend of a friend who can advise.

So my first step in planning any trip is to hit the web. I divide my research into three main areas …

The things you love

First, I research the things I most love to see no matter where I am in the world. For example, I love modern architecture, so the first thing I do when researching any city is to find out what interesting architecture is on offer. ‘<City name> architecture’ and ‘<City name> modern architecture’ are my two starting points there.

I also love the view from tall buildings, so ‘<City name> observation deck’, ‘<City name> observatory’, ‘<City name> rooftop bar’ and ‘<City name> bar with a view’ are next on my hit-list.

Again, the great thing about the web is that you never have to rely on what any attraction says about itself. Once you have some potential locations in mind, you can check out reviews and search for photos.

I’ll talk more about reviews in Staying in 4-5-star hotels on a 2-star budget, but I tend to pay most attention to the longer reviews. The lengthier positive reviews often contain valuable tips about things you don’t want to miss while there (a signature dish in a restaurant, a view from a window tucked around the corner out of sight, that kind of thing). The longer negative reviews often contain recommendations on alternative places to visit that deliver a better experience.

What your destination is known for

Second, I find out what the destination is known for. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting home from a trip and then finding out a week or two later that everyone but everyone who has visited raves about something you missed.

If a destination is famous for something, I’ll tend to check it out – at least to the extent of web research – even if it’s something I’m not normally into. For example, I’m as far from a trainspotter as you can get. But Japan is famous for its bullet trains, and so on one visit to Tokyo, I decided I really ought to experience one – and it did indeed prove to be a worthwhile experience, for reasons I’ll get to later.

What the locals recommend

Third, I aim to get local advice whenever I can. Some ‘must see’ sights are obvious, but some of the most spectacular sights – even in very famous places – are relatively well-kept secrets. Nobody visits San Francisco with time in hand without walking across the Golden Gate bridge, visiting the sea lions on Pier 39, hopping on a cable-car and taking the boat across to Alcatraz, for example, but it was only through local advice that I discovered that you get the best view of the city from a set of very unassuming streets up in the hills.

Finding that the Shanghai World Financial Centre was (at the time) the tallest building in Shanghai was easy. But it was only through local advice that I discovered one of the most breathtaking sights – indeed, one of the most beautiful man-made sights I’ve ever seen – was a view from inside the skyscraper right next door. That was from the top balcony of the Shanghai Hyatt, inside the Jin Mao Tower. The Cloud 9 bar on the 87th floor is commonly recommended (and serves fantastic wine), but it was the view I got by walking 20 feet from the elevator that really made my visit: an incredible atrium.

Putting the word out on Facebook can be a great way to get local advice. A simple post asking for recommendations on a place, and asking whether anyone knows anyone who lives there, can pay real dividends. If there’s a particular web forum you visit which has a worldwide membership, that can also be a really good place to ask (if the forum allows off-topic posts).

But remember to ask locals on arrival too. If you’re staying at a decent hotel, there will be little the concierge doesn’t know. If you’re staying in an Airbnb apartment, or couch-surfing, always let your host know what kind of things you love and they will often be able to make great recommendations.

Long story short: the more research you do beforehand, the more you’ll get out of your visit.

Of course, not all of the advice you get may be positive. Which brings us to the Sao Paolo trip …

2

"Don't take a camera!"

Most of my business trips were scheduled a week or two in advance, but there were exceptions …

One such was when one of my team members was due to go to Sao Paolo the next day. Others had been before, and Brits can get a visa on arrival, and it was only the day before she discovered that this didn’t apply to her. She’d been living in the UK long enough to think of herself as a local, but her passport – like her nationality – was still Australian. Australians need to apply for a business visa in advance, and there was no longer time to get one. Which is how I ended up travelling to Sao Paolo on 24 hours’ notice.

The schedule was particularly brutal. An overnight flight landing at 5am local. That would get me to my hotel at around 6am, and my first meeting was at 8am. There was no other free time at all between then and my flight home. I had exactly two hours for sightseeing. Research was going to be key.

One of the online places I hung out a lot in those days was the photography forums over at dpreview.com. There were members from all over the world, and of course they all liked to take great photos, so it was an excellent place to get recommendations.

I wrote a brief post. I’m arriving at this hotel on that street at 6am tomorrow, and have until 8am free. I love modern architecture. Where should I go, what should I see? I awaited replies.

I didn’t have long to wait; there was a reply from a local within a few minutes, but it wasn’t what I expected. ‘Don’t bring a camera,’ it said. It went on to say that Sao Paolo had one of the highest street robbery rates in the world, and that cameras were a key target.

I laughed it off. I was an experienced traveller, and had taken a camera with me everywhere I went. I’d wandered around backstreets all over the world and never had a problem. The idea of going somewhere new and not taking a camera was ridiculous!

The second reply was from someone who visited six or seven times a year. ‘Don’t take a camera,’ he said.

Further replies arrived, and all gave the same advice. It seemed crazy, so I headed over to the Foreign Office Travel Advisory website. The very first sentence warned of violent street robberies, and made specific reference to cameras making tourists a target.

I’m not noted for paying a great deal of attention when people suggest that something might be risky, but even I had to admit this was out of the ordinary. I compromised. I took an ancient film camera and my cheapest lens. Together, they were worth around £100 ($150). If anyone wanted to grab those, they were welcome to them. When I got to my hotel at 6am, I emptied my pockets completely. I headed out with nothing on me but a £100 SLR loaded with a roll of 35mm film.

When I got out onto the street, a main thoroughfare in the heart of the business district, the streets were thronged with people even at that ungodly hour. I couldn’t see that anyone was going to be dumb enough to attempt a mugging with thousands of witnesses. So I set off down the street, stopping every now and again to take a photo.

I swear I’m not exaggerating here. This is the literal truth. Every single time I stopped – every time – there was a hand in one of my pockets. There was nothing for them to take, but I finally understood that the forum members meant that they said: Sao Paolo takes crime to a whole new level.

Part of the reason for that was obvious: the degree of poverty. But I’d visited many poor places, and never experienced anything like this. I made a mental note to ask my local contact about it when the day’s work was done.

It was a long day, and it was after 10pm by the time we finished. My local guy was going to drive me back to my hotel. As we were about to leave, he looked at the laptop under my arm and stopped.

“Do you have a bag?” he asked.

I told him I didn’t.

“We’d better find you one.”

I asked why. He told me that, with the laptop visible, someone would grab it.

“But the car is right outside,” I protested, “not more than 200 feet away.”

“It’s enough,” he said. “Someone will take it.”

They found me a suitably tatty-looking sports bag.

Driving back to my hotel, I noticed he slowed for red lights but didn’t stop for them. I tentatively raised the topic.

“It’s the law here,” he said: “you don’t have to stop for red lights between 10pm and 5am. If you do, someone will stick a gun through your window.”

I paid a little more attention to travel warnings after that.

3

"This isn't the 17:52 from Liverpool Street"

I also promised to mention the bullet train trip in Tokyo …

I figured if I was going to take a ride on one, I needed some kind of excuse lest anyone mistake me for a trainspotter. My research revealed that the town of Mishama – around an hour away – offered a view of Mt Fuji on a clear day. It wasn’t a clear day in Tokyo, but a weather site said that it was in Mishama, so off I headed to the station.

I spoke only ten words of Japanese (see 10-word phrasebook), and I found it quite random whether or not people spoke English. The woman at the ticket counter didn't at all. I was prepared for this, having printed out the timetable for the line and marked my desired outbound and return trains with a highlighter pen. I also knew there was only one class, so I was expecting it to be straightforward.

It turned out not to be. It seemed she needed to ask me all sorts of questions. Some of them I was able to figure out, thanks to her excellent miming skills, others left me bemused. A lesser woman would have given up and just given me whatever the default ticket was, but this woman was determined not to sell me a ticket until I'd answered all her questions.

Concerned that I could spend the rest of my life there, I took to answering Hai (yes) or Iee (no) randomly. The fare I paid was what the website told me it would be, and no strange fate befell me en-route, so I guess my answers were ok. I headed to the platform.

Everything is organised in a fiendishly Japanese fashion. There are marked lines on the platform to queue for each carriage on each train, and you know where the doors will open because every position is marked (and in a much clearer fashion than on Eurostar).

Tokyo is a terminus, so I was able to observe the turnaround process for the train. The passengers were of course all neatly queued up for the door to their assigned carriage, leaving the actual doorways clear (much like in London <cough>). Two cleaners per carriage waited for the passengers to offload. Once they had, they zipped through the carriage, clearing away the litter and swivelling the seats around to face the new direction of travel. Total time, about two minutes.

Inside, the carriages are quite spartan, but this is deliberate: everything on board is as lightweight as possible, to maximise acceleration.

The seats are probably very comfortable if you're Japanese. I'm only 5'9", but the lumbar support was in completely the wrong place, and the head-rest was at the back of my neck, so it wasn't wildly comfortable at first. However, the seats recline a long way, so that made it much comfier.

The lightweight approach to the interiors clearly works: the acceleration of these electric trains is quite phenomenal compared to UK trains.

What was even more impressive was the way the guard paused to bow to the passengers each time he entered the carriage. He also turned around to bow again on exit. You don't often see this on the 17:52 from Liverpool Street.

On, and Mishama? Raining. Mt Fuji? Somewhere in the clouds in the distance. But I had to admit the bullet train ride was a worthwhile experience in itself.

4

Short sharp trips

I’m known for my ‘short, sharp trips,’ typically staying somewhere for just a few days. I once went to Jamaica for the weekend. Some people think this strange.

It’s a habit carried over from business trips, when I discovered just how much it’s possible to see in a short time. And one that was reinforced by being fortunate enough to have staff travel privileges on a long-haul airline for a time, when the standby nature of the trips encourages one not to hang around – but that’s a story I’ll get to later.

But even when I could take more time, I tend not to. What began as a necessity has evolved into a choice. I’m probably not going to persuade too many of you to follow my example, but I am at least going to give you my pitch for the concept …

Why short, sharp trips can work

There will be places where there are so many things you could see and do, and so many of those you actually want to see and do, that you couldn’t even manage it in a fortnight. Maybe you’ve never been to New York before, and don’t expect to visit again. Then sure, you’re going to have a packed schedule even if you stay for a couple of weeks.

But most people, I suggest, have relatively few such places. If you take a more typical place you want to visit, and then look at how many sights you want to see there, how many things you want to do there, I’m betting the number is in single digits.

For example, I once went on a four-day trip leisure trip to San Francisco. In that time, I watched the sun rise at the Golden Gate Bridge. Ok, I watched the fog rise, but that’s San Francisco for you. I watched the sun set there (and that one really was spectacular). I walked across the bridge and back. I cycled across the bridge and back. I rode a scooter across the bridge and back (unless there are any local police reading this book, in which case I definitely didn’t). I walked the entire waterfront from the Oakland Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge, including all of the accessible piers. I cycled the entire waterfront. I visited the fort. I saw the sea-lions on Pier 39. I took tram rides, got the driver to explain how they worked, watched them turn the trams around at a terminus and visited the tram museum. I visited City Hall. I toured Alcatraz. I cycled down Lombard Street, then did the same on the scooter. I explored the hills. I visited Treasure Island. I took a Segway tour of the city. I ate at Fisherman’s Wharf (every day, actually). I ate all the sour dough bread they could bake.

I did as much in four days as I suspect most people do in a fortnight.

Now sure, that’s a packed trip. I wasn’t doing any lazing around on sun loungers. If spending half your holiday by the pool is your thing, short, sharp trips are not for you. But if you like to spend your time getting out there and seeing things, saving your lounging around for the flight home, the approach can work really well.

The argument in favour

Ok, you say, so short, sharp trips can work, but why would you want to do your leisure travelling at such breakneck speed? Two reasons: time and money. Most of us have limited amounts of each. Short, sharp trips allow both to go further.

If you have, say, four weeks’ holiday a year that you can devote to trips, that’s two fortnight trips but perhaps five or six short ones. It’s even more acute for me: as a freelance, I don’t have any paid holiday, so every day I spend travelling is costing me a day’s income (unless I work while I’m travelling, which I do sometimes, getting up early in the morning to do so).

On the money side, most costs remain the same. You’re staying the same total number of nights in hotels, you’re just staying in more of them for shorter periods of time. Same with food and drink: the same expenses in total, just spread across more destinations. Entry fees and the like, I admit you’ll probably spend more, because you’re packing more in. But against that, you’re spending less time in your hotel sipping expensive cocktails.

Of course, there is one expense where you’ll definitely spend more: flights. Swap two holidays a year for five or six short trips and you’ll be adding significantly to the amount of money you hand over to airlines. Which is where you need to balance out the costs against how much of the world you want to see.

Some will protest that I spend longer on the plane than at the destination. To which I’d offer two responses. First, it’s not true. Ok, it’s almost always not true. But the second is: so what?

The time spent sitting on the plane isn’t something we can control: that’s just overhead. With luck, we have a comfy trip and manage to pass the time enjoyably, watching movies, reading a book and listening to music. And, if you’re lucky enough to get a Dreamliner, Facebooking on decent-speed wifi. That’s in any case stuff I’d do anyway, even if I was at home. So the ‘hours spent in the air vs hours spent on the ground’ formula has no relevance.

The relevant question is: what gives the most bang for the buck, in both financial and time terms? For me, it’s short, sharp trips. Here endeth the pitch.

5

Protecting your health

You can travel on virtually any budget, from thumbing lifts around Europe while subsisting on lentil soup to First Class air travel and 5-star hotels. But the one thing I would argue should never be skimped on is your health.

Vaccinations

You can use a website like www.vaccines.gov or www.nhs.uk to check the recommended shots needed for your destination(s) – and any other countries you’ll be passing through if using ground transport. Advice can vary, with some websites being more cautious than others, so I recommend trying a couple of reputable sites (the two I’ve given are government sites) and comparing notes.

In some cases, the risks vary depending on where in a country you are visiting, and the type of journey you are making. A business trip to a capital city will typically require fewer shots than a backpacking trip in rural areas, so make sure you read the advice carefully.

Bear in mind that some vaccinations require multiple courses, or take time to take effect, so never leave this until the last minute. Most vaccinations last for a year or more, so you can get them done well before you leave.

In particular, if you are travelling to an area where malaria is present, you always need to start your course of tablets at least a few days before you travel – and depending on the recommended pills, it can be as long as 3-4 weeks (for Mefloquine/Lariam). So sooner rather than later is your watchword here.

There are a variety of places you can go for travel jabs. If cost is not an issue, then a travel clinic is the most convenient way to get everything done. These allow you to book an appointment to suit your schedule, or you can sometimes just walk in off the street and get all the vaccinations you need there and then. In the UK, for example, many branches of Boots offer a travel clinic service.

But that kind of convenience comes at a price. You’ll typically pay £30-100 per vaccination, and that can very quickly add up if you need quite a few.

The cheapest route in the UK is via your GP. You won’t generally get vaccinations on prescription (unless you have some relevant health condition), but the cost is usually significantly lower than in travel clinics. The downside is it’s also the least-convenient method, generally needing you to make an appointment some time ahead, and sometimes also requiring more than one visit. If you’re going this route, allow even more time before your trip.

Your local pharmacy may also offer vaccinations without the need to go through your GP, but costs may be higher that way, so always check.

If you’re taking malaria tablets, use your smartphone to set a daily reminder to take them. If you skip even a day, their effectiveness is quickly reduced or eliminated. Remember too that you need to continue the course for the recommended time after you return from your trip – it’s really easy to forget to do so without a reminder. And malaria – especially the recurring kind – is definitely not something to mess with.

If you’re a frequent business traveller who sometimes has to travel at short notice, it’s worth getting all the common vaccinations done routinely so you are always prepared. Contact a travel clinic (vaccinations for business trips will normally be on expenses), let them know the full list of countries and regions you are likely to be travelling to and see if you can get everything done in one go. If there’s any doubt about the regions you may visit, err on the side of caution: it’s better to have unnecessary shots than fall seriously ill by missing one.

Travel insurance (health)

The second area where you definitely don’t want to do any cost-cutting is travel insurance. There are hundreds of different policies out there, and coverage varies tremendously – from the generous to the grossly inadequate.

Fall ill, or have an accident, with inadequate health insurance and you can lose your house or worse. In some countries, you simply won’t receive treatment at all without the ability to pay for it.

You need to consider more than just the policy limits shown. There can be nasty surprises in the small-print, and even if the coverage is good, you’re only protected for as long as the company remains in business.

Check too for excluded activities. It’s usual for policies to exclude a whole range of activities which are either relatively normal, or things you’re likely to do on holiday. Motorcycling, rock-climbing, scuba-diving, hot-air ballooning and light aircraft flights are all common exclusions – and things people commonly do on holiday. Most insurance policies also require you to specifically add winter cover for skiing.

Finally, when in doubt, check the definitions of excluded activities. You may think you are hiking or scrambling rather than rock-climbing, for example, but the insurance company may disagree. You may dive to 30M only to find that your insurer defines leisure diving as down to a maximum of 18M. If you have an expensive accident while engaged in any kind of activity which might be considered risky, you don’t want to give the insurer any excuse to refuse to pay out.

Generally in life, I like to support small businesses, but where health insurance is concerned, my view is that bigger is better. Personally, I stick to Amex on the basis of its size and coverage. Other providers are available, but my advice is to stick to the big boys here. Look for $10M medical coverage, and ensure that an air ambulance home is included: if you are ill or badly injured enough to require a lengthy stay in hospital, you’ll want to be able to transfer to one in your home country rather than being stranded thousands of miles away with no family or friends on hand.

If you are travelling more than twice a year, you’ll almost certainly be better off getting an annual policy, rather than buying separate insurance for each trip. Even if the cost works out to a few pounds more, there’s a lot to be said for the convenience and peace of mind of an annual policy. It’s one fewer thing on your to-do list, and there’s no possibility of forgetting to organise it.

If you’re in any doubt about the necessity for decent insurance, I have two friends who provide good case studies. One crashed his motorcycle in Germany. He needed a helicopter trip to the hospital, a stay in intensive care and an air ambulance back to the UK. Another had appendicitis in LA and needed both surgery and an extended stay in an hospital – home to the highest medical bills in the world. The cost of both incidents amounted to many tens of thousands of pounds – all covered by their travel insurance.

A pretty much universal exclusion for travel insurance policies is war zones. Granted, few people are likely to do what I did once – deliberately drive into a war-zone (a story I’ll get to very shortly) – but here again, definitions can be important. If you know an area well, or have reliable local advice, you may know that you will be hundreds of miles from the nearest fighting – but that may not matter to your insurer. Sometimes they exclude entire countries, even where there is conflict only in one tiny corner of it. Again, always check.

Another typical exclusion is travel to any region, country or area in defiance of a government travel advisory. For US citizens, check the State Department advisories at http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings.html. For those in the UK, check the Foreign Office travel advice site at https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice. If there is any warning in effect for your destination, or any place you will travel through, check with your insurer that your policy is valid. If they say yes, get it in writing.

Travel insurance (property)

Finally, almost every travel insurance policy on the planet is grossly inadequate when it comes to insuring your property, with ridiculously low limits for both total claims and individual items. A common limit with many policies is no more than £200-250/$250-500 per item. Fine if you’re an impoverished student backpacking with nothing more than a change of underwear to your name, not so great if you’re travelling with four figures worth of laptop, tablet and smartphone – and another four figures worth of DSLR and lenses.

Always make sure you have a separate policy offering worldwide all-risks coverage for any valuables you take with you when you travel. It is generally cheapest to include these things as named items on the worldwide all-risks section of your home contents insurance. Again, though, check the exclusions. Typically – and not unreasonably – you won’t be covered if you put something down and forget to pick it up, and you’ll often be covered only if a theft involves force (eg. breaking into a locked room) or threats (eg. a street robbery). The remedy here is care rather than insurance – a topic I’ll cover in Safety in unfamiliar locations.

6

"Let's visit a war zone for Christmas"

No, this isn’t a recommendation …

It was shortly before Christmas during the Yugoslav civil war that I heard a news report: operations (including amputations) were being carried out in a field hospital near Sarajevo without anaesthetic because supplies had run out. Other casualties were dying of infections because they had also run out of antibiotics.

As someone who will do anything to avoid Christmas, and jump on any excuse to indulge in a spot of truck-driving, the solution seemed obvious ...

A fantastic team effort by a group of friends meant that we were able to approach every single pharmaceutical company and Health Authority in the country in just 48 hours. The result was 3.5 tonnes of medical supplies, most of it donated by Glaxo. Ryder came up trumps with the loan of a brand-new 7.5-tonne truck (with 12 miles on the clock), Sutherlands paid for the fuel, Jarmain & Co insured it for us and P&O donated the ferry passage.

We did have one small problem with the insurance: there was an exclusion for war zones. This meant that we were only insured as far as the Austrian-Slovenian border. As I didn't reckon my credit card would stretch to a replacement truck, I started looking around for solutions.

I phoned a ridiculous number of insurance companies, all of whom laughed at me. I then figured that there were a number of charities doing humanitarian aid runs to the region, so they must have figured out a solution. One of the main ones I knew of was run by a little old lady in Birmingham. She was running an amazing operation, with several trucks a day heading out there. I phoned her and asked her what she did for insurance.

"Oh, it's no problem," she told me. "The UN operates a special insurance scheme for aid trucks: you can buy the insurance at the border for $30." Sorted – or so I thought.

We had one other paperwork issue to resolve: morphine is a Class A controlled drug, and needs to be signed for by a doctor. Neither the pharmaceutical companies nor Health Authorities could hand it over to us without that signature.

That was resolved when a GP friend stepped in and signed for it. Except that ... one Health Authority came up with an additional box of morphine after all the paperwork was done. They were happy enough to hand it over on the basis that they'd had a signature for the previous batch, but as this box wasn't listed on the paperwork, technically that made us drugs-runners ... We put that box into the very back of the truck and hoped that none of the Customs officials dug too deep!

We drove non-stop, three drivers operating on a 4-hours-on, 8-hours-off shift. Of the two resting drivers, one slept while the other had one simple but vital job: look out for Low Bridge signs! We had been warned that the insurance did not cover damage caused by dozy drivers colliding with bridges.

When we reached the Austria-Slovakia border, we looked in vain for a UN office to purchase our war-zone insurance. We asked the officials, none of whom knew anything about it. We asked other truck drivers; they didn't know about it either. Finally, I spotted a truck from the Birmingham charity and dashed over to the driver.

He laughed: "There's no such thing. We just tell her that so she doesn't worry." So the trucks are actually completely uninsured? "Yes."

The news did not fill me with seasonal joy, but I figured that we'd come that far and weren't about to turn back now. I had visions of thumbing down a passing army Chinook helicopter to air-lift the remains of our truck back into Austria before we called the insurance company ...

We arrived in Split on on Boxing Day, and found the hotel which was serving as the UN base of operations for the area. There we were told that we could either continue on the final 20km to the field hospital ourselves the following day, or we could hand over our supplies at the hotel to be taken on by UN convoy. There would, we were told, be a briefing at 7am the next morning which would give us the information we needed to make our decision.

The briefing was conducted by a British army Major. I'd always assumed that swagger sticks had been abandoned a century or two earlier, and now only existed in sitcoms; I was wrong.

The briefing was incredible. With the aid of large-scale maps, and in crisp, slightly-bored tones, the Major proceeded to show us the situation as of that morning, and what they expected to transpire within the next 24 hours.

The main route in went straight across the front and was described as 'inadvisable'. There was, however, a secondary, more circuitous route. We were told that there was little action expected there in the next 24 hours, but it was still beset by 'light sniper fire' and one part of it had 'a few drunken soldiers celebrating their recent advance by throwing grenades around'.

We decided that being killed by light sniper fire or a drunken soldier was not a notable improvement on being killed by heavy fire or sober soldiers, so opted for the coward's way out. Our truck was offloaded with great rapidity by British squaddies. They also diagnosed and fixed a problem with the tail-lift with the kind of efficiency which would have put the AA to shame (a relay had frozen overnight in the sub-zero temperatures).

We were told that the road we had come in on was now back in the thick of the fighting, so we would have to take smaller roads back. We were given a bunch of maps with hand-drawn markings showing where we should and shouldn't go. "Obviously these are classified, so please destroy them once you are out of the country."

I'm pleased to report that the truck made it back home without a scratch.

7

Gadgets for travel

One could argue that travel to some places, at least, ought to be about living a simpler life for a while. Visiting less technologically-developed countries and living life more like a local. And that’s a perfectly valid perspective. If it’s yours, you can probably skip this chapter.

But my own view is that gadgets can enhance any trip, from wasting less time trying to find places to coming home with fantastic photos. So here are the gadgets I take on most trips.

For ease of reference, I’ve included Amazon links for both UK and US sites. Full disclosure: these are affiliate links, so if you buy from them you’ll pay the same as normal but I’ll earn a small commission on each sale. If for any reason you object to that, just visit your preferred retailer directly and search for the products.

Smartphone

The obvious one. At a basic level, it provides you with communication, from keeping in touch with people at home to being able to contact local emergency services should the need arise.

But smartphones can of course do much more. Download an offline map app, for example, and your smartphone becomes a handheld GPS that can save huge amounts of time when it comes to finding the sights you want to see. But I’ll get to apps in the following chapter.

Step one is ensuring you don’t return home to a mobile phone bill bearing an uncanny resemblance to the GDP of the country you were visiting.

Some cellphone tariffs allow you to use your phone abroad at similar rates to your home country. This is obviously ideal, but there are usually a few pieces of small-print to consider.

First, such deals are limited to specific countries, so you need to ensure that all the countries you’ll be visiting are covered. Second, make sure that the deal applies to all three elements of your tariff: talk-time, texts and data. Some deals don’t cover all three, while others give you a smaller data allowance than you have at home. In all cases, the excess charges you will incur if you go over your inclusive minutes, texts and data allowance will be vastly more expensive than they would be at home – often horrendously so where data is concerned.

This is important because it’s likely that your usage while travelling will be higher than average – especially with data. At home, you may use your smartphone only while mobile, using a laptop at home and work. Even if you use your smartphone at home, you’re probably doing so on wifi. When travelling, your smartphone may become your primary Internet device, and you’ll typically be using it on mobile data at least as much as on wifi.

For those reasons, even if your standard tariff is valid in the countries you’ll be visiting, consider a top-up to your data allowance. Even for my short, sharp trips, I double or triple my data allowance.

If your normal tariff doesn’t apply overseas, ask your provider whether they offer an add-on for the countries you plan to visit. If they do, again consider buying two or three times as much data as you typically use in a month.

Finally, if neither option is available, buying a local pay-as-you-go SIM on arrival can be an excellent deal. The drawback, of course, is that you’ll be on a different phone number from normal – and for family and friends at home, it’ll be an international call. But with the proliferation of apps like Skype (discussed below), this isn’t anything like as big a deal as it once was.

Again, research is key. Check out the local carrier deals before you travel, so you’ll be able to pick up the best SIM for your needs, rather than just taking pot-luck when you arrive. Many airports have phone shops in the terminal, so you’ll often be able to pick up your SIM the moment you arrive – but do make sure you are getting the one you researched. It’s not unknown for such places to try to palm you off with whatever SIM earns them the highest commission.

Tablet

If I were only allowed to take a single gadget on my travels (a truly terrifying scenario, admittedly!), it would be a tablet. It can do everything a smartphone can – including standard voice calls, with the right app – while also making a half-decent job of imitating a laptop.

I’ll talk specific apps in the next chapter, but as an overview, a tablet can serve as an ebook reader, movie-watching device, music player, games console, map, web-browser, photo-viewer, document reader, videophone, online chat machine, weather forecaster, photo editor, video editor, wordprocessor, study aid, newspaper, magazine, flight and hotel reservation system, flight-tracker, interpreter, nightstand, blogging device and more.

The screen is big enough to make it a far better bet than a smartphone for many of those roles, but it’s still sufficiently portable to slip into a small shoulder bag or camera bag to go everywhere with you.

If you don’t yet have a tablet, I’d offer three key pieces of advice. First, get one with plenty of storage. For travel use, you’re likely to want to load it up with a decent selection of movies, tv shows and music, and some apps can take up a fair amount of space – especially offline maps – so the more storage you have, the better. Personally, I opted for the 128GB iPad Air 2 (UK: http://amzn.to/1NergQM, US: http://amzn.to/1MA4iTE).

Second, get one that allows you to insert a SIM to support mobile data as well as wifi. That way, you don’t have to worry about finding wifi every time you want to use it. Again, all the comments I made about smartphone data apply equally to a tablet.

Third, I’d also strongly recommend a Bluetooth keyboard: it makes a huge difference for emails, blogging and so on. Personally, I use the Brydge keyboard (UK: http://amzn.to/1GLPaq5, US: http://amzn.to/1ktcK0k), which is a high-quality moving keyboard that mates so neatly with the iPad it looks almost like Apple kit.

Many of the travel apps I use, I have on both iPhone and iPad, for maximum flexibility, but 95% of the time it’s my iPad I use.

Kindle ebook reader

Personally, I use my iPad as my ebook reader. It’s not as small and light as a Kindle, but it has the virtue of being a multifunctional device, so is one less thing to carry.

However, I’m not noted for spending holidays sitting on beaches. If you are, you may want an e-ink Kindle reader purely for the fact that you can read it in sunlight far more easily than a tablet. If you do go this route, the 3G model (UK: http://amzn.to/1WwCN8f, US: http://amzn.to/1MIwVV3) is well worth the extra as it allows you to download both sample chapters and full books worldwide without paying any data charges.

Smartwatch

I must confess that I was a massive smartwatch sceptic when they first came out. I just couldn’t see why anyone would want one: they couldn’t do anything a smartphone couldn’t do (and indeed are fairly useless without one) and are one more thing to charge.

But I tried one, the Apple Watch in my case (UK: http://amzn.to/1WA6boU, US: http://amzn.to/20uEOkS), and found that they are actually useful if far from must-have devices.

In everyday life, they are mostly a more convenient way to get notifications. Instead of the usual thing of your phone pinging, reaching into your pocket to pull it out, finding that you’ve just missed the alert, unlocking your phone and then swiping down on the notifications to find out what the alert was for, you can just glance at your wrist. In countries where Apple Pay is available, the Apple Watch is also a very convenient way to pay for things.

But smartwatches are particularly useful when travelling. Dual timezone display is handy, and the Apple Watch is a great way to navigate. Instead of wandering along spending half your time staring at your phone screen, you can simply select your destination on your iPhone, then put it away in your pocket. The watch taps you on the wrist for left or right, enabling you to spend your time looking at the place you came to visit, not at your phone.

Additionally, in areas where you don’t want to be a target for street robbers, being able to walk confidently like you know where you’re going and with no gadgets on display leaves you at far less risk than the obvious tourist with their expensive smartphone out.

Laptop

Whether or not it makes sense to take a laptop will depend on the nature of the trip, the things you intend to do with your technology while travelling and – quite probably – your generation.

For a business trip, you’ll almost certainly have no choice. Conversely, if you’re a millennial who grew up with smartphones, and are taking a leisure trip, you might consider it bizarre to even consider travelling with a laptop.

But one thing I learned from frequent travel is that you want to do everything you can to feel at home while you’re away. And for me, a significant part of that is having exactly the same access to my digital world in Hong Kong or Cape Town as I do at home: all my music, all my movies, all my documents.

Of course, in a cloud-based world, you can argue that the need to physically carry data with you has been greatly reduced. Streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music give you access to most music, Netflix gives you access to movies and TV shows (though see an important rider to that in the Apps for travel chapter), services like Dropbox and iCloud give you access to your documents.

But we don’t yet live in a world of ubiquitous, high-speed Internet – especially when travelling. And while an iPad can be used for things like photo & video editing, a laptop still makes a better job of it. As I like to process photos as I go, a laptop is a better choice.

So personally, I carry my primary laptop with me, despite the fact that it’s a 17-inch one. Most people, though, are going to want something a little more portable. With both Windows and Mac, you have to think about whether ultimate portability is your top priority, or whether you’re willing to take a very small hit on the portability side to get a more capable machine.

For ultimate portability, the Windows answer is a Microsoft Surface (UK: http://amzn.to/1NQjdfY, US: http://amzn.to/1MIrc1u), while the Mac equivalent is the 12-inch MacBook (UK: http://amzn.to/1PawS4A, US: http://amzn.to/1MIsp8U).

But bear in mind you are making significant sacrifices to go to this extreme. The 12-inch MacBook, for example, can’t be connected to an external Thunderbolt display. Sacrifice just a tiny amount of portability and you can get a much more capable machine. So unless you care hugely about ever millimetre, I would opt for the next level up.

On the Windows side, the official Microsoft answer is the Surface Book (UK: http://amzn.to/1NsnI1S, US: http://amzn.to/1ktifME) – a different product to the Surface, above. There are, though, a tonne of competitors in the Windows ultrabook category (UK: http://amzn.to/1Qdqfhd, US: http://amzn.to/1MAi7Bn).

On the Mac side, the next level up from the 12-inch MacBook is, rather counter-intuitively, the 11-inch MacBook Air (UK: http://amzn.to/20uL3Fl, US: http://amzn.to/1ktksYl). Having recently used one as my only laptop for a week while my main machine was being repaired, I can say they are remarkably capable devices.

Camera

One thing I’d never travel without is a decent camera – another lesson learned from early business trips where I assumed from my schedule that there was no point taking one. I always regretted it.

I discuss this in detail in the Travel photography chapter.

Headphones

In my world, good quality headphones are pretty much an essential. I spend much of my journeys listening to music, audiobooks and podcasts, and also tend to watch a movie or two. Whether it’s on my phone, iPad or airline entertainment system, decent, comfortable headphones make the world of difference over earphones or nasty airline freebies.

I don’t personally like full noise-cancelling ones, as they block out announcements, but my preferred pair of B+W P5s (UK: http://amzn.to/1NfMDB6, US: http://amzn.to/1iFSJT1) provide just the right amount of sound isolation to hear when an announcement has begun.

Power

Finally, if you’re taking a bunch of gadgets with you, you want a simple way to charge them all. The two considerations here are that you don’t want to be carting half a dozen chargers and plug adapters into your carry-on bag, and way too many hotel rooms are woefully under-endowed with plug sockets.

Fortunately, most small electronic items these days can be charged via USB. If you’re taking a laptop and have only one or two gadgets to charge, then a couple of USB cables may do the job. However, laptop USB ports only provide a limited amount of power, so it’s a slow way to charge things.

My personal approach is to take four things:

- A 2-way plug adapter married to a universal travel adapter

- A power brick for my laptop

- A powered USB hub

- Enough USB cables for all the devices I take with me

All these items live permanently in my carry-on bag so I don’t even have to think about power when packing.

On arrival, I simply select whatever international pins I need for the universal adapter and plug in. The laptop power brick goes into one of my two sockets, the powered USB hub into the other. In that way, I need only a single plug socket to charge all of my devices at a decent rate.

8

"Is that an air traffic control screen?"

I don’t generally do games, but I do have a few. One of them is an air traffic control simulator. There are cartoon-style ones, but my favourite is APP Control, which is much more realistic in both appearance and functionality. It has a radar-like green-screen view of the aircraft, which are tagged in much the same way as on real-life systems, and you have to guide the aircraft by giving them a heading, altitude and airspeed.

You issue instructions by tapping on the screen, but those instructions are repeated back with a decent simulated voice.

I was playing this one time on a long-haul flight, headphones on, when I noticed the woman of a certain age in the seat next to me repeatedly glancing over with a somewhat nervous expression on her face. This finally happened enough times that I pulled off the headphones and waited for her to ask the question she clearly wanted to.

“Is that an air traffic control screen?” she asked.

“It is,” I replied.

She paused. Then: “But aren’t you supposed to be at an airport, not on a plane?”

I admit it. I couldn’t resist.

“It’s an experiment,” I told her. “The theory is that we’ll be extra careful if we’re actually on board one of the aircraft we’re controlling.”

“I see,” she said, not looking any less worried. “Which one are we?”

I pointed to one of the tags. I’d like to pretend I managed to pick one with the right airline tag, but sadly not. Not that she noticed.

“Oops!” I said, “lost track of that 747 over there – I’d better get back to work.”

You have to make your own entertainment when you’ve already watched all of the in-flight movies on your tick list.

9

Apps for travel

I’m an Apple guy, so for convenience I’m going to refer to my iPhone and iPad, but my points apply equally to Android devices. The specific apps I recommend are iOS ones, but in many cases are available for Android too.

Offline maps

Even if you have a low-cost data tariff, you’ll soon burn through it constantly using Google or Apple Maps. Don’t even think of using either as a GPS in online mode: the data usage is truly terrifying. A friend from Australia was considering doing that when driving around Europe. Fortunately he did his research beforehand: he calculated that the cost of doing so would have amounted to several thousand dollars!

So, the first and most important app is offline mapping. There are a whole bunch of different map apps around, and just as with paper maps, which is best is a very subjective judgement. It’s worth looking at a few to find one you like.

But one feature I would look for is an app that (a) covers the whole world and (b) allows you to pick and choose the maps you download. A single app with street-level mapping for the entire world would take up a huge amount of space, so the ideal is to install only those maps you need.

If you already use and like Google Maps, the simplest solution is to download an offline version of the map. The benefit of this is that you get the same mapping you use every day. The drawback is that you can’t do this for all countries, nor can you easily control the exact area you download. For these reasons, I opt for a separate app.

My personal favourite is Maps.me. I find it clearly separates major from minor roads, has great coverage of everything from metro stations to coffee shops, and has sensibly-sized maps. For the USA, for example, you download maps for individual states, so that you don’t end up with masses of data you don’t need.

If you do find yourself somewhere without an offline mapping app, a workable alternative can be to load up the Google or Apple Maps you want while you’re on wifi, and take screengrabs. On an iPad, these get saved to the Photos app, so spending a few minutes at the hotel taking grabs for the route you intend at least gets you some static apps to refer to as needed. A mapping app is better, though, as it highlights your position and can also give you directions.

Interpreter & translator

My 10-word phrasebook approach is remarkably effective, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have the most widely-spoken language in the world as my mother tongue. But there are times when I may need a few more words …

Fortunately, there’s an app for that. Google Translate is an absolutely incredible app that can translate both written and spoken language between a huge number of languages. Just select the language you want, then touch the Camera icon to translate written words, or the microphone to interpret spoken ones.

Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and this app is one of the best demonstrations I’ve ever seen of this principle. In camera mode, you can hold up your phone or tablet to any text – anything from a road sign to a menu – and it will translate the text. More than that, it will do so using augmented reality, so instead of plain text on a screen, the thing you are looking at will actually appear to be written in English. I’ve been a tech guy all my life, but that still impresses the hell out of me every time I use it.

The speech translator (technically interpreter) is equally impressive. Two people can have a conversation, and it will translate for both parties using excellent artificial speech.

Best of all, the app is completely free of charge.

You do, though, need a network connection – another reason to ensure you have plenty of data available.

Airline & airport apps

Airline apps are a convenient way to do things like check your itinerary, check the status of a flight, check in online, make additional bookings and display electronic boarding passes.

Airport apps can also be handy if you have a tight connection to make, providing a map of the terminal so that you can plan your dash in advance. At the opposite end of the scale, if you’re going to be hanging around an airport for hours, the app can show what facilities are available in the airport so that you can pass the time more usefully – though see the chapter on VIP lounges for my preferred way to do this.

Obviously there are no specific recommended apps here: you just need to get the ones for your airlines and airports.

Priority Pass

This is discussed in the VIP lounges chapter, but the short version is, if you join the scheme, it’s good (though not essential) to have the app.

Uber

I discuss local transport in the Getting around chapter, but Uber can be a good bet when you’re on a tight schedule – offering the speed and convenience of a taxi without the worry about getting ripped-off. Uber is only available in a limited number of countries, but if it’s there and you want to use it, you’ll need the app.

Local city app

Many major cities have their own apps, typically combining maps, public transport details and attractions. These can be a useful supplement to web research, though they tend to be geared to very stereotypically touristy visits. Maps also tend to be online ones, thus eating up data, so it’s definitely better to use your own offline maps. With that caution, they can come in handy, so there’s no harm in having them on board your phone or tablet.

Skyscanner

While you will normally have booked all your flights before you set off, plans can change and stuff can happen (see The Dubai adventure), so there may be occasions where you’ll need to book additional flights. I find Skyscanner tends to give the best deals, so I like to have it available just in case. It’s also handy for downtime when not travelling if you fancy checking out potential bargain trips.

Although some people question the need for apps like this when you can just visit the website, apps can be more reliable when you have poor data connectivity. They can also be quicker to use.

Hotels.com & LateRooms

Again, you’ll normally have booked your accommodation before the trip, but again, you never know. It’s good to have apps on board just in case.

I discuss hotels in Staying in 4-5 star hotels on 2-star budgets, but these are the two services I use most frequently, so I recommend loading up the apps.

PlaneFinderHD

If you’re waiting at an airport for the incoming flight to arrive before it becomes your outbound flight, a flight tracker is a far more convenient – and reliable – way to check on its progress than asking airline staff. On more than one occasion, it has been me showing the airline’s own ground staff where their plane actually is, rather than where their gate systems think it is. Notably at JFK, where they told me it was taxiing in and I showed them it was actually still at 23,000 feet and a good half an hour away from the airport. (You’re right: they didn’t appreciate this.)

Flight trackers are also extremely handy when meeting someone at the airport.

There are a number of different flight-tracker apps, and they all use the same datafeeds, but PlaneFinderHD is my personal favourite.

GoodReader

In Packing in 12 minutes flat, where I discuss travelling light, one of my recommendations is to carry all paperwork electronically. There are any number of apps that allow you to store PDFs, so if you already have a favourite, use that. Otherwise, GoodReader is my recommendation. It’s easy to use, simple to organise things into folders and syncs effortlessly with Dropbox.

So far, I’ve been discussing travel-specific apps, but there are a whole load of more general apps that are great to have with you when travelling. I won’t cover all of these, especially as half the apps you’ll need come preinstalled anyway, so I’ll just mention a few …

Books: iBooks, Kindle & Audible

I’m an avid reader, so have three book apps on my iPad: iBooks, Kindle and Audible. One of the great things about ebooks is they take up so little space you can easily carry hundreds of them on an iPad.

I have two normal ebook readers simply because you often find exactly the same book is priced differently on Apple and Amazon stores, so I shamelessly flit between the two to get the best deal. I’m a very recent convert to audiobooks. I don’t know why, but for some reason I never really thought of them as books. It was only listening to the audiobook version of my own novel (http://adbl.co/1Jmwn5u) that sold me on the concept. I’m now a firm fan.

Movies & TV shows: Netflix, VLC and VPN Unlimited

At home, I mostly watch Netflix, but there are two issues with that when travelling. First, you have to be online to access it, and on a halfway decent connection. You can’t watch Netflix on a plane, for example, unless you’re fortunate enough to be travelling on an aircraft and airline that offers it.

Second, Netflix isn’t available in all countries – and the programming on offer also varies by country. Fortunately, however, this second issue is easy to overcome. You just need a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to make it appear that you are still in your own country.

The one I use is VPN Unlimited. Don’t sign up for the the standard deal as you’ll then need regular top-up credits. Instead, look out for the frequent offers of the lifetime unlimited deal, which is exactly what it says. www.9to5toys.com is one place to search for this.

If you’re viewing on a laptop, then Chrome has an extension called Hola! (with the exclamation mark) that also acts as a VPN. This is completely free.

For offline viewing, VLC is my video viewing app of choice on both iPad and laptop as it allows you to view absolutely any format.

Skype

Skype is a brilliant way to keep in touch when travelling. There are plenty of other audio & video calling apps available now, and I actually have several, but Skype is the most useful as almost everyone has it.

Skype offers the flexibility of text-chat, voice-only or video, which is useful when you’re on a poor connection or are using mobile data. Video eats data and is best left for times you’re on unlimited wifi. Audio uses less data, and is more reliable on slow connections, but is still best reserved for wifi. Text-chat uses almost no data.

Other comms apps I use are FaceTime (only works between two Apple devices), Viber, Line and Telegram – but for non-geeks, Skype is likely to be all that you need.

Sleep apps

Getting to sleep can be challenging when travelling, given a combination of timezones and variable sleeping conditions: mattresses, temperature, noise and so on. I find that a white-noise or rain app can help. Personally, I fall asleep very well to rain sounds, and use an app called Nature Sound, selecting one of the rain sounds and setting the timer to 20 minutes. I’ve never yet heard it stop.

AccuWeather or Yr.no

Finally, accurate weather reports and forecasts are extremely handy when travelling. You can, for example, plan any indoor visits (museums, galleries and so on) for when it’s raining, leaving the dry times for the great outdoors.

There are approximately a billion different weather apps available, using a huge variety of different sources, ranging from the incredibly reliable to the digital equivalent of licking your finger and sticking it in the air. User interfaces also vary from slick and simple to a random sprinkling of pixels thrown at a screen.

The two most accurate apps I have found are AccuWeather and YR.no. Both use great data and offer hourly forecasts. I personally prefer the user interface of AccuWeather, but I recommend trying both before you travel to see which works best for you.

10

Choosing luggage

If you travel frequently, I highly recommend investing in high-quality luggage. It is one area where my philosophy of buying the right thing once – however painful the up-front cost might seem at the time – definitely pays off in the long run.

The exact luggage you’ll want depends, of course, on the type of travelling you do. Backpacking round the world will require very different luggage to short business trips. Personal taste, too, comes into it. You may have a fondness for traditional leather cases, Gladstone bags, aluminium flight cases or any of the almost infinite number of other options out there. Buy what you like.

But if you don’t have a strong preference of your own, there’s a reason why almost every business traveller in the world uses identikit black roller-bags: for most people, they are the perfect bag. Their design means they allow maximum carrying capacity within their to-the-millimetre IATA size. They make it easy to get at your travel wallet and laptop without having to open the whole bag. They just work.

Twenty years ago, I noticed that almost all the airline crew I saw moving through airports were using the same brand of luggage: Travelpro (UK: http://amzn.to/1Mow2Pb, USA: http://amzn.to/1MCQzeT). I took at look at their IATA-sized roller-bag. It was about four times the price of a typical roller-bag, but I figured they knew what they were doing. So, twenty years ago I bought a Travelpro roller-bag. I’m still using it today. It has literally been all around the world with me.

It’s not just about longevity, either. With quality luggage, the wheels roll smoothly, the zips open and close easily and the compartments are well thought-out.

If Travelpro bags aren’t to your taste, Victorinox (UK: http://amzn.to/1Nxx9wW, US: http://amzn.to/1S3IrZ4) is another brand I’ve seen a lot in my travels, and seems to be broadly similarly priced. And then there are of course all the designer brands; I’ll leave discussion of those to people better versed in the fashion world …

A second bag is a more personal choice, and I have several, depending on what I’m taking with me. If I’m travelling with my Brompton folding bike, for example, a Brooks briefcase for it is perfect, doubling as my on-board laptop bag and my bike bag once I reach my destination. If I’m carrying a DSLR (rare these days, for reasons discussed in the Travel photography chapter), I have a camera bag that slips over the handle of my roller-bag.

So use what works for you – but just make sure that it looks small enough to definitely qualify as a laptop or camera bag.

Once you have your luggage, it’s time to learn the secret of packing in 12 minutes flat …

11

Packing in 12 minutes flat

Packing isn’t the most enjoyable of activities, so you want to get it done as quickly and painlessly as possible. At the same time, it’s not something you want to get wrong.

On a business trip, forgetting to take something you need – a prototype, a cable to connect your laptop to your projector, a USB key containing essential documents – can be disastrous. On any trip, leaving behind something you meant to bring can be annoying – and potentially expensive if you have to buy it again locally.

Some people can take literally days to pack. Personally, I see no reason why it should take more than minutes. Unless I have a really early flight, I pack on the day I leave, and it generally takes me 12 minutes.

There are three secrets to packing in 12 minutes flat:

- Travel light

- Use a checklist

- Keep a partially-packed bag

Let’s look at each in turn …

Travel light

Most inexperienced travellers take way too much stuff with them. Way, way, way too much. Way. Too. Much. So the first secret is: don’t.

With an exception I’ll discuss in Getting around, almost every flight I’ve ever taken since I was age 20 has been hand-baggage only. Getting to and from the airport is more pleasant, and you walk straight past baggage collection on arrival and are out of the airport a good 20-40 minutes before those waiting around for their hold baggage to arrive.

What you can take on board as hand-baggage is theoretically governed by IATA standards, but in practice there are four levels to it. From best to worse, these are:

- Full-service airline, business class, frequent flyer

I’ve been fortunate: a lot of my travel has been on business. That’s meant I’m flying on a fully-flex business class ticket, and with frequent flyer status with the airline. These are the customers who keep airlines in business, so they will generally do their utmost to accommodate you, even when what you want to take on board exceeds the official limits.

I’ve taken a folding bicycle on board aircraft many times. On one five-country trip, I managed to take a laser-printer on board every flight. On another, a 27-inch monitor. Admittedly the fact that both were prototypes worth frightening amounts of money did help, but if you’re a sufficiently profitable customer, and have a decent amount of confidence, life can be kind.

- Full service airline, business class

If you’re flying business class, but don’t have status with the airline, you may get away with carrying more than is technically allowed, but you can’t count on it. Officially, you’ll generally get the standard IATA deal (see below), plus one additional IATA-sized bag.

- Full service airline, premium or economy

Here, most airlines give you the standard IATA deal: one IATA standard sized cabin bag, plus a laptop bag or handbag, plus one ‘personal item’ (usually defined as an umbrella or overcoat). Generally, you don’t get any additional allowance in premium economy despite the fact that the reduced seating density means there’s more locker space available per passenger.

- Budget airlines

Here, they basically make it up as they go along. I’ve done my share of flights on no-frills airlines with silly weight and size limits, and I’ve still managed them without hold baggage – I give some specific tips on these below.

Obviously, hand-baggage only isn’t practical if you’re going on an activity-based holiday and have your own kit – climbing, diving, skiing, cycling and similar.

Weight limits

Before I get onto the specifics of packing light, a quick word about weight limits for hand-baggage. Many airlines these days have abandoned these altogether in favour of a simple ‘must be able to lift it into the overhead locker unassisted’ rule. This is sensible as overhead lockers are designed to safely accommodate vastly more weight than you could ever fit into them, short of everyone filling their bags with lead.

But some airlines do still have limits, and these can vary a lot. I’ve encountered everything from 20Kg down a totally absurd 6kg.

I completely understand size limits, and I generally aim not to push these too much, especially when flying economy. Everyone has the right to their share of the overhead locker space, and it’s selfish for one person to hog a locker. But I have a much more relaxed attitude to weight limits for the simple reason that these are totally arbitrary. Aircraft manufacturers do not make one airline’s overhead lockers weaker than those fitted to the same aircraft in another airline’s fleet. They are all designed to the same standards, and given that an ‘if you can lift it, you can take it’ policy applies on many airlines, that policy is by definition safe with any airline.

For that reason, I have no compunction at all about employing whatever devious means necessary to bypass arbitrary weight limits.

Clothing

Let’s start with clothing. Check both current and historical weather for your destination(s) to find out what clothing is appropriate. There’s no point taking several thick sweaters to a place where the temperature won’t drop below 30C during your stay. Take only the clothing you’ll actually need. (But do still take one sweater, for reasons explained much later.)

Don’t simply multiply the numbers of days you’ll be staying by items of clothing and figure out you’ll need a whole suitcase worth. I typically take enough clothing for 3-4 days at a time. If it’s a business trip on expenses, simply use the hotel laundry service to get the previous day’s clothing laundered – that way, you never run out of clean clothing.

You won’t generally want to do that on leisure trips, as it can get expensive, but I still only take 3-4 days’ worth. Depending on circumstances (budget, type of accommodation and how much spare time I have), I take different approaches to laundry.

If I’m staying with friends, I simply ask to borrow their washing-machine. I have nice friends, so usually this actually translates to them kindly doing it for me as part of their own wash. Budget accommodation often has washing facilities in the building. And in any other urban area, there will be a laundry place offering service washes within a few minutes’ walk. (If you’re backpacking through the countryside, you’ll no doubt be washing your clothing yourself in rivers using stones and detergent hand-milled from tree nuts or something. I can’t help much there, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you know what you’re doing.)

To minimise both weight and space, I usually wear silk shirts when travelling. I have a whole bunch of them – bought for pennies in places like Hong Kong and Cambodia. They weigh nothing and roll up into a space approximately no centimetres by no centimetres. Ok, perhaps I exaggerate slightly, but I can carry four of them in a tiny corner of a case.

With clothing generally, avoid creases by rolling it – don’t fold it. Once you arrive at your hotel, put everything on hangers. If there are any creases, hang the clothing from hangers in the bathroom, put the shower on maximum heat then close the bathroom door. Within 10-20 minutes, the steam will have removed all the creases.

I’m a bloke, so don’t change trousers every day – just shirt, socks and underwear – so two pairs are enough. One I wear, one in my case. Then while I’m away, one pair can be at the laundry while I wear the others. Women may be more finicky, but do have the advantage of being able to get clothing in thinner fabrics, so they take up less space.

Paperwork

I live a completely paperless life. All incoming paper gets scanned and shredded. So generally my passport is the only paper document on me when I travel: everything else is a PDF. Important documents (itineraries, boarding passes, hotel confirmations, business papers and similar) are stored in more than one place: on my phone, tablet, laptop and on Dropbox.

Other items

Think light, think small. Obviously, ebooks rather than paper books. In the days when airlines were sillier about electronic devices during the climb and approach, I used to carry a single paperback to get me through the 20-30 minutes at either end of the flight when you weren’t allowed to read ebooks, but most airlines now allow handheld devices to be used from gate to gate.

For toiletries, take travel-sized ones. If those are too annoying, consider buying what you need in airport shops once you are past security. Most major airports have chain-store pharmacies who charge the same at the airport as on the high-street, so this doesn’t usually incur a financial penalty.

For anything else, ask yourself whether you really need it at all – and if you do, whether you can just pick it up on arrival. If it’s bulky and cheap, I’ll often opt to just buy one on arrival – an umbrella being a common example. Similarly, one trip to a freezing cold Chicago (actually, 20 degrees below freezing), I didn’t have enough room for the bulky sweater I would want, but clothing is cheap in the States so I just nipped into a department store and bought one when I arrived. Although that approach might sound extravagant, if you think about £10-25 as a proportion of the total cost of a trip, it’s not such a big deal.

Checklists

There was a period when I was spending more time out of the country than in it, and a friend who was visiting while I was packing for a trip expressed surprise that I still used a checklist. Surely, she argued, I must know everything by heart by now?

Well, probably. But a checklist not only offers the peace of mind that I won’t suffer brain-fade and forget something obvious, but also significantly speeds up packing as I’m literally doing it by numbers.

This is my checklist. I don’t take every item on every trip, and some of the contents won’t be obvious, but I’ll discuss some specifics in the relevant chapters to follow. You may also notice that my last-minute double-check duplicates items already on the list. That’s because I may be using my Mac, iPad and phone right up until it’s time to leave, and because checking the essentials twice is better than screwing up.

Documents

Passport in travel wallet

Travel wallet in roller-bag

E-tickets

Hotel confirmations

ESTA valid?

Any other documents?

Clothes

Boxers & socks

Silk shirts

Trousers

Thermal shirt

Jumper

Waistcoat

Swimming trunks

Clothes bag sealer

Photography

Samsung a6000

Second lens?

Full photography bag? (Separate checklist)

Chargers

Mac charger

2-way adapter

Overseas adapter

USB hub with mains power

Cable bag

Watch charger

Toiletries

Contacts

Razor

Shaving soap

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Suncream

Deodorant

Warfarin

Antiseptic wipes

Glasses

Brompton

Hinges out

Saddle protected

Tripod added

Multi-tool with hinges

Cycle jacket, cap & gloves

Gadgets

iPhone

iPad + keyboard

Headphones

Apple Watch

Last-minute double-check

Mac

Mac power

iPad

Wallet

iPhone

Sunglasses

Passport

Keeping a partially-packed bag

Travelling light reduces the number of items to pack, and a checklist makes the packing process fast and reliable, but there’s one other thing that helps: keeping a partially-packed bag.

In my case, it’s a spare power brick for my Mac, a complete set of cables and toiletries. That’s a modest expense for saving some time every trip, plus I know I can’t forget Mac power – which is easy to do if I’m using it right up until the last minute, and would be moderately disastrous.

To that, I add a single change of underwear and a shirt, so in the worst case of a stupidly last-minute overnighter, I can pick up my bag and go.

Coping with hand-baggage on no-frills airlines

Budget airlines do pose a particular challenge. Despite the fact that they use the same aircraft as full-service airlines – and usually very new ones, as they are more fuel-efficient – there is some excuse for them having more restrictive size and weight limits. Because they cram more seats into the same space, partly through an all-economy layout and partly through reduced seat-pitch, they are carrying more passengers and thus more baggage needs to be squeezed into the same space.

But part of it, of course, is deceptive pricing models: a low headline fare, then all kinds of supplementary fees to make the true all-in cost much higher than it appears. Absurd fees for hold baggage forms one of their key sources of income, so it’s in their financial interest to force as many people as possible to pay them.

But there are ways to cope …

Budget airlines typically use one or more of three different restrictions:

- Size limits which are smaller than the IATA standard for cabin bags

- Ridiculously low weight limits

- A strict one-bag policy, rather than the usual ‘main bag plus’ deal

Step one is, wherever possible, to avoid airlines with non-standard size limits for cabin baggage. Those are a bigger problem than either weight or item limits as they mean you can’t use your normal luggage – which means additional expense, as well as losing out on the benefits of that partially-packed bag.

If you can’t avoid such airlines (and I haven’t always been able to do so), then you just have to bite the bullet and buy a bag to match the policy – and take advantage of step three below.

Weight is less of an issue, as it is less immediately obvious than size. Indeed, if you are able to casually lift your cabin bag by finger and thumb, and swing it there like it is packed with nothing more than reduced-fat feathers, you may be able to get away with not placing it on the scales at all. Just wait until out of the check-in area before heading to the nearest first-aid post to get treatment for your sprained wrist. I usually keep an eye on each check-in counter while I’m in the queue to see whether or not they weigh every bag before deciding whether I need to switch queue or resort to step two.

The next step used to be to skip the check-in counters by doing online check-in, but now everyone does this, budget airlines tend to simply carry out the baggage checks at the gate

Step two is to offload as much as you can from your bag. Sometimes a little misdirection is all it takes. For example, put your passport in your laptop sleeve – there is then a very natural reason for the fact that your laptop is not in your bag. Most times, they won’t pick up on this, so you just saved the weight of your laptop.

Similarly with clothing. If you are carrying a thick sweater, this will weigh a fair bit, so just put it on long enough to get past the check. Cameras and lenses can be heavy, so wear your camera round your neck and stick other lenses in jacket pockets. You can pack everything away again once past the check.

But there may be times when you are simply carrying too much weight and bulk to get away with this, in which case we need to roll out the big guns: step three.

Step three is a travel vest. These can make the impossible possible.

A travel vest is essentially an inside-out photographer’s waistcoat. On the outside, it looks like a somewhat bulky waistcoat. Inside, it hides multiple pockets. I have a Scott eVest (UK: http://amzn.to/1Nxtqj0, USA: http://amzn.to/1S3Bebs), which has more than 20 pockets. The largest of these, which is in the back of the waistcoat, is actually big enough to hold my 17-inch laptop. In fact, clothing aside, I could actually carry everything I ever travel with in the eVest.

Admittedly this does push the packing time up past 12 minutes, but still beats hanging around waiting for hold baggage to come through – and definitely beats paying a crazy sum each flight for the privilege.

12

"You can't do that"

One particular budget airline allowed standard sized IATA bags, but had a stupidly low weight limit of 6Kg. My roller-bag weighed 3Kg empty. This was in the days before they offered online check-in, so I had to visit the check-in desk.

I put my clothes in the bag, taking it to 5.5Kg, and everything else in my Scott eVest. This included not one but two laptops, power bricks for same, a DLSR, three lenses, two battery chargers and a bunch more stuff. I looked like the Michelin man, but the check-in woman didn’t blink, just weighed my near-empty bag and was happy.

Once checked-in, I packed everything back into my bag. Only I didn’t get very far: an over-zealous airport official at the entry to Security stopped me and had me put my bag onto scales there. It was well over the limit.

No problem. I opened the bag, and started transferring things back into my vest.

“You can’t do that,” he said.

I enquired why not.

“Because it’ll be the same weight, just in your jacket!”

I agreed, but calmly observed that there was no weight limit on jackets.

“That’s ridiculous,” he persisted.

I agreed, and continued transferring stuff. He looked unsure what he should do next. It was clear that I knew and he knew that I wasn’t breaking any rules, but security personnel can make life difficult if they want to, so I decided to handle it in a way that he didn’t have to lose face.

“All these rules are a bit silly, aren’t they?” I asked. “What do you think seems sensible – put the lenses and books into my pockets and leave the laptop in the bag? Or would you prefer I leave the lenses in and remove the laptop? You just tell me what you’d like.”

That did the trick. He now felt like he was in charge again, and satisfied himself with a couple of half-hearted directions about what should go where, then got bored and wandered off. I put everything back in the bag.

13

Finding great flight deals

Leisure travel is infinitely preferable to business travel in most respects, but there is a lot to be said for someone else picking up the tab – especially when that tab runs to fully-flexible business class tickets on major airlines. For leisure travel, price tends to loom rather highly as a factor in our choice of flights.

There is, though, a balancing act to be considered. If the cheapest flight takes 24 hours and involves a six-hour layover in the middle of nowhere, versus a higher-priced flight that gets you directly there in nine hours, you’re going to want to think carefully about whether the saving is worthwhile. Not only is the cheap flight likely to be an unpleasant experience, but it’s going to use up a chunk of time that could otherwise be spent at your destination – both while travelling and because you’re going to want to do nothing more on arrival than hit the shower then sleep for a long time.

Only you know your budget, and can decide on the relative importance of time, money and comfort – but do make it a conscious choice.

The first key to getting the best deals is to be flexible on your dates if possible. Sorry, parents.

There are seasonal fluctuations on many routes, for example. Of course, there may be good reason for that – like the fact that a destination is hellishly hot in the off-season – but sometimes it’s more about habit and tradition than any particularly persuasive reason.

Demand can fluctuate dramatically, depending on what’s happening in your destination city on any given dates. A business expo, for example, can fill every seat on every airline and every bed in every hotel. Big tourist draws are the same: good luck on finding any bargain flights to Rio when the Carnival is on.

This doesn’t help, I appreciate, when that big event is the reason you want to go. But otherwise, check for popular business and tourist draws, and steer clear of those dates.

Don’t just mindlessly search for exact week or fortnight periods, either: you may well be able to get a significantly better deal by staying for eight days rather than seven, or thirteen rather than fourteen. Most websites allow you to include +/- days in your search, and others will show you pricing for the surrounding dates in the search results.

Second, while we may wince at the idea of booking a package holiday, don’t dismiss them out of hand: they can sometimes prove the cheapest way to get to a popular tourist destination. And if you’re going to be out exploring all day, it doesn’t really matter that the hotel pool will be packed with hoi-polloi.

I’m a fiercely independent traveller, but if I can save £300 by flying with the masses, I’m not going to get overly snobbish about it.

Third, flight aggregators are your friend. These are websites that check out fares from loads of airlines at once and present them to you in price order.

There are two main ones: Google Flights and Skyscanner. I personally prefer Skyscanner, though that may be mostly familiarity. If you have a destination in mind but not specific dates, Skyscanner has a couple of features I really like: Whole Month and Cheapest Month.

Say Hanoi is on your bucket list. You don’t care when you go, it’s just a destination you want to visit. When asked to enter outbound and return dates, just select Cheapest Month. Skyscanner will then check what time of year offers the cheapest flights and show you those months.

Alternatively, if you want to travel sometime in a particular month but are flexible on exact dates, select Whole Month.

Either way, click on the Chart tab afterwards and it will show you a bar graph of the lowest flight prices it has found for both outbound and return flights. Click on the lowest suitable bars for both outbound and return dates and it will immediately show you the total cost. You can play around with these dates until you have a trip that potentially works for you. Once you do, hit the Show Flights button for details.

Skyscanner will then connect to each of the airline sites and pull in live fare data. Note that it’s typical at this stage for the exact fare to change from the lowest one shown up-front – occasionally by a significant amount, but more often it’s a relatively small adjustment. I think the first screen uses cached data and the next one refreshes it.

By default, Skyscanner will show you all routings, no matter how many stops are involved. Some routings can be … involved. Unless you need to get the cheapest possible price regardless of the hassle, I recommend unchecking the ‘2+ stops’ box to avoid the sillier ones. It’s then worth comparing the prices offered if you also uncheck ‘1 stop’ to leave you with direct flights only.

If you’re happy to take an indirect flight, check carefully the total flight time. It’s very often the case that the cheapest indirect flights have very lengthy stopovers – often overnight. You won’t see the stopover time until you check the flight details, but the total flight duration will tip you off.

For example, when doing a London-Hanoi search at the time of writing, the cheapest fare was with Asiana Airlines. The first leg is an overnight flight, so you set off at 20:15 on day one and land at 16:05 in Incheon, Korea, on day 2. You then have a 16h 35m layover there before the second leg departs at 08:40 on day 3 before finally getting you to Hanoi some 32h and 15m after you left! So, for most trips, I’ll select direct flights only.

Of course, airlines vary tremendously in quality, and as a general rule you get what you pay for. The cheapest flights will generally be with airlines which have dense seating and the most basic in-flight service. So you need to weigh cost against quality and find a balance that works for you. If you’re not familiar with an airline, tripadvisor.co.uk/Airlines is a good place to check their ratings.

Note that fares change all the time, so if you can’t find an affordable trip with dates that work for you, just check again a few days later.

Finally, don’t dismiss traditional travel agents. Once you’ve found the very best deal you can on Skyscanner, give a travel agent a call and see if they can beat it. They sometimes have access to flight deals not sold directly to the public. In the UK, Trailfinders has occasionally managed to beat the best deal I could find online. Again, though, make sure you are comparing like-with-like in terms of direct versus indirect flights.

14

Getting the best seats

Even in business class, some seats are better than others. For example, some older aircraft configurations have inside seats where you may need to step over the feet of the person in the aisle seat when they have their seat in the lay-flat bed mode. Conversely, in configurations with free access to the aisle from all seats, window seats tend to offer more privacy.

Seat position can also make a huge difference in premium economy. Wide-bodied aircraft often have a 2-4-2 seating configuration in premium economy cabins, and there is the world of difference between a seat with just your companion next to you – or the chance of an empty seat next to you when travelling on your own – and a centre seat in a block of four.

In economy, the difference between a good seat and a bad one can be night and day. For example, emergency exit rows have extra legroom. The best of these have no seats in front of you at all – just the exit door then a bulkhead. These offer three benefits:

- Essentially unlimited legroom

- Direct access to the aisle from window and centre seats

- No-one in front to tilt their seat back to an uncomfortable degree

On aircraft where there are seats immediately forward of an emergency exit, avoid these at all costs, as they often don’t recline.

No matter what class you’re flying, there are three additional factors to consider. First, you don’t want to be next to the washrooms as those get a constant stream of people – not great when you want peace & quiet. Second, being next to a galley isn’t ideal when you want to sleep, due to the noise.

Finally, you want to be as close to the main exit doors as possible – especially when flying to the USA. That way, you get the fastest possible exit, which can make a huge difference in airports where there are lengthy queues for Immigration. At some US airports, being first off the plane versus last off the plane can literally mean a difference of two hours in the time it takes you to escape the airport. That’s why you’ll find me out of my seat the moment the seatbelt signs go off, and speeding past the dawdlers between the aircraft and Immigration.

Identifying the best seats

From the above, then, we get the following criteria for choosing a seat:

- In business class, window if it has free access to the aisle, otherwise an aisle seat

- In premium economy, a seat in the ‘two’ part of a 2-4-2 configuration

- In economy, an emergency exit row (but never in the row ahead of one)

In all cabins:

- Not next to a washroom

- Not next to a galley

- As close as possible to the main exit doors

Most airlines have a graphic showing their seat layout, so you can see where the toilets, galleys and exits are, but some are more detailed than others – and there can be additional reasons why some seats are better or worse than others on specific aircraft. For that reason, I recommend visiting http://www.seatguru.com to check seat recommendations. Note that you will need two pieces of information to use this, both of which should be shown on your itinerary: your airline, and the exact aircraft type.

The exact type is important, for example an Airbus A330-300 is different to an Airbus A330-200. The airline is equally important, as different airlines configure their aircraft differently. For these reasons, never just google for a seat layout.

Getting your preferred seat

Once you know the seats you do and don’t want, you want to maximise your chances of getting one of them.

You’ll often get the option of choosing your seat at the time of booking. Sometimes, whether or not you get this option depends on the class you are flying and/or your frequent flyer status with the airline. Where it’s offered to you, this is ideal as you’ll get the maximum choice at this point.

If you’re offered the option to pay a fee to select your seat when booking, only you can decide whether it’s worth it.

If you have to wait until online check-in before you can choose your seat (or you get a pre-allocated one that you can’t change until then), the earlier you check-in, the greater the choice of seats. I set an alarm for a few minutes before online check-in opens. This is usually exactly 24 hours before the flight departs. Get yourself logged-in ahead of time so you are ready to grab your preferred seat the moment it opens. If you’re travelling with someone on a different booking to you, then the ideal is to both be logged-in on different machines so you can coordinate choices.

Seat choice on budget & charter aircraft

Some budget and charter airlines don’t offer allocated seating. I hate these with a vengeance.

However, even these may offer you a couple of options. The first is that even if you can’t choose your exact seat, you may be able to pay extra to get an emergency exit row seat. Again, you need to weigh up cost against comfort. For short flights, where you’re unlikely to want to move around the aircraft, and where the meal service is non-existent or a simple snack, the benefit of a better seat is marginal. On a long flight, where you want access to the washrooms as well as the chance to stretch your legs – and where you don’t want someone reclining their seat almost into your lap while you’re trying to eat or work – being able to choose your seat can be worth every penny.

If you’re reading this at the airport and realise you should have done that, it may not be too late: you can sometimes buy the ‘upgrade’ at the airport. It’s not a good idea to leave it this late when you have the choice, however: there are no guarantees that any will be left by then, especially when two or more of you are travelling and you want to sit together.

A second option often offered is priority boarding: getting onto the plane first. Mostly, I wait in the lounge until boarding is drawing to a close, as I can’t see the point in either queuing to board or sitting on the plane for any longer than I have to. However, on no-frills flights where seating is dense and overhead locker space is at a premium, I will pay for priority boarding. It can delay your exit significantly if you end up having to stash your bag in an overhead locker several rows behind you.

Finally, seat choice doesn’t necessarily end with the number printed on your boarding pass – a topic covered in DIY upgrades.

15

"Silent night"

While I’ve generally been able to get a decent seat, sometimes you get what’s available …

On one business trip to Tokyo, the schedule was changed at the last minute – and by the time it came to booking my flight, there was exactly one seat left. In economy – in the row behind the bulkhead seats.

All experienced flyers will now be wincing: the bulkhead seats are where the baby bassinets are found. This is not where you want to be at the best of times. It’s definitely not where you want to be on a 12-hour flight. And it’s absolutely not where you want to be on a 12-hour overnight flight.

Sure enough, my misery was complete when I found that there were indeed two babies in the row ahead of me. This was going to be hell.

Usually babies start crying when the engines spool up for take-off. Not a sound. I was pleasantly surprised, but knew the noise would start as soon as the cabin pressure reduced in the climb. Still nothing.

Twelve hours later, we landed at Heathrow. There had not been a peep out of either baby the whole night. I stood up as the seat-belt signs went off, and leant over to the mother.

“Thank you!” I said. “I don’t know what you did, but two silent babies for twelve hours is nothing short of a miracle – thank you!”

She smiled.

“Two double brandies at the airport, and breastfeeding.”

16

Staying in 4-5-star hotels on 2-star budgets

First, if you haven’t yet read the Finding great flight deals chapter, read that first – as point one applies to hotels every bit as much as flights. If you try booking a hotel in Rio during Carnival, you’re going to be lucky to find a 2-star hotel for 5-star prices, let alone the other way around.

By the way, one word on stars. I use 4-5 stars as a shorthand for a good hotel, but it should be noted that star ratings can mean different things in different countries. Some are awarded by national tourism bodies or respected independent organisations, and can be generally relied upon – but even there, they may just measure the facilities available (for example, a reception staffed 24 hours a day) rather than the actual quality (a chain-smoking grumpy receptionist who can’t help with anything may count). Other countries may have stars that are rather loosely awarded by less reputable organisations, or even just self-declared. And then, of course, there’s the Burj al Arab: only a shameless marketing genius could invent a whole new star category, and then make up not just a 6-star rating but skip direct to seven.

The safest bet is to stick to the known international brands; but you may then miss out on some fantastic boutique or family-owned places. More on this when I discuss reviews shortly.

The web makes it incredibly easy to book accommodation, at every level from dormitory space in a hostel to luxury hotels. Years of business travel has spoiled me, I confess; I figure my dormitory days are behind me.

Fortunately, business travel does one other thing besides spoil you: the inevitable mix of last-minute trips and schedule changes imbues a relaxed attitude to last-minute bookings, and this is the secret to getting bargain hotel deals.

My usual hotel-booking site is hotels.com. The best deals on hotels are found either months ahead – when they want some bankable income on the books – or a few days out. The time you don’t want to be looking is when everyone else does: two or three weeks ahead.

Almost none of my trips are scheduled months in advance, so that just leaves the ‘few days out’ approach. I tend to start looking one week ahead, then visit the site on a daily basis, as deals change each day. Just plug in your city, dates and room requirements and then see what you get offered.

Start by checking out the going rate for 2-3 star hotels for your dates. This will provide the benchmark you’re aiming for.

With many destinations, I order hotels by price, cheapest first – then look for the big brands. I must confess to being too lazy to seek out all the little boutique hotels, but if you’re prepared to put the work in, you could do web searches to identify these and then look for these too. Me, I just want a four- or five-star hotel from a known brand at a decent price.

With some destinations, though, price ranking doesn’t work: there are too many hits spread over too wide an area. This is typically the case where there are a great many airport hotels, plus business districts out in the surrounding area. You can easily find that you’re being offered hotels that are anything from 10 to 25 miles from the city centre. On my short, sharp trips in particular, I want to be reasonably central – though I can be more flexible if I’m taking my bike.

So where this happens, I rank instead by distance from the centre, then scan for price. Once you’ve found a good price and location for a known hotel brand you’re done. If you’re not having any luck with big brands, but are finding other 4- and 5-star hotels in the right places and at the right prices, then it’s time to check out the reviews …

Hotel reviews can be a bit of a minefield. First, there are the out-and-out fraudulent reviews, posted by the the hotel owners themselves or by the mates they have roped in to help out. These are generally easy to spot, as they are just full of gushing praise with not a single negative or neutral point, but the smarter owners will tone it down a little.

Second, there are the easily-pleased – especially if the price was great. They may be judging it by the standards of the price they paid, rather than by the claimed standard.

Third, the converse can sometimes be true. An American used to luxury hotels in the States may apply those same standards to a family-run hotel in a less-developed country, and be overly critical of what is in fact an excellent place by local standards.

So, my rule of thumb is to look for hotels that have lots of reviews, and then to pay most attention to those reviews posted by people who’ve reviewed lots of places. They are more likely to be both genuine and objective. I also give more weight to reviews which mention both positives and negatives.

If hotels.com (or whichever site you are using) doesn’t have enough decent-standard reviews to reach a conclusion, check out the reviews on tripadvisor.com.

Finally, even where you are satisfied from the reviews that a hotel is a safe bet, it’s still worth reading through the lengthier reviews: these often contain valuable tips about things you don’t want to miss while there (a signature dish in a restaurant, a view from a window tucked around the corner out of sight, that kind of thing). The same can be true when checking out reviews of local attractions, and the lengthier negative reviews can also be helpful here as they will often contain recommendations on alternative places to visit that deliver a better experience.

Hotel deals change all the time, so if you spot a bargain and the reviews check out, don’t hang around. Sometimes there will be literally one or two rooms at the price shown, perhaps because of a cancellation.

If it’s a familiar brand, you know what you’re going to get. If it looks good from the site but you’re not familiar with it, check the number of reviews as well as the ratings: it’s easy for the owner to get a few mates to post 5-star reviews, so once you see a dozen or more, the average rating should be reliable.

If you’re not seeing good prices at reputable hotels, don’t panic – there are new deals all the time. I look once in the morning, then again in the evening. If I don’t find anything that day, I just look again the following morning.

This does require a certain degree of courage – especially if you’ve been looking twice a day for two or three days and still not found anything suitable. But my experience is that courage pays off.

If you’re feeling ultra-brave, the best deals I’ve ever found have been same-day bookings on laterooms.com. I was able to get 4- and 5-star hotels in Dubai – not an inexpensive city – for £40-50/night. But leaving things until the day is a little brave even for me, so that wasn’t by choice – a story told in The Dubai adventure …

17

A word on overnight return flights

Most hotels have a noon check-out time. The better ones will extend this to 2pm free of charge, while others will charge you, but even then they tend to max out at 4pm to be able to ready the room for incoming guests. All of which is a bit of a pain if you have a midnight flight home.

Hotels will gladly store your baggage after checkout, so that you can at least wander the city luggage-free on your final day, but in hot climates you’ll want a shower before heading to the airport, and often a change of clothes if you’re going to look the part for a potential upgrade. For this reason, it’s worth thinking about booking your room for an extra night – so you have the use of it right up to the moment you need to head off to the airport.

Of course, how extravagant this is depends on the hotel, and the rate you’ve managed to get. But while hotels will quote you an all-in figure for your stay, they actually cost each day individually, so the cost of an extra night will sometimes be less than the average cost per night you’ve paid overall. It’s always worth putting the extra night in after you’ve got your quote, just to see the difference it makes.

My personal view is that if I can’t shower and change before I head to the airport, I’m probably not going to make the most of my last day – I’ll be taking it a bit easy. So when the cost of the extra night effectively buys me an extra day’s exploration, it’s often going to be worth it.

If there’s a group of you travelling, with several rooms between you, hanging on to just one of them is pretty much a no-brainer. Store all the group’s luggage in the one room, figure out a rota for the bathroom and split the cost between you.

18

"The Dubai adventure"

I talk about staff travel specifically in Staff travel, the hidden extra travel class. For now, all you need to know is that staff travel is on a standby basis, with all staff falling below paying customers in the case of over-booking, and my particular status falling about as far down the staff pecking order as it is possible to get …

It was the end of a 5-day trip to Dubai, and I’d seen everything on my list. The first sign of trouble came when I went to do an online check-in. If there is enough room on the flight to accommodate standby bookings, you get checked-in as usual. Otherwise, you get a message saying that the system was unable to check you in online and you should check at the airport. I got that message.

Ok, no big deal, I thought, that can just mean things are tight, and at the time I’d booked the trip the flight had about a dozen spare seats. But I’d booked a week ahead and stayed five days, and a lot can change in 12 days …

On the morning of my supposed flight home, I checked out of my hotel and made my way to the airport. With staff standby, you have to wait until the check-in desks have closed, when they know what is and isn’t available. The check-in closed and I looked around the check-in area. There were about 20 of us still there. That wasn’t good. Not when there had only been a dozen spare seats at the time I’d booked, and not when I was at the bottom of the list.

Sure enough, a handful of staff got on and the rest of us were told to try again tomorrow. We were warned that flight was also very busy.

Which is the other thing you need to know about staff standby in that situation: you are on your own. The airline owes you nothing. Which left me with no flight home, and no hotel for the night. The very worst rates at hotels are for the so-called ‘walk ins’ – people who just turn up at the front desk and want a room for that night. Hotels work on the basis that such people are desperate and don’t want to spend the entire day visiting hotels, so they are the people who get charged the official ‘rack rate’ – which is generally painful.

I was hoping the same wouldn’t be true for online bookings, but feared it might. I hit hotels.com.

The rates I was finding were less than I’d feared, but still pricey, so I decided to try another site: laterooms.com. To my amazement, I quickly found a 5-star hotel of an international brand for the equivalent of £45! I scrabbled to book it.

The next morning, I checked out from that hotel and made my way to the airport. I again waited until check-in was closed, and again saw a lot of people waiting around, and again was told sorry, try again the next day. Back to laterooms.com and I again found a good hotel – four stars this time – for under £50.

This went on for four days. On the fourth morning, the check-in staff – who were virtually old friends by this time – said they didn’t know how to break it to me, but all flights were overbooked for the next fortnight! I appeared to have accidentally emigrated.

At this point, I decided I was just going to have to bite the bullet and buy a flight home. I hit Skyscanner. There was bad news, good news and bad news.

The bad news was that all the direct flights were really expensive. The good news was that there were some cheap indirect ones. The bad news was that most of those were 25+ hours with lengthy stoppovers in the middle of nowhere. I did, though, find one 11-hour trip with a 2-hour stoppover.

This was with Azerbaijan Air with the stoppover in Baku. Wouldn't be my first choice of airline or route, but hey, it was cheap and reasonably quick. There was nothing available that day, so I booked a 1pm flight the following day.

By now, I just wanted to be home, so booked a hotel right by the airport. There was one other piece of good news: the flight with the airline on which I had staff travel privileges left at 11am, while the Azerbaijan Air flight wasn’t until 1pm, so I could give it one last shot.

To my amazement, they had good news for me: I was on! And upgraded to premium too. That beat 11 hours in Azerbaijan Air economy any day.

The adventure wasn’t over yet, however. With check-in closed, I had exactly 30 minutes to get to the gate before my flight departed. It was, naturally, on the far side of the terminal. I ran. At Security, showing my boarding pass allowed me to queue-jump, and running some more got me there with a few minutes to spare. I was finally on board.

There’s one final thing you need to know about staff travel standby at this point: just because you are on board the aircraft still doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to fly. If a last-minute passenger turns up whom they didn’t expect to make it, you get offloaded and the paying customer gets on board. You’re safe only when the door closes.

I waited nervously, then heard the one thing I definitely didn’t want to hear. A PA announcement.

“If there’s a Mr Benjamin Lovejoy on board, would he please identify himself to cabin crew.”

Ok, that was bad. Not only was I being thrown off the flight, but it was now after 11am, and I was airside. To check in for my Azerbaijan Air flight, I’d need to get back to landside. Doing that is non-trivial, requiring an escort. Check-in for the Azerbaijan Air flight closed at 12 noon. It was by no means certain I was going to make it.

So reluctantly, I introduced myself to a cabin crew member.

“Ah, we’ve been told of your little adventure,” she smiled. “One of the business class passengers has failed to show, so we thought you deserved the seat …”

19

Travel documents

Travel documents are about the most boring part of organising a trip – but not something you ever want to get wrong …

Passport

Many countries require your passport to have at least six months of remaining validity at the point at which they either issue a visa or admit you to the country. It’s good practice to set yourself a diary reminder to renew your passport in plenty of time – an electronic diary will allow you to set reminders years in advance.

Renewing your passport early doesn’t necessarily incur a financial penalty, by getting less use from it. A certain amount of unexpired time can often be added to the new passport. In the UK, for example, you can renew a passport up to ten months before it expires and have that 10 months added to the validity of the replacement. From what I can tell, the same isn’t true of the USA, unfortunately.

Note also that some countries will not accept a passport which has suffered significant damage. You definitely don’t want any obscured information or missing or partially-missing pages. If yours does, get it replaced.

Visas

Visa requirements are the first thing to check, especially for business trips, where getting the type of visa needed is not always straightforward. One time for a trip to Russia, for example, I needed a formal letter of invitation from the company I was visiting. That didn’t sound like a big deal, but it turned out that they needed to write it then send it off to a local government office to be approved. Only when that had happened could they send it to me – and that took several days. The Russian embassy in London then needed to fax the same letter back to either the same or a different office in Moscow (I’d lost the will to live by this time, so wasn’t paying close attention) to get it verified. Only when that was done could they begin processing my visa application.

That same trip also involved a ‘fun’ paperwork experience with some prototype mobile phones, but I’ll get back to that …

In general, business visas take longer to get, and are more expensive, than tourist ones. This sometimes tempts people to take shortcuts, applying for a tourist visa for a business trip. I know people who’ve done it and got away with it, but I’ve never done it myself, and wouldn’t recommend it: many countries consider it an extremely serious matter. Getting caught on the way in is likely to get you put on the first plane home; getting caught on the way out could see you in a jail cell.

Business visas sometimes also require you to have other documents in your possession, such as a letter of invitation from the company you’re visiting, and/or a letter from your own company confirming that you are travelling on business as their employee.

How long you get on a visa varies by both visa type and country. A business visa can, in the best of cases, get you unlimited entries over two years. Very convenient for countries you visit often, but expensive – and the application process can take time.

A tourist visa will typically get you six months, but is sometimes shorter. A few countries give you the exact duration of your trip. On one such trip, a friend made a mistake on his application, stating that he would be leaving one day earlier than our actual departure date. He got briefly detained at the airport and it was made clear to him that over-staying a visa, even by 24 hours, is a serious matter.

UK citizens can check via requirements here: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice

US citizens can check here:

http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country.html

Visa waiver programs

Some countries have reciprocal visa waiver arrangements, meaning that a citizen of one country doesn’t need a visa to visit the other country. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just go knocking on that country’s door. UK citizens travelling to the USA, for example, need to obtain a document known as an ESTA. This is valid for unlimited entry for two years. You can apply for this here: https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

Three points to note about the ESTA. First, always use the direct link – don’t google for ESTA or you’ll get loads of links to scam sites which make the application on your behalf and charge you a premium for doing so. (The genuine application has a small fee, which was £14 at the time of writing.)

Second, ESTAs aren’t valid for all UK citizens, nor for all types of visit. Do carefully read the requirements to ensure you qualify. US border control has no sense of humour, and has been known to refuse entry for tiny and perfectly innocent errors.

Third, while the ESTA is normally valid for two years, it is linked to your passport number – so if your passport expires, so does your ESTA.

Yellow fever vaccination certificate

Some countries require vaccination certificates, to prove that you have been inoculated against particular diseases. For example, many African countries require a certificate for yellow fever. Again, use the above links to check for any requirements, as well as visiting the website for the country’s embassy.

Document checklist

You’ll notice that I include documents on my packing checklist. Here’s a more comprehensive version:

- Passport with at least six months’ remaining validity and no significant damage

- Visa(s) or any necessary visa waiver document (eg. ESTA)

- Any supporting documentation needed for the visa (eg. letter of invitation)

- Travel itinerary

- Plane tickets (and/or ferry, train, etc)

- Boarding pass(es) if you’ve checked-in online

- Hotel confirmations (check that the address is shown on this – it isn’t always)

- Vaccination certificates

- Other country-specific paperwork needed

- Any documents you need to carry out your business

Electronic documents

A significant chunk of the art of travelling without breaking sweat is a belt-and-braces approach to things that can spoil your day – like losing an important document. I always recommend carrying multiple copies of all documents. As a minimum, print out two copies, keeping one in your pocket and one in your carry-on bag. But better still, carry them electronically. This is not only more convenient, but also allows you to have multiple copies without adding any bulk to your carry-on luggage.

I’ve been paperless for several years now, so with the exception of my passport and visa (and any country-specific documents required to be in paper form), I carry all my documents electronically. My personal approach is to use the print-to-PDF function for any documents that would normally be printed, and store them on Dropbox. I then load them into GoodReader (see Apps for travel) on both my iPad and iPhone, and they are of course also in the Dropbox folder of my Mac.

That puts them onto three devices in my possession, plus I can use any PC anywhere to retrieve them from Dropbox if required.

Your passport is one document where a copy won’t do, but having a scan or photocopy of the data page and relevant visa page can at least save a certain amount of hassle in the event that the worst happened.

Finally, when you check-in online, most airlines have the option to save your boarding pass to Passbook if you’re an iPhone/Apple Watch user, or to email it you. Again, I take a belt-and-braces approach, putting it in Passbook so it’s on both my phone and watch, and also emailing it to myself so I can pull it up in email if needed.

20

"To Moscow with mobile phones"

Oh yes, the Moscow experience …

As I mentioned in Travel documents, I’d already had some fun and games with the visa application, but I also needed to bring into the country a whole bagful of mobile phone models for some work I was doing for one of the manufacturers. The total value was quite high – high enough to need customs documentation.

To take expensive items into most countries, you require a document known as a carnet. You present one part of this on arrival, providing a record of what you took into the country, and show the other half on departure. In this way, the country’s customs official can check the paperwork against the physical items to ensure that you haven’t sold any of the kit while you were there, or purchased anything extra.

Russia had, at the time at least, a rather more convoluted system. We had to apply in advance for permission to bring in the phones. That again involved the local company getting permission from Moscow, then me getting permission from the local embassy, which, naturally, couldn’t process the application until it heard that Moscow had okayed it. This took time, which was an item in somewhat short supply.

But we did it. I turned up at Sheremetyevo airport with both the phones and the impressively thick sheaf of (actual paper) documents granting me permission to bring them into the country.

I have naively assumed that would be it on the paperwork front. There were so many sheets that I didn’t think it would be physically possible for anyone to come up with a requirement for any more documents, but I was wrong.

The Customs official solemnly worked his way through my documents, inspected each of the phones carefully and then passed me an entirely new – and very lengthy – form to complete. It was, of course, in Russian, and my 10-word phrasebook didn’t cover it.

But the official helped me, and about 40 minutes later it was complete. He stamped both my old and new paperwork many times with great flourishes, and I reached over to pick up my bag of phones.

“Nyet.”

I enquired as to what the problem was. It appeared that the new paperwork I’d just completed needed to be approved. By an official somewhere in the Kremlin.

It was almost midnight. It didn’t appear overly likely that there would be anyone in the Kremlin just at that moment to approve the paperwork, even if they faxed it over immediately. This was confirmed.

“It will take 30 days.”

I protested that I’d sought and obtained permission beforehand, needed the phones to do my work and was only going to be in the country for five days.

A shrug.

I did consider at that point whether or not to offer him one of the phones as a bribe. On the plus side, if it worked, both I and the bulk of the phones would make it out of the airport. On the downside, if it didn’t work out, I might find myself in a Moscow jail for the next ten years. I decided not to risk it.

I entered the country without my phones, just a receipt for same, wondering what the chances were that the phones would be returned to me on my departure from the airport at the end of the week. Amazingly, they were. My work had to be done using photos.

21

Getting to the airport

I said in the introduction that the book was about how to travel without ever having to break sweat. This chapter is fundamental to that goal!

There are three types of travellers when it comes to the time they leave to get to the airport. Inexperienced travellers, who are nervous about what could go wrong, and leave loads of time. Somewhat experienced travellers, who’ve done enough travel to grow complacent but not enough to have experienced the full range of things that can go wrong, who tend to leave it until the last minute. And highly experienced travellers who are neither nervous nor complacent, and leave loads of time.

We’re all busy. Business trips in particular are fraught with time challenges. There’s usually a great deal to be crammed into the trip itself, and generally a whole bunch of other stuff that has to be completed beforehand – either in preparation for the trip or just because you’re going to be out of the office for a time and there are things that need to get done whether or not you are there.

When travelling directly from the office to the airport in particular, the pressure or temptation to leave it until the last minute can be great. Resist it. Really.

The beginning of the trip sets the tone. Spending it panicking about whether or not you’ll make your flight, or dashing through the airport with sweat running down your back, isn’t a great way to begin a trip. You are starting the trip stressed, you’ll look like a mess, feel like a mess and certainly won’t have that wonderfully relaxing flight they promise you in the ads.

Missing a plane is an even worse one. The best case is flying on business on a fully-flexible ticket to a destination with more than one flight a day. But even then, you’re going to miss a meeting. The worst case is travelling on a non-flexible, non-refundable ticket which is worthless the moment the door closes and the plane pushes back from the jetway.

Even if your original ticket was cheap, the replacement won’t be: buying a ticket on the day is the most expensive possible way to do so. It will almost certainly be eye-wateringly expensive. For a leisure trip, it may even be beyond your means, it which case you lost the price of the ticket, whatever element of your hotel accommodation was non-refundable (sometimes the entire stay) – and you lost out on your trip. This will not make you a happy bunny.

There are all kinds of things that can delay you on the way to the airport. If travelling by train, your train could be cancelled. It could break down. There could be signalling problems. Points failure. Leaves on the line, the wrong kind of snow … well, you don’t need me to tell you. Bottom line: trains generally give you a more consistent and reliable door-to-door time, but things still can and do go wrong.

Road travel can be worse. In most major cities, traffic is terrible pretty much all of the time – and it only takes one accident or broken down vehicle in the wrong place to turn what should be a 45-minute drive into a two-hour one. Or worse, as my Pretending to be a police car story will reveal.

So … I always allow loads of time. Enough time that, if the trains stopped running, I could get a cab instead and still get there in plenty of time. Enough time that, if my car broke down, I could wait an hour for recovery, then get a cab and still make it with time to spare.

The beauty of this is that it doesn’t cost you any time! Especially if you have lounge access (see VIP lounges), as you generally do anyway with business trips, you can do in the lounge whatever work you would have done in the office. Or if you’d have otherwise been lounging around at home reading a book or watching Netflix or listening to music, you can do that too at the airport.

If you want to spot a moderately experienced traveller, look for the slightly-frazzled ones in a hurry. The ones looking like they’re out for a stroll in the country as they wander through the terminal are the really experienced ones.

22

"Pretending to be a police car"

There aren’t many benefits to having to get up at 4am in order to get to the airport in time for the first flights of the day, but one of the very few is that the M25 is empty at that time. Despite living on the opposite side of London to Heathrow, I could reach the M25 within ten minutes and could then get all the way around to Heathrow in less than an hour. Of course, in line with my relaxed travel policy, I allowed a lot longer.

It wasn’t the best of weather that morning, but there was almost zero traffic, so that didn’t appear likely to cause problems. How wrong I was. The articulated truck I was gaining on appeared to swerve to avoid something in lane 1. The next thing I knew, it had jackknifed across the motorway. It seemed to slide for a long time, so there was no drama for me in coming to a halt.

I parked on the hard shoulder and got out to check on the driver. He was unhurt, but the cab was bashed in and trapped between the trailer and the armco in the central reservation. The back of the trailer was overhanging the grass next to the hard shoulder. One vehicle – almost the only vehicle I’d seen on the motorway – was now completely blocking it. Even if I’d fancied my chances on the wet grass behind the truck in a rear-wheel drive sportscar, there was an embankment with thicker grass that would have probably posed a problem for a Landrover in the wet conditions.

I called the police and fire service, and then all we could do was wait. And wait. And wait. While a steady queue of traffic grew behind us.

The police turned up quite quickly, and one police driver climbed into the lorry cab to have a go at freeing it, but had no luck. Next a Police Landrover tried to tow it free, also without success.

The fire service turned up and had a good look. Conversations were held between truck driver, police and firemen, with much rather random-looking pointing of arms. Eventually, it was decided to try using a fire engine to tow the cab free, as it had a lot more grunt than a Landrover. This did not look like it was going to be successful, and it wasn’t.

More conversations were held, more pointing of arms, and finally it was decided to try anchoring the cab to one fire engine while another one would try to pull the trailer backwards to free the cab. I was doubtful, but to my surprise this did finally succeed sufficiently to free the cab.

This didn’t solve the problem entirely. The cab was facing backwards down the motorway, and to move it out of the way would mean driving it a couple of lengths the wrong way down the motorway. Whose passage was, of course, now jammed full of cars. After a great deal of marshalling by police, firemen and me (I was motivated), we eventually managed to clear enough space to get the rear of the trailer off the hard shoulder.

I wasn’t going to wait around to see how much further they might get it – I waved goodbye, jumped into my car and hared off down the very temporarily empty motorway. It was now close to 6am. My flight left at 7.15am. While the motorway stretch behind the truck was of course empty, that changed as soon as I reached the next junction.

That stretch of the M25 was still ok. But the closer I go to the airport, and the later it got, the worse the traffic got. Getting completely stuck at one point, I took the opportunity to phone the airline. One of the benefits of frequent flyer status with that airline was a dedicated help number which promised special assistance. I called it, and they said that while they of course couldn’t hold the flight, they would have someone meet me at the terminal entrance and escort me to the aircraft to skip all the queues.

The traffic got worse, and I came off the motorway. The traffic was no better there. I was now no more than two miles from the airport, but clearly wasn’t going to make it. I decided to do my best impersonation of a police car, flashing my headlights in a regular on/off/on/off pattern and sounding my horn in a not-remotely-convincing impression of a siren.

I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was a crazy person rather than a police car, but either way, it worked: cars opened up a gap to let me through.

It was still pretty clear I wasn’t going to make the flight. I needed to park the car, get into the terminal, get to check-in and then – even with an escort – pass through security and get to the gate. But I decided to give it my best shot. I drove into the short-term car-park, miraculously arrived as someone was pulling out of a space right by the entrance and parked. I decided I’d explain later to my MD why I’d parked my car in the highly expensive short-term car-park for ten days.

I ran like crazy into the terminal. Special services apparently worked, as I was approached by someone from the airline as I entered and looked around.

“Mr Lovejoy?”

I confirmed it. There was less than half an hour to go before the flight left. Normally that would be completely impossible, but the member of staff assigned to me was both determined and a good runner. We got to the gate literally as they were reaching for the aircraft door to pull it shut.

I did break sweat that day.

23

The four secrets to getting upgraded

If you have enough miles with an airline, you may be able to use them to ‘purchase’ an upgrade. Although this is a relatively expensive option, using up a fair chunk of miles, it can be a good one if you’re doing so much business travel that the last thing you want to do in your own time is go anywhere near an airport.

The only problem with this is that airlines don’t want to lose the chance to sell a business class seat, so upgrade seats have limited availability – availability indistinguishable from zero on some flights and routes. But if that’s not an option, there are other ways to get upgraded …

Airlines upgrade passengers for a variety of reasons.

Commercial reasons. Airlines obviously want to keep their most profitable customers happy. If a high status passenger is flying economy or premium, and there are plenty of spare seats in business, it’s going to make commercial sense to encourage that passenger to remain loyal to the airline by treating them well. This one is especially likely if you usually fly business class and are using miles to purchase a leisure flight – I think I’ve been upgraded almost every single time I’ve done that.

Operational reasons. The flight may be overbooked in one cabin but have empty seats in the next one up. It obviously makes more sense to upgrade one or more passengers than to turn people away.

Problems. There may be problems on board the aircraft, for example the seatback entertainment system not working properly. In which case, if there are no other seats free in that cabin, they will need to upgrade someone. (But don’t imagine that complaining about your seat will get you upgraded, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.)

You want to do everything you can to be top of the list to get the alert on the check-in screen, the magic red light at the boarding pass scanner at the gate or the polite “Excuse me, sir/madam” from one of the flight crew before departure.

I had to learn the information in this chapter when I was head-hunted from a small company to a very large one. There was one drawback to this move which I didn’t discover until after I’d joined: I’d moved from a company where we always flew business class to one with a rather less friendly policy.

The new deal was economy for flights of less than four hours, premium economy for 4-8 hours and business class only on flights longer than 8 hours. Fortunately, they used the same airline, so I had my carried-over frequent flyer status to help me, but I decided I needed to quickly learn the secrets to getting upgraded. This was achieved by a mixture of experience and friends in the airline industry, and there turned out to be four such secrets.

Stick to one airline

The single most important factor in determining your chances of being upgraded is your airline status. The more valuable you are to the airline, the more it will want to look after you. A frequent business-class passenger has a very high chance of being upgraded when making a leisure flight booked with miles; a passenger on a cheap ticket and no history with the airline has almost no chance.

You need to notch up a decent mileage to reach the highest tier of an airline’s frequent flyer program, so it’s more valuable to have flown 200,000 miles with one airline than to have flown 70,000 with each of three airlines. Being in the top five or six passengers on the potential upgrade list is not much help when they’re only looking to upgrade one or two people.

The good news here is that most companies have a deal with one particular airline, which means that all your business flights are already likely to be with a single carrier. The best shot at getting upgraded on a leisure flight is therefore to fly with the same airline.

You will, of course, have immediately identified the potential conflict here with the advice in Getting the best flight deals: the benefit of hitting Skyscanner is rather lost if you’re going to limit yourself to a single airline. So here you have to apply a balancing act, with three factors.

Factor (a), are you travelling alone? If not, then your partner is unlikely to be impressed by you wafting into business class if they are stuck back in economy without you – and the likelihood of you both being upgraded if they don’t also have similar status is exceedingly low.

Factor (b), what is your status level with the airline? You’ll likely never know the exact answer to this question as many airlines assign exact points numbers to their frequent flyers, which are rather more precise than just the typical three tiers in the program. That number is often different to just the number of tier points you’ve accumulated, and may even be different to your lifetime points. But the bottom line is that you need to be in the top tier for your airline before you are likely to get upgraded on a regular basis.

Factor (c), what’s the value to you of being upgraded? For a one-hour flight, really, who cares? There are other ways to get lounge access, covered in VIP lounges, and you’re not on board long enough for it to make much difference during the flight. I’ll take the cheaper deal every time. For a long-haul flight, the difference is huge, and I’m willing to pay more for the privilege. For a long-haul overnight flight where I’m likely to get upgraded to a lay-flat bed, I’ll pay significantly more.

Look & act the part

The second secret is to look and act like you belong in the next cabin up. Sure, some very frequent flyers pitch up in business class dressed like bums, but you can be fairly sure they paid for their seats. If an airline has three or four passengers with similar status, and is only looking to upgrade one of them, it’s going to be the quiet, charming, smartly dressed one – not the brusque loudmouth in the badly-pressed suit.

Just as they say to dress for the job you want rather than the job you have, the same applies to flying: dress for the cabin you’d like to be flying in.

Just as important as looking the part is acting it. Being polite and charming to staff will increase your odds; adopting a ‘don’t you know who I am?’ attitude will seriously decrease them. The last thing you want in a premium cabin is a passenger who will create a disturbance.

Which leads neatly into the third secret …

Hit all the contact points, and be charming at each

There are three points at which it’s possible to be upgraded:

- Check-in

- The gate

- On board

To maximise your chances, you want to ensure that you hit all three points, and are charming at each.

Check-in

Yep, there’s another potential conflict here. Two, in fact.

Checking-in online and flying hand-baggage only allows you to completely bypass the check-in area. This gives you a faster, smoother travelling experience, which is a good thing. It also means you skip the main point at which your hand-baggage is weighed, which can be very handy when employing a liberal interpretation of any weight limits.

Again, you need to balance the factors as above.

If the airline wants to upgrade you for commercial reasons, you will already be flagged in the system, so hitting check-in doesn’t matter: they’ll catch you at the gate. But if it’s for operational reasons, check-in staff may be briefed to look for potential upgrades – so if you skip check-in, you also miss one of the upgrade opportunities.

Hitting it won’t help if another passenger has much higher status than you, but if several people are all candidates, it’s human nature to want to do favours for people we like – so be the charming & friendly one who is all smiles and asks them about their day.

The departure gate

This is the most likely place to get upgraded. Once check-in has closed, airlines know with far greater certainty what the loadings are in each cabin. Gate staff may now be looking for passengers to upgrade. Again, airline status trumps all, but that being equal, looking & acting the part, and greeting staff with a friendly smile and a ‘Hey, how are you?’ can increase your odds. If not, you’ve made someone’s day just a little bit better – and a someone who will often find themselves the brunt of passenger frustration when there are delays or cancellations – so it’s all good.

On board

If there’s a problem with someone’s seat, and no free seats in the same cabin, staff will look to upgrade someone to free up a seat.

Don’t think that ‘creating’ a problem with your own seat will do the trick, however: cabin crew are wise to that one. The standard procedure in such cases is to upgrade someone else, then move the passenger with the problem seat to the newly-vacated seat in the same cabin.

Again, airline status will be the first consideration here. Passenger manifests typically have codes that indicate the value of each customer to the airline, and where time permits they will upgrade the person with the highest score. But if a problem comes to light before pushback, that’s a very busy time for crew, who may just want to grab the nearest suitable-looking candidate. The well-dressed passenger who gave them a friendly smile and ‘Good evening’ on boarding is going to have a better than average chance.

Having friends in high places

If you have friends who work for the airline you’re flying with, let them know your flight details. In the best of cases, your friend is the dispatcher for your flight, or cabin crew working your flight, in which case they may be able to get you upgraded personally. But worst case, they can get a message to the crew asking them to be nice to you.

Even if premium cabins are completely full, and an upgrade isn’t possible, ‘who you know’ can still pay off. On one flight, a friend who worked for the airline took me up to the flight-deck for a chat with the flight crew before departure. I was in premium economy and business class was full, but one of the cabin crew spotted me chatting to the captain and had me moved to another seat in premium with an empty seat next to me – which makes for a much more comfortable flight.

24

"HR needs to meet with you"

If there’s one phone call you don’t want to receive when working for a large company, it’s a call where you’re told that HR needs to meet with you. That’s never good.

It’s especially not good when they come into your office and close the door behind them.

I was told that the company had hired a firm of consultants to conduct a top-to-toe health & safety audit of the company, examining every aspect of the way the company operated to identify risks that could be eliminated. I wondered what the hell I’d done that was so dangerous HR needed to meet with me.

One of the things the consultants had done to identify risks, I was told, was to examine the health records of staff. I’d had two pulmonary embolisms, a complication of deep-vein thrombosis. The company was aware of these because my hospital stay had been courtesy of the company’s BUPA scheme. Tests had revealed that I had a genetic predisposition to clotting, and was on medication to reduce the risk of this.

This fact had, I was told, been flagged as a risk given the link between flying and DVT, and the fact that I did a great deal of business travel. At this point, I was sure I was going to be let go. They were going to impose a travel ban on me, and if I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t do my job.

But no. The HR person went on to say that medical advice had been sought, and legroom was known to be a factor in the risk of DVT. Consequently, the company had decided that I should not be allowed to fly in economy or premium economy, no matter what the length of the flight. I would henceforth only be permitted to fly business class.

I did my best to accept the ruling with good grace.

25

"Be nice"

The least likely person in the world to be upgraded is a one-off passenger travelling on the cheapest possible non-flexible, non-refundable economy class ticket. But I managed it once, aged 20, and in quite spectacular fashion.

It’s been a while since I was aged 20. I can’t really avoid revealing that fact as the airline in question was Pan-Am …

I lived in London, a friend had moved to New York and I wanted to go visit. I bought the cheapest possible ticket I could find, which cost the equivalent in today’s terms of about £250 – it was cheap!

I didn’t know then what I know now about Getting to the airport, so I was there toward the end of the check-in period. There were extremely lengthy queues, and it took an age to get to the front. By the time I did, the rather harried-looking woman checking me in told me I was fortunate as the flight was over-booked and I was the last economy passenger to make it on board.

The guy behind me overheard this, and started going nuts. The poor check-in woman was trying to simultaneously check me in and calm him down, letting him know there was another flight in two hours and he would be transferred to that. He wasn’t having any of it.

My flight was due to land around 6.30am. I am not a morning person. Again, not knowing then what I know now about US immigration queues, I thought landing at 8.30am sounded far more civilised, so I told the check-in woman that if it would help she could transfer me to the later flight and let the guy behind me have my seat on this one.

She gave me a very grateful smile, asked me to stand aside for a moment while she checked in the now-calm guy (not that he thanked me). A colleague of hers then came over and asked me to step over to an adjacent desk. It seemed the following flight was also extremely busy, due to the number of passengers being bumped over to it, and as a thank-you for being so helpful, she was upgrading me to business class!

As a 20 year old guy with very little flying experience and exactly zero status with the airline, I couldn’t believe it. I was a very happy bunny. But it didn’t end there …

The later flight was indeed packed. There wasn’t a single empty seat in business class – I guessed I wasn’t the only person they’d upgraded from economy (there was no premium economy in those days).

I had a window seat, and the guy behind me was complaining to a cabin attendant that he’d wanted a window seat and had been put in an aisle one. The attendant apologised but explained that business class was completely full, so unfortunately she was unable to move him to a window seat. He carried on complaining, angling, I suspect, for an upgrade to first class.

Partly because I was so happy to be in business class on my el-cheapo economy ticket that I didn’t care which seat I was in, and partly because the guy was annoying me as much as the cabin attendant, I told her I’d happily swap with him. She smiled gratefully and the two of us swapped seats.

About ten minutes after we reached the cruise, the cabin attendant returned.

“If you’d care to get your bag and follow me, Sir.”

I realised at this point that she had no idea that I’d started out on an economy ticket. She just saw me as a business class passenger who’d helped her out. Yes, this 20 year old guy on the cheapest possible economy ticket really did get upgraded to first class. Which, in those days, included a helicopter transfer to Manhattan. I was rather pleased.

26

"We'll be your flight attendants"

I haven’t experienced the delights of first class very often, but I did manage it three times on one particular business trip …

It was a five-country trip, and the client had a logistical problem which meant they kept holding off on pressing the button on the project. I kept being told it was definitely going ahead, but they couldn’t absolutely confirm the dates as yet. It was, frankly, a PITA: we had staff in five countries with the time booked in their diaries, not to mention a whole mass of arrangements involving considerable expense, for timings that were not yet guaranteed.

But finally we got the go ahead, with just 48 hours to go before the first round, in China. I informed our team secretary, who made the travel bookings. She came back a short time later to say that there were no business class seats available on three of the legs. She’d spoken to HR to see whether they would let me fly premium, and they’d said no. Sometimes corporate bureaucracy can work in one’s favour! So, she’d checked and found that first class seats were available for those legs.

She gave me the costs, and I called the client to explain the issue and ask whether they were ok with the rather higher flight costs.

“Sure, whatever, just make it work.”

One of the legs was from Beijing to Hong Kong on Air China. The first class cabin had eight seats, and two cabin crew dedicated to the cabin. I was the only first class passenger. It was a comfortable flight.

27

"That's what it takes to get a Premier card"

I had a two-year period of particularly intensive business travel, where I spent more time out of the country than in it. All business class, most of it long-haul, all of it with BA.

BA has three public levels of its Exec Club frequently flyer scheme: Blue, Silver and Gold. I had a gold card, which came with a nice set of perks. But there is a further, non-publicised level above gold known as Premier. Some Premier cards are not earned for flying: the people in charge of corporate travel for major companies are likely to get one, for example. Some VIPs do too. But I’d heard it was possible to earn one through flying. After my second year, and another year of gold, I wondered what on earth you had to do to get a Premier card if I didn’t qualify. One flight to Hong Kong (with the aircraft going on to Sydney), I found out.

I was sat next to a guy who had a Premier baggage tag on his bag. I said I hoped he didn’t mind me being rude, but I was curious just how much flying you had to do to get one.

He was a lawyer for a global company, in their mergers and acquisitions team. Most of the time, when they bought an overseas company, there was paperwork that had to be signed on the home soil of the country concerned. He was flying the 22 hours to Sydney where he would get off the plane, go landside, meet the local lawyer, sign the papers and – without ever leaving the airport terminal – get back onto the same plane to fly the 22 hours back to the UK.

I decided there and then that I never wanted a Premier card.

28

DIY upgrades

So, you’re taking a flight, you’re picking up the tab yourself or work for a company with a cheapskate travel policy. You’ve followed all my advice about getting upgraded, and it hasn’t happened. Damn.

You do, though, have two remaining options – what I think of as ‘DIY upgrades.’

The first is to try to get two or more seats to yourself. In premium economy, with a 2-4-2 configuration, a pair of seats in the ‘two’ part is almost as comfy as business class for a daytime flight, allowing you, for example, to have a laptop out on one tray table and your meal tray on another.

Even in economy, it makes a surprising difference to your comfort to have an empty seat next to you. The holy grail in economy is a row of four seats to yourself on an overnight flight, when you can stretch out and sleep almost as comfortably as in the lay-flat beds at the pointy-end, albeit without the snuggly duvet. (This is, incidentally, about the only time when you can get a better deal in economy than premium: premium seats are usually separated by dividers that prevent you laying down across a row of them.)

Keep an eye around you, looking for seats you may want to snag. Don’t get your laptop or anything out yet – you sometimes need to be quick! You of course won’t know which seats are free until everyone is on board, so keep your eyes and ears open for the door closing. Usually there’s an announcement to cabin crew to let them know boarding is complete.

The very moment that announcement is made, make a beeline for the seats you want to nab!

Sometimes, cabin crew will make an announcement asking people not to change seats until the plane reaches the cruise. This is because, on flights with quite a lot of empty seats, a significant number of passengers changing seats can alter the weight distribution of the plane, which can affect handling. In this case, the same applies – identify the seats you want and be alert to the bong as the seat-belt signs go off at the top of the climb, then make your rapid move.

If you’ve made the move before push-back, and a crew member comes and asks you to return to your original seat until after take-off, smile, apologise and do so – but leave a jumper or something else behind in the seat. A very simple way to ‘reserve’ it …

The second tiny but pleasant ’DIY upgrade’ that is sometimes possible is simply being appreciative of the cabin crew. That way, if you happen to express regret that you’re not in business class this flight as you adore the Pinot Noir, or the salted caramel dessert, you may find these items appear later in the flight.

29

VIP lounges

Getting to the airport in plenty of time is great for a stress-free journey, but not so great if you then have to spend hours hanging around in the noisy and crowded public areas of an airport – or spending a fortune on coffee and snacks to pass the time.

VIP lounges, in contrast, provide a tranquil environment in which to relax or work as appropriate, with free hot and cold drinks, snacks and sometimes even three-course meals. Having access to these quiet havens from the chaos outside completely transforms the airport experience – and means you won’t mind having some time to kill before your flight boards.

When you need to work, they have desks with power and wifi. When you’re able to relax, they have comfy chairs, subdued lighting and refreshments on tap.

There are four ways you can gain access to VIP lounges:

- Flying business or first class

- Frequent flyer card

- Membership schemes

- Pay per visit

Airline lounges – business, first class & frequent flyer

Major airlines have their own lounges at most of the airports from which they fly. Smaller ones tend to have arrangements with other airlines to provide access to their lounges. Airline lounges are the best option by far, and you’ll usually get automatic access to these when flying business or first class.

However, if you have frequent flyer status with the airline, you may get lounge access even when flying economy. Airlines recognise that in a difficult economic environment, an increasing number of companies are choosing to book their staff into economy. Fully—flexible economy fares still rack up the tier points, albeit at a slower rate, so frequent travellers should get lounge access no matter what class they fly.

The top tiers of some frequent flyer schemes even give you lounge access when you’re flying with a completely unrelated airline. This can be a real bonus when making leisure trips, retaining the comforts you’ve grown accustomed to on business trips, and is another good reason to always fly with the same airline whenever you can.

At larger airports, the biggest airlines have two types of lounge, one for first class, the other for business class. Sufficient airline status will get you access to the first class lounge when flying business class. The proliferation of airline alliances mean that you may also have a choice of lounge. It’s well worth researching these, as the quality of airline lounges can vary tremendously – and it’s not always at all obvious which airlines have the best. Once you know your options, I recommend checking out the reviews at sites like http://www.airlinequality.com/review-pages/a-z-lounge-reviews/.

Membership schemes

There is a second type of lounge at most airports: ones owned either by the airport itself, or by a third-party company. These typically provide lounge access for premium passengers flying on airlines too small to have their own lounges at all of the airports they serve.

But you can also gain access to these lounges via a membership scheme. The best known of these is Priority Pass. There are three membership options:

- Standard

- Plus

- Prestige

Standard membership has the lowest annual fee, and you are then charged per lounge visit. With Plus, your first ten visits a year are free (remember, that’s only five return trips when using lounges at both ends). With Prestige, you pay the highest annual fee but get unlimited free lounge visits.

At the time of writing, the break-even point is 13 visits – which is just seven return trips a year. Prestige is therefore a non-brainer for most regular travellers who don’t qualify for access to airline lounges.

If you fly for business, but don’t accrue enough status points to get airline lounge access, it’s worth enquiring whether your company will pay the annual fee for a Prestige membership. Given the increased productivity of having a quiet place to work, with free power and wifi, it’s not too difficult an argument to make.

Pay per visit

A smaller number of independent lounges offer a pay-per-visit option, where you don’t need a membership but can simply pay for access. Most of these lounges allow you to make a reservation online, which is usually cheaper than paying at the front desk.

Although paying for lounge access might seem extravagant, the typical cost is around £20/$30, and it’s not difficult – at airport prices – to notch up close to that just in coffee, snacks and wifi charges in the public areas of the airport. A long visit can therefore be close to cost-neutral, and any additional premium is a small price to pay for a far more pleasant experience.

Take care with your lounge choice

I noted that airline lounges can vary greatly in quality, and the same is even more true where airport-owned and independent lounges are concerned. These can vary from something close to an airline lounge experience to absolute dives.

For example, at my home airport of Heathrow, my Priority Pass membership gives me a choice of two lounges: No.1 Traveller, and another one I won’t name. No.1 Traveller is clean, comfortable, has pleasant decor and has decent snacks. Again, Google for reviews.

A very good rule of thumb where you have a choice of membership/pay-per-visit lounge is to see whether one offers free alcohol and the other doesn’t. Where this is the case, always pick the one that doesn’t. Free booze in independent lounges is always cheap-and-nasty, and those lounges attract the type of people who go there to drink it – some of them seemingly determined to get their money’s worth …

Set an alarm for your boarding time

One small downside of being comfortably settled into a lounge is that it’s easy to lose track of time. Most lounges don’t make flight announcements, so set an alarm for when it’s time to make your way to the gate. Bear in mind that while airline lounges are usually located close to the gates used by that airline, this isn’t always the case for alliance airlines, nor in the case of independent lounges. Always check airport maps or ask on arrival, and allow yourself plenty of time – again, you want a leisurely stroll to the gate rather than a jog!

One specific word of warning here: in airports with multiple terminals or satellites, do check that it will be possible to get from your chosen lounge to your departure gate, as that isn’t always the case. More on this in No entry …

Most lounges have flight display boards, so do check these for delays before you leave the lounge.

Arrivals lounges

Finally, a few airlines offer arrivals lounges at a small number of airports. These can be exceedingly welcome after an overnight flight where you’re heading straight to a meeting. A quick stop off allows a shower and change of clothes and makes all the difference in the world.

30

"No entry"

I used to take a regular fortnightly flight to Germany from Stansted Airport. The flight departed from satellite 2, which was also the location of the lounge to which I had access. All very convenient.

One time, I was flying somewhere else. That flight departed from satellite 1, where there was no lounge, but the two satellites were just a few minutes apart by monorail, so I figured I had all the time in the world to hop on the monorail to satellite 2 and then jump on the return one when it was time to go to the gate in satellite 1.

There was just one small flaw in my plan. A flaw I discovered only when it was time to return from satellite 2 to satellite 1. The configuration of the airport was such that the monorail service from satellite 1 to 2 served only departing passengers, while the one from satellite 2 to 1 served only arriving passengers. So one journey was on the Departures side of the airport, while the other was on the Arrivals side. They may have been separated only by a single glass wall, but the two sides are of course strictly quarantined.

On realising this, I took my problem to a member of staff. Who expressed a (not unreasonable but rather colourfully-phrased) opinion as to the wisdom of doing what I’d done. No, I was informed, it was not possible to pass between Departures and Arrivals.

The solution, it turned out, was to wait for the airport authorities to send a car to an empty gate in satellite 2. That would then drive me, and one other person who had made the same mistake, to satellite 1.

No, they couldn’t say how long this would take. I had of course allowed time for a gentle amble to my gate, but not for a drive around the airport.

And it was indeed around the airport. While the distance between the two gates was very short in a straight line, airports disapprove of cars mixing with taxiing aircraft, so the route for cars went all around the edges.

There was a 15-minute wait for the car to arrive, and it then took half an hour to drive around to my gate. I did make the flight, but only just. I didn’t do that again.

31

Making yourself comfy on board

I covered the most important tips for making yourself comfortable on board in The four secrets to getting upgraded and DIY upgrades, so here I’m covering a few other things that will help.

Warmth

First, and easily forgotten if the weather is warm at both ends of your journey, is to take a sweater on board with you – especially for overnight flights. The air-conditioning on aircraft can sometimes be turned up to a setting which I can only assume is for the benefit of any polar bears on board. The blankets provided in economy and premium economy cabins are usually paper-thin, so a warm layer of clothing can make a big difference.

Movies

If you do a lot of travel, bear in mind that airlines typically only change the in-flight movie selection on a monthly basis. Although there can appear to be an incredibly wide selection available, most people only enjoy a few genres, and the selection within genres is down to a mere handful. If you watch two or three of those on a long-haul flight, it doesn’t take long to run out of appealing options – especially on a multi-leg trip.

For this reason, I keep my iPad loaded up with a good selection of movies, TV shows, audiobooks, ebooks and music so that I have plenty of choice of entertainment both while flying and while away. If you’re in the UK, the iPlayer app on the iPad allows you to download shows for 30 days.

At-seat power

Of course, if you need to use your own device, either for entertainment or to work, power can be handy. Even an iPad, with its genuine 10-hour battery life, can be challenged if you’re using it en-route to the airport, at the airport, on board and en-route to your hotel at the far end.

Virtually all airlines have at-seat power in business class. The better ones have them in premium economy too, though sometimes shared between two passengers (another reason to get an empty seat next to you if you can!). Only the very latest aircraft models have power sockets in economy, and even then it’s an option that not all airlines will take up.

At-seat power arrangements vary. On the latest aircraft, it’s a standard power socket for that airline’s home country, so a standard international power adapter is all you need. On older aircraft, it’s usually an airline power socket. This is similar to the 12v power socket in a car, but not quite identical. So to use the power on most airliners, you need an airline power adapter.

Airline power adapters are big, heavy and clunky things (though the latest ones are better than they used to be). However, as challenging as they are when trying to fit them into what little space is left in your hand-baggage, they are very handy.

Don’t, though, buy them at airport shops: you can easily end up paying double the going rate anywhere else.

Finally, some airlines offer USB power sockets. These are fine for tablets and phones, but not for laptops – so when an airline advertises at-seat power, it’s worth checking what they actually mean by that.

Dealing with annoying passengers

If you haven’t managed to get an empty seat next to you, having a random travel companion can occasionally be delightful. I’ve had some really enjoyable conversations on flights with complete strangers. One even invited me to dinner on landing.

But sometimes you can end up next to That Guy. Someone who loves the sound of their own voice, and just won’t stop talking; someone trying to sell you something, from their company to their particular brand of god; or someone who just complains about everything.

Apparently you’re not allowed to actually kill them, even in international airspace. It’s therefore good to have a couple of alternative tactics available.

Most will take the hint if you start reading a book or working on a laptop. But some don’t. Headphones are your ultimate defence.

Sleeping

For most long-haul flights, you’re going to want to sleep for at least some of the journey – though see Minimising jetlag as it’s not always a good idea.

In the best of cases, you’ll be in business class with a lay-flat bed, real pillow and Egyptian cotton duvet filled with finest duck down. In the worst of cases, you’ll be in economy surrounded by drunks and babies. It’s good to be prepared.

An eye-mask and earplugs can help a lot. You’ll generally get these in amenity packs on full-service airlines, but the quality is often poor. Getting a decent eye-mask is a small but worthwhile investment, and I personally find that wax earplugs are highly effective while foam ones are all but useless. If you have a lot of problems with noise, you can even get custom-molded earplugs, either standalone ones or as earphones.

I’ve already recommended decent headphones in Gadgets for travel, which are more comfortable than airline freebies, have better sound quality and far better sound isolation. Unless I have a flatbed seat in business class, I generally leave my headphones on when I sleep, as they reduce noise. Noise-cancelling ones do an even better job.

I also recommended a sleep app, which I personally use when flying as well as in the hotel.

Cold is my enemy when it comes to remaining asleep on a plane, hence a decent sweater – and I usually try to steal an extra blanket. Yet another benefit of an empty seat next to you.

Finally, a couple of drinks can help you sleep. I’ll generally have a couple of glasses of wine before settling down to sleep. But don’t overdo it: a combination of the reduced air pressure on board, and much drier air, means that the effects of alcohol are amplified. So drink in moderation, and drink plenty of water too, else you’re likely to wake up an hour or so later very thirsty and feeling like hell.

32

"Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

I’m one of the more laid-back guys I know. It takes quite a lot to piss me off, but there are limits – and parents who can’t be bothered to actually be parents are among the more likely people to reveal them.

One flight, there was a mother and son in the seats behind me. The child – who was I guess about five or six – started kicking the back of my seat. This is one of those things that is actually far more irritating than it should be.

I turned around to the mother, smiled and very politely asked her if she would mind asking her child to stop kicking my seat. She completely blanked me.

Ok, it’s a flight from Germany to the UK, so perhaps she doesn’t speak English. So I asked her, in both English and German, whether she spoke English. No response.

Perhaps she’s deaf, I thought. I decided to leave it. But then the kid started doing it again. So this time, I turned around and spoke to him directly. I was again very polite. He stopped for a while, and then started again.

At this point, I took a more direct approach.

“Stop doing that right now.”

He stopped. For about ten minutes. By that time, I’d had enough. I turned around again and repeated my previous instruction, only this time interspersing two extra (and identical) words. At which point the mother miraculously had perfect hearing and perfect English. Well, not perfect English, but English.

The kid didn’t do it again, though.

33

On board health & wellbeing

I covered Protecting your health earlier, but there are two other issues to consider while on board a plane.

Infections

First, in any given chunk of the population, a certain percentage of them are going to have some kind of communicable disease. On a long-haul flight, you’re mostly going to be sharing the same air as a lot of other people – over 500 of them in the case of a typical A380 – for seven plus hours.

The situation isn’t as bad as you might imagine. Planes are constantly drawing in fresh air, pressurising it and then filtering it to a very high standard, with the entire cabin air supply changing around 20 times an hour. But still, put a lot of people in a small space, and airborne infections will circulate.

There are also a number of surface-borne diseases that can be picked up by touching the same surfaces as an infected person. Airliners typically work on tight turnaround schedules, and cleaners are usually on minimum wage, so cleaning standards can be … casual.

Most of the diseases you could pick up on a plane will be minor – coughs, colds and stomach bugs – but even a bad cold can make a business trip tougher and spoil some of the enjoyment of a leisure trip, and flu or worse can completely ruin it. It’s worth taking a few simple precautions against infections.

A simple one is to keep the air nozzle above your seat on the entire flight, even if not fully open. This is drawing in filtered air, so having filtered air flowing into your seat space will push other air away.

However, surfaces are the bigger issue. There have been studies of microbes found on tray tables, seat pockets, entertainment screens and so on, and they don’t make pleasant reading. A very simple precaution you can take is to carry some antiseptic wipes (you may have noticed these on my travel checklist) and wipe down the surfaces around you: tray table, arm-rests, entertainment controls and window blind. Minimise the surfaces you touch in the washrooms too (men have an advantage here).

And yes, you guessed it: yet another reason to want an empty seat next to you.

I don’t get paranoid about infections, but having picked up coughs and colds on several trips, I do think these basic precautions are worthwhile.

Deep-vein thrombosis

The second on-board health risk is deep-vein thrombosis, or DVT. This is a blood-clot that forms in the leg, which can then break off and make its way to either the brain or the lungs. A blood clot in the brain can lead to a stroke, while one in the lungs can lead to a pulmonary embolism.

I can tell you from personal experience that a pulmonary embolism is Not Fun. It has a 30% mortality rate, which can be inconvenient, and if it does’t kill you it is both painful and debilitating for quite some time.

DVTs generally form when you are immobile for significant chunks of time, so being stuck on a plane for many hours makes flights a good candidate.

Fortunately, there’s a simple preventative measure you can take: move regularly. Best practice is to take a walk down the length of the plane every couple of hours. Doing simple exercises at your seat – typically shown on one of the in-flight entertainment channels – can also help.

34

"Broken leg class"

Spending 12 days in hospital with a broken leg, getting out of hospital on day 13 and heading straight to the airport with your leg in plaster to catch a long-haul flight is not a good idea. Especially when flying economy.

At the time I did this, medical researchers knew that it wasn’t a good idea, but the data hadn’t yet filtered down to hospitals and airlines. Or patients.

Broken leg class, though, did turn out to be rather a comfortable way to travel.

I phoned the airline to advise that I would need some assistance, and was given a number to call when I reached the terminal. I called the number from the taxi, and was met at the terminal entrance by an airline rep with a wheelchair. I was wheeled to check-in, checked-in at a spare desk, bypassing the queues, and then wheeled onward to Security.

Barriers were magically opened, and I was again whisked past all the queues.

I was parked by the desk at the departure gate, and pre-boarded – ahead of the first-class passengers. On board, I found I’d been given a row of three seats to myself, and the cabin crew were every bit as attentive as in a typical business class cabin. I spent half the flight trying to think up a way to create an inflatable fake cast and collapsible crutches so that I could travel broken leg class on every flight.

The subsequent DVT and pulmonary embolism was, though, rather less comfortable. When I warn of the dangers of DVTs, you can take my word for it …

35

Minimising jet-lag

Jet-lag hits some people harder than others, but whatever your personal degree of susceptibility, there are some practical steps you can take to minimise the impact.

Some people begin their preparation for a long-haul trip a few days in advance, gradually going to bed earlier or later as appropriate. If you’re flying west, where the local time is earlier, it can help to start going to bed and getting up an hour or two earlier for two or three days beforehand. Sadly, work schedules mean that, for most of us, going to bed & getting up later isn’t usually practical when flying east.

But the principle here is key: minimising jet-lag is all about adjusting to the local timezone as early as possible. If you can’t start doing it a few days ahead, you can at least do it the moment you board the plane.

There are two things you can do here. Start by immediately changing the clocks on all of your devices to the local time at your destination. Ironically, this is harder to do now that most electronic devices set their clocks automatically. Your smartwatch and phone, for example, will typically use GPS to locate themselves, setting their time to the local timezone. Laptops do the same thing, based on location-based IP addresses when they connect to the Internet. You’ll therefore need to switch off the automatic settings before you can manually change the time.

On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > Date & Time and slide off the ‘Set automatically’ switch. On an Android phone, Settings > Date & Time and switch ‘Automatic time zone’ off. On a Mac, click the clock (top right) then Open Date & Time Preferences. Untick the box that says ‘Set time zone automatically.’ On a Windows PC, right-click on the clock then select Adjust date/time > Change time zone and deselect 'Automatically adjust clock for DST' before clicking OK. Once you’ve done this, you can manually select the timezone for each device.

Now whenever you check the time, you’ll be seeing the time at your destination. This simple psychological trick is remarkably effective, and means that you begin your adjustment to the new timezone before you’ve even taken off.

There are a couple of additional things you’ll want to do, one simple, the other more challenging.

The simple thing is to close your window blinds if it’s day where you are now but night at your destination. Our bodies take part of the cues to time of day from light, so you don’t want daylight streaming in if you’re trying to persuade your body that it’s really night.

The tougher challenge is to try to sleep appropriately to your destination time. Overnight flights make this easier, as lights will be turned down low as soon as the meal service is complete, which makes it a lot easier to sleep if you need to. Sleeping on a daytime flight is harder, but the good-quality sleep mask and ear-plugs I recommended earlier do definitely help – as, of course, does finding yourself in business class.

The same is true on arrival at your destination. Do everything you can to persuade your body that this is the ‘real’ time by sleeping or not as appropriate to the destination time.

Flying west is far easier than flying east. For example, flying from London to New York, you are effectively adding five hours to your day. If you can manage it, don’t go to bed until an hour or two before your usual bedtime. By this time, you’ll be pretty tired, so sleeping an hour or two longer shouldn’t be a problem. If you can manage both, you’ll be adjusted overnight.

Flying east is tougher. There you may arrive at what is night for you but morning locally. Here the best plan is to get as much sleep as possible on board the plane so that you can stay awake throughout the day. If you can’t manage that, try at least to wait until the early evening, by which time you’ll likely be exhausted and can sleep through to a sensible waking time.

Some people swear by melatonin, taken 30-120 minutes before sleep. Laws on this vary by country; in the USA, it’s available over the counter, in the UK only by prescription. Personally I’ve never found it necessary.

A couple of words of warning if you do take melatonin. First, many tablets contain ridiculous dosages. 5-10mg is not uncommon, which is many times higher than any naturally-occurring level in your body. It’s best to stick to 1mg, which will mimic more accurately the natural levels generated by your body when it thinks it’s time to sleep.

Second, even when buying low-dosage tablets, you can’t guarantee their accuracy when bought over the counter. In the States, for example, melatonin is sold as a dietary supplement, not as a medication, which allows it to avoid FDA approval. This means that dosage is not strictly controlled the way it is in FDA-regulated medicines. If possible, get it on prescription.

There is an alternative approach to jet-lag I’ve taken for short trips on my own schedule: simply remain on UK time throughout!

This isn’t practical for business trips, obviously, where you have to go to meetings, but I’ve done it a few times for short leisure trips to the USA: getting up very early, going to bed very early. Then when you return home, there’s no adjustment to make.

Of course, it can be challenging on leisure trips too, where you probably want to eat out at night, and I love to see the sun go down from a tall building. Even where it works with your schedule, it can still be tough, as all the clues around you – daylight and clocks – will contradict your assumed time (see the next chapter on Getting a good night’s sleep). But if you can manage it, it works surprisingly well for a 3-4 day trip.

36

Getting a good night's sleep

Rule 1 of getting a good night’s sleep while travelling is to make sure all of your noise-making devices are switched off at night – especially your phone! Otherwise, you are extremely likely to be woken by someone from home calling or messaging you at what would be a perfectly appropriate time in your home city, but which is a decidedly inappropriate one where you are now.

It’s best to put your phone and tablet into Do Not Disturb mode rather than just muting them, otherwise they may vibrate when they receive a call or other alert, and that can wake you just as easily as a ring or text tone.

If you’re not used to doing this (I do it at home too), you may need to scribble yourself a note to remind yourself to switch off DND the next morning – otherwise you’ll be missing calls, messages and reminders for the rest of the day!

Remember to do the same to your laptop. Most of us have messaging apps installed on them these days, and a Skype call at 4am is no more welcome than a phone call.

Finally, do the same to your hotel phone. Most have a Do Not Disturb function, otherwise you can simply unplug them from the wall socket.

Put the Do Not Disturb sign on your hotel room door. But I’ve learned the hard way that housekeeping staff can either totally ignore these, or assume they’ve been left there by mistake if you need to sleep late (after a failed initial attempt to adjust to local time, for example). If you’re going to be sleeping at unusual times, I recommend letting the front desk know and asking them to ensure that you’re not disturbed.

If you need to sleep when it’s light, do everything possible to block out the light – there is nothing more certain to wake you than a shaft of sunlight hitting your eyes, and it will do so through the smallest possible slit.

Some hotels are better equipped than others for this. The better hotels have both pull-down blackout blinds and curtains. If so, use both. If there are curtains only, a little care in ensuring there are no gaps can make all the difference.

If you can’t completely block the light, do everything you can to ensure the sun can’t shine directly into your eyes. One thing I’ve often done in this situation is to make up my bed the ‘wrong’ way around, so the sun will hit the back of my head, not my face. Some hotel beds are even wide enough to sleep sideways if that will put the windows behind you. Alternatively, you may be able to move your bed, though this can be a bit tiresome as housekeeping will invariably move it back again, leaving each of you mentally cursing the other.

Light is one enemy of sleep, temperature is another. In hot climates, you’re generally more likely to sleep with the air conditioning running at a constant pace than you are to sleep through night sweats if you turn it off. In genuinely cold climates, you’ll usually get appropriate bedding in the better hotels, but not always in budget ones. This is the reason I have a thermal undershirt on my packing list.

But don’t assume this will only be needed in cold countries. Warm ones can actually be the worst, as the temperature can still drop dramatically at night, and in general those countries are better configured for heat than cold. Hotel rooms, for example, invariably have air systems which are much better at cooling than they are at heating. So that thermal shirt can come in useful even in the Middle-East.

37

"The lonely bean"

I’m normally extremely reliable when it comes to silencing all my technology at night, but even I can get tired and forgetful. Which was why, one February morning, a colleague phoned me at 10am. In London. Which was 5am where I was, in Chicago.

After a rather blurred conversation, I realised there was no chance I was going to fall asleep again, so I had a shower, got dressed and headed out for a walk. My hotel was a short walk from one of my favourite sculptures in the world: the Bean, more properly known as Cloud Gate.

I’m not the only person who loves it, so it’s normally extremely crowded, but I figured that at this time on a morning where the temperature was well below zero I might find it relatively deserted. I was right. By the time I got there, a little short of 6am, it was completely deserted. There was me and a security guard.

I got some great photos of a sight almost never seen: the bean without a single human being in shot. It was worth it – but I didn’t make that mistake again!

38

10-word phrasebook

I’m utterly hopeless at languages. I did have the world’s worst French teacher at school, who couldn’t even control the class, much less teach, but I’ve since tried every language course under the sun with no luck. I even tried the Michel Thomas Method – the one that works when all others have failed. It was better than anything else I’d tried, but it still didn’t help much.

At one time, I was in Paris once a week. For years, I visited Germany twice a month. Nothing made any difference: I still didn’t get much beyond 7-800 words in either language.

But I was determined not to be the stereotypical Brit who simply speaks English louder, and came up with a rule for myself. Every place I visited, I had to be able to say ten things in the local language:

Hello

Goodbye

Yes

No

Please

Thank you

One of those (combine it with ‘please’ and you can order anything you can point to)

Toilet

Airport

Taxi

(I used to include ‘Do you speak English?’ before concluding that this was redundant.)

Amazing as it may sound, with just those ten things I’ve been greeted with smiles everywhere.

This is not because they’ve been grinning at my pronunciation. I actually have the worst of all possible combinations: no facility whatsoever with languages, but I’m an extremely good mimic. Once I’ve been in a country for a couple of days, accent-wise I can pass for a local. Which means that I quite often get a whole stream of words in reply, of which I’m doing well if I recognise one.

No, the reason I was greeted so warmly, I realised, was that most Brits – and it’s true of Americans too – don’t even bother with that much. Simply by saying hello and thank you in their own language, I’d made some tiny effort.

Most of the time, I just Google the phrases ahead of time – but there have been a few times when a silly schedule has meant I’ve instead sat one of the cabin crew down at a quiet moment in the flight and had them teach me. Even if the first crew member you ask doesn’t speak the language, they will be able to send over someone who does.

Do check the pronunciation of your phrases. YouTube is an easy way to do so. But if you’ve followed my advice in Apps for travel and installed the Google Translate app, you’ll be able to have the app teach you.

I’m fortunate in that my mother tongue is the most widely-spoken language in the world. Almost everywhere I’ve ever been, there have been people who speak at least a little English. But for the exceptions, and to fill the gaps, the Google Translate app is a brilliant way to communicate, effectively giving you a simultaneous interpreter in your pocket.

39

"One of those, please"

I was on a business trip to Beijing with a new colleague. I’d been to China several times before, while it was her first trip.

We went for lunch in a little backstreet place where you ordered at the counter and they then brought the food to your table. I asked her what she wanted, then went to the counter to order the six or seven dishes we wanted between us. As is common in some areas of China, there were realistic-looking plastic models of the dishes they offered.

Our table was just close enough to the counter that my colleague could hear I was speaking Chinese, but not so close she could hear what I was saying. I returned, and she congratulated me on speaking Chinese so well. I was confused for a moment, then realised she thought she’d heard me ordering each of the dishes we wanted.

I had to explain to her that the entire conversation on my part had been ‘Hello’ followed by ‘One of those, please’ repeated for each dish, followed by ‘Thank you.’

40

Getting around

I have one exception to my hand-baggage-only policy: a Brompton folding bicycle. If you don’t already own one, let me see whether I can sell you on the concept. If not, I’ll talk about more conventional transport shortly …

Folding bicycle

With so little free time on business trips, I didn’t want to waste half of it on underground transit systems or stuck in traffic in taxis, so one thing that has made a huge difference has been taking my bike with me. It folds up into a space smaller than a typical small suitcase.

Of course, I could hire a bicycle on arrival, and do that sometimes, but there’s a special joy in having your own bike with you. Rental bikes are usually heavy, clunky things, with little or no luggage capacity – and you’ve got to find a docking station for it every time you want to go into a building.

My bike is very nippy, carries everything I might need in the course of the day, and has both GPS and camcorder on the handlebars – allowing me to navigate an unfamiliar city with ease – and also record clips to be able to relive the ride later. I never have to worry about finding a place to leave it, because it goes inside with me wherever I go.

Bromptons are also great conversation-starters with locals. While they are pretty much the default London commuter bike, and are popular in a handful of other cities around the world, most people elsewhere have never seen one before. Every time I fold it up to take it into a coffee shop with me, I gather an audience. Inside a coffee shop or restaurant, everyone wants to ask about it. There’s no better way to get chatting to people.

Though technically a Brompton plus my normal hand-baggage would be more than allowed, the fact that most of my business travel was made business class helped enormously. Airlines can be remarkably friendly and helpful when it comes to their frequent business class passengers.

I didn’t want to risk an unfriendly check-in person, however, so what I usually did was to ask at check-in to gate-check it – taking it right to the aircraft door like a pushchair, and then having it placed into the hold. Once I was through Security, I’d simply remove the gate-check tag and take it on board. It fitted into some overhead lockers, and otherwise into one of the wardrobes.

My only issue in those days was regional jets. These have much smaller lockers than conventional airliners, and little to no wardrobe space. There I would gate-check it and simply cross my fingers! With those, though, I was usually able to speak to the baggage handler and watch where they put it.

These days, however, my business class flying days are mostly behind me. I don’t want to risk it being refused at the door and consigned to the hold unprotected, so I check it in as hold baggage inside a case made for the purpose: a B&W Foldon case (UK: http://amzn.to/1Mi19Lf, US: http://amzn.to/1QqEK2a). I take a Brompton bag as my laptop bag, so that I have a bag to use when I’m there.

Some people go one step further, and take a bike trailer so that they can cycle to and from each airport. I must confess I love the idea, but when I’m arriving on a long-haul flight where my timezone adjustment may be less than 100% effective, immediately cycling through traffic in an unfamiliar city is a step too far for me.

While a folding bike may seem an extravagance just as a travel accessory, they are also by far the best way to commute to work – especially in summer, when underground transport systems are both hot and hopelessly overcrowded. The Brompton is by far the best folder, and while the purchase price may cause your eyes to widen a little, compare the cost to an annual season ticket on public transport and it typically pays for itself in less than a year. Here endeth my pitch.

Getting from the airport to your hotel

Whatever forms of transport you may use once you’re settled-in to your destination, when you’re tired from a long-haul flight, you may decide to treat yourself to the easy option of a taxi for the journey to the hotel, even on a leisure trip. I’ve done that quite a few times.

In most countries, there are just a couple of things to watch out for here. The first is to make sure that a taxi really is the best way to make the journey. There are some destinations where the airport is a long way from the city, and the traffic is horrendous – while there’s an express train service that will whisk you straight to the city centre (where you can pick up a taxi to your hotel) in half the time and for a lot less money. Again, do your research beforehand.

If you do decide to take a taxi, make sure that you are taking an official one. These are – in most places – licensed, and their fares are regulated. You can still get occasional rogue ones, so it’s worth asking them for an estimate of the fare before you get in, but in general you’re going to be paying the standard rate for the city.

It’s not uncommon to be approached by someone in Arrivals offering you a car service into the city. Never fall for this: they are touts paid to lure people into unlicensed, uninsured, unregulated cars whose drivers will charge whatever they can get away with.

Another option is shared cars/minibuses. Most airports have these, and they can be a reasonable option for a leisure trip where you’re too tired to be bothered messing around finding your own way there but don’t want to pay for a taxi. How long the journey takes is pretty random – in the case of a minibus, it can be dropping people off at as many as seven or eight different hotels. If yours happens to be the nearest, you’ll get there almost as quickly as a taxi (just a little more hanging around at the start waiting for everyone to arrive). If yours is the furthest hotel, the zigzag journey can be very slow, but at least it’s door-to-door. If you can’t find one, ask at the airport Information desk.

Metro systems

For those without bicycles, there are those who are extremely vocal in arguing for the use of public transport over taxis, arguing that you are experiencing the city as a local and will have the opportunity to engage in conversation.

Personally, I’m a little on the fence on that one. Granted there are some differences in the trains, carriages and stations. In some cases, like the Moscow Metro and the Blue Line in Stockholm (dubbed the world’s longest art gallery) offer quite spectacular views in their own right. I would also argue that you can’t really claim to have visited New York without experiencing the metro there. So I’d certainly suggest including at least one metro journey to any new city, but in most cities I’m not convinced that being in a tunnel in one metro system looks markedly different to being in a tunnel in any other metro system.

Some metros are overground rather than underground, which is certainly a more pleasant way to travel, though being above street level it’s still not the same as being on the streets themselves.

As for conversations with locals, I’d certainly like to be a fly on the wall (or window) when someone attempts to strike up a conversation on the London tube. Yes, there are places where you can do so, but staring at one’s smartphone in silence is the norm in most cities I’ve visited.

In most cities, metro systems are easy to navigate once you know the station you want to get to. Even if you don’t speak a word of the language, once you know where you are and where you’re going, it’s just a question of picking up a map at the station and following the coloured lines.

There are, though, some exceptions. Maps can be harder to read where the local language uses a non-Latin alphabet. Tokyo can be challenging, for example, with lots of densely-packed Kanji. And Moscow stations have no on-platform maps to indicate which direction is which, so I took to just jumping on the first train that came and then checking the name of the next station to find out whether or not I was going in the right direction.

Both Google Maps and Apple Maps are gradually rolling out transit directions in their respective apps. If the city you are visiting isn’t included in one, it’s worth checking the other. Bear in mind my warnings in Apps for travel about data charges, and there will often be no data coverage underground anyway, so use these to plan your journey, taking screen grabs to consult en-route, rather than using them for live route-finding.

Finally, and again as recommended in Apps for travel, there may be a local city app that will help you find your way around.

Buses

Buses are a distinct improvement over underground metros, allowing you to actually see the city you’re travelling around. Bus systems can, however, be harder to navigate even with an app, and are often not a particularly fast or direct way of getting from A to B. Which is fine on a leisurely trip where it’s about the journey as much as the destination, but less practical when you’re trying to squeeze a lot into a short time.

Uber

I’m therefore something of an Uber fan in cities where the service is available. Because both route and fare are calculated by an app, you have none of the worries that a local taxi driver is ripping you off by taking an indirect route or charging above the going rate, nor do you have to mess around with cash. Simply use the app to call a car, get in and get out at the other end.

You have all the plus points of a bus in terms of seeing the city as you travel through it, but with none of the drawbacks. I’ve also found Uber drivers are usually happy to act as local tour guides, talking about their city and recommending additional places to see.

With most taxi drivers, I carry a map and show them where I want to go. In countries that don’t use a Latin alphabet, like China, I’ve found it’s helpful to get the hotel receptionist to write out the name of the destination and the street – though there have been times when I’ve needed to rely instead on my camera …

Walking

Finally, if the place you’re going to isn’t too far away, and you have the time, walking can be a great way to get around. In Manhattan, for example, walking is definitely the preferred way to get around. Again, offline maps help, with screengrabs from Google Maps as plan B. Do read the Safety in unfamiliar locations chapter, though.

41

"Can I help you?"

My previous trips to Tokyo had all been on business, and I’d always taken a taxi from the airport. On my first leisure trip, and picking up my own tab in one of the world’s most expensive cities, I decided that taking the metro to my hotel would be a better idea.

I’d looked up the nearest metro station to my hotel, so figured I was all set. Just pick up a map at the airport station and away I’d go.

Problem one: there were no maps available at the airport station. I wasn’t deterred, I figured I’d just look at the map on the platform.

Problem two: there was no map on the platform. Or, rather, there was, but only for that one line. I knew my hotel was on a different line, but the platform map didn’t admit that line existed, not even – so far as I could make out – where the interchange might be.

I was studying the map with an obviously perplexed expression on my face when a local guy walked up to me and, in perfect English, asked “Can I help you?”.

He wasn’t, it turned out, staff – he was just a guy being friendly to a lost tourist. He told me where to change and drew a little diagram for me, with the name of the interchange station and the name of the station before it.

That degree of helpfulness was one I found mirrored during the rest of my stay. Any time I asked directions, they would typically walk me to the door if it was close, or take me to the junction and point if not.

Ever since that time, I’ve aimed to be as helpful to Japanese tourists as they were to me.

42

"My camera speaks fluent Japanese"

In Tokyo, I was getting around by cab and asking the hotel receptionist to write my destination in Kanji so I merely had to show it to the taxi driver. That worked fine right up until a friend recommended that I get up early to watch people doing Tai Chi at sunrise in The People’s Park.

I needed to be there at 5am, and I realised when I got up that the hotel desk wouldn’t be staffed then. These days, I’d just use the Google Translate app, but that didn’t exist then. So a little ingenuity was called for.

I visited Google Translate on the web, got the translated text on the screen (which of course I had no idea how to pronounce) and took a photo of my laptop screen. I then hailed a cab and showed them the photo on the LCD screen on my camera. Sorted.

43

Safety in unfamiliar locations

I’m a confident traveller, and whether by luck or good judgement, I’ve never been a victim of crime while travelling.

It’s definitely not good judgement in terms of where I’ve walked. I like nothing better than wandering the backstreets wherever I go, and have done so in places like Jo’burg, Delhi and Casablanca without any problems. But while there may be some luck involved, I think there are some other factors at play, so these are my eight tips for keeping you and your property safe while still being free to explore.

Don’t carry more than you need

Realistically, having your pockets picked or bag snatched is far more likely than any kind of violent crime – and you can give yourself a significant degree of protection from these possibilities by simply limiting the amount of stuff you carry.

Start with your wallet. Remove any cards you won’t need to use that day, and put them in the hotel safe. In most cases, that’s going to leave you with two cards at most: one business, one personal. And unless you’re going to be miles from anywhere, don’t carry more cash than you’ll need that day. You can always top up at an ATM if needed. Then in the worst case of someone taking your wallet, they’ll get a day’s spending money and one or two cards.

Similarly, if you’re taking a bag, empty out anything you won’t need that day. Granted that still typically leaves me carrying an expensive camera and an iPad, but with only three things to look after – those plus my wallet – it means I don’t have to worry about guarding lots of pockets and compartments. Limiting the number of things you carry also makes it much less likely that you’ll lose something or accidentally leave anything behind in a coffee shop or restaurant.

In terms of the things you’re leaving behind in your hotel room, there are a number of things you can do. The hotel room safe is the obvious one. If you look on YouTube, the locks are rather worryingly easy to defeat, but in most cases you’re only looking to defeat a snatch thief who darts in and out while housekeeping has left the door open, so personally I’m happy enough with these.

With larger items, hiding them is a good plan. Don’t put anything in obvious places. For example, the first place a thief is going to look for a laptop is in the desk drawers. Slide it well under the bed, or tuck it into the spare blankets in the wardrobe.

In an apartment rather than a hotel, you have many more places to hide things. I’ll typically bury a laptop beneath sheets or blankets. If I have to leave a DSLR behind, I mess up the bedclothes and tuck it under those. I’ve done both of those things habitually for years, and did on one occasion get to put it to the test: an apartment in Tenerife was burgled, and the thief took some money from my bag but didn’t find either laptop or camera.

Another approach you can take is a device called a PacSafe. This is a steel-reinforced net that you wrap tightly around a bag and then lock to something immobile like a radiator pipe. It’s a little bulky when travelling hand-baggage-only, but I have used one on trips where I knew I’d have to leave a bag with valuables in relatively insecure places, like non-overlooked apartments.

Don’t stand out

Ok, there are places where many of us have no chance of convincingly passing for a local, but what you want to avoid at all costs is looking like a stereotypical tourist. Tourists tend to be carrying expensive toys, and have plenty of cash. They are also often too busy looking at the sights to notice what someone is doing behind them, so obvious tourists are targets.

Start with clothing. You don’t have to go native, but – business requirements permitting – dress for the climate and you’ll at least be able to pass for an ex-pat or regular visitor to the city. A camera can be a bit of a give-away, so I tend to keep that out of sight if I have any concerns about an area.

I don’t go in for specialist travel clothing very much, but inside pockets that zip are worth having. However alert you are in general, it’s inevitable in an unfamiliar city that you have more things to distract you – including the sights you’ve set out to see!

Signal confidence

There have been a number of studies showing that your body language can make a big difference to the likelihood of you ending up as a victim of violent crime. I’m convinced that part of the reason I’ve been fortunate in my travels is that I walk confidently: I’m alert, but not nervous.

I do generally walk with a camera, only tucking it out of sight when I consider the environment makes that a good idea, but there are plenty of people who do that in their home city. When I stop to take photos, I try to ensure I’m not oblivious to the people around me. Again, carrying as little as possible helps a lot because if I’m using my camera then I know I only need make sure my iPad and wallet are safe.

Get local advice

If you want to know where is and isn’t safe to go, ask your hotel or local business contacts. They can also alert you to common methods used by thieves in the area.

In Rome, for example, a very popular method of bag-snatching is to swoop in alongside the pavement (sidewalk, for Americans) on a scooter, slash the strap of the victim’s bag and then ride off with it before the victim can react. The whole thing is over in seconds. Knowing this, taking simple precautions like walking on the inside of pavements and keeping your bag on the side away from the road can dramatically reduce the chances of falling victim to that method.

At the same time, treat local advice as data rather than as diktat. No hotel or business partner wants to see their guest fall victim to crime, so they can tend to the over-protective. For example, when I told my hotel in Jo’burg that I wanted to visit Soweto and asked them to arrange a car for me, the moment they heard that my intention was to wander the streets there they told me it was too dangerous and declined to organise the car. I had to make separate arrangements. More on that in We'll be six feet behind you …

At the same time, I’m not stupid about it. For example, while I felt fine wandering the streets in Soweto in daylight with a driver keeping a close eye on me, I wasn’t about to do the same at night without company. Common sense goes a long way.

Obey the law

Just as you don’t want trouble with criminals, equally you don’t want to run into problems with the police. Laws vary wildly around the world, and what may be perfectly acceptable at home may be an extremely serious criminal offence in the country you’re visiting. Enjoying a glass of wine in a country where alcohol is forbidden, for example.

Getting arrested for breaking the law is never going to be a fun experience anywhere, far less so in a country where you don’t even speak the language. Do a little Googling to familiarise yourself with the key things foreigners need to know. Again, your government’s travel advisory website will be a good place to start – and there’s no harm at all in checking both sites below, not just your own.

UK: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice

US: http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country.html

Be alert to scams

Just as thieves like to target overseas visitors, so too do confidence tricksters – and for much the same reasons.

A former work colleague managed to get targeted by scammers twice within minutes of reaching his Moscow hotel. First, someone ran along the pavement and ‘accidentally’ bumped into him, spilling apparent currency all over the pavement. The ‘police’ then arrived to ‘arrest’ the guy with the cash and suggested that my colleague was involved. A bribe was of course solicited in return for letting him go. He managed to extract himself from that one only to have another ‘police’ officer shortly afterwards demand to see his passport and threaten to arrest him for not having it with him. That time, an attempt was made to levy an ‘on the spot fine.’

Again, blending in as much as possible makes it far less likely you’ll be targeted.

Google for common scams in your destination, as some are quite country-specific. In the Philippines, for example, there is the bullet trick. Someone distracts you at the airport while you are still landside on your return journey, then someone else slips a bullet into your hand-baggage or a pocket. This will be ‘discovered’ at Security, and you will be asked to pay a hefty fine else be arrested as a suspected terrorist. The team who plant the bullet and the (genuine) security official split the proceeds. To protect yourself, keep pockets and bags tightly closed, don’t let anyone get too close to you, and be alert for distraction techniques. If you do find yourself stopped for being in possession of a bullet, demand to see the police, who are well aware of the scam.

Some scams prey on people’s fears, while others appeal to their greed. In many countries, for example, you’ll be approached and offered the opportunity to exchange currency unofficially, being quoted a much better rate than the standard one. If you’re foolish enough to accept, the best outcome is that you are given counterfeit currency in exchange, the worst one is that you’re led down a quiet street, stabbed and robbed. Of course, if you follow the advice in The cheapest way to get cash, you won’t have any currency to exchange anyway.

Similarly, if anyone offers you gold or precious stones at a bargain price, walk away – no matter how convincing a story they have concocted!

Really much of the advice I could offer here just boils down to: if it sounds like it could be dodgy, it probably is.

Stick to ATMs at major banks

Card-skimmers are in heavy use in some cities, and there are even entire fake ATMs. The best advice here is to stick to ones inside major international banks and hotel chains wherever possible. Apply the same precautions you would at home: look for signs of tampering, and cover the keypad when you enter your PIN.

Avoid ATMs inside small shops or fuel stations.

Use your common sense

Much of staying safe is just a question of using your common sense. Don’t walk around quiet areas with expensive items on display, whether it’s technology or jewellery. Don’t flash large amounts of cash. In short, don’t make yourself an appealing target.

Common sense is also a good supplement to local advice when it comes to being alert to the type of risks you may be facing. A quiet road at night puts you at risk of robbery, which is why I save my backstreet wandering for daylight hours, while a very busy tourist area in the daytime means that pickpocketing is a far greater risk.

So, behave accordingly. Don’t stop to look something up on your iPad in a backstreet, and don’t wander around with your wallet easily accessible in a crowded area.

Finally, do your own risk analysis. Just because I’m happy wandering backstreets doesn’t mean you should be. If doing so would make you nervous, then (a) you’re not going to enjoy the experience and (b) your nervous body-language makes you a target. Stay in your own comfort-zone.

44

"We'll be six feet behind you"

I mentioned spending an afternoon wandering around the backstreets of Soweto while I was in Jo’burg, and my hotel refusing to arrange a car once they learned that was my intention (they’d initially assumed I just wanted to do the usual tourist thing and be shown Nelson Mandela’s former home and so on from the comfort of the car).

I found a local company who would provide a car and guide for me. He too was used to the normal tour, so when I said I wanted to just see some ordinary streets, he had no real idea where to take me, and I took to just looking around, pointing and saying “Let’s try there.”

The first street, my driver was extremely nervous about me getting out. As I walked down the street, he literally drove the car six feet behind me the entire length of the street. The next area, he drove a little further back, and by the end of the afternoon he was content just to keep me in sight.

As I say, backstreets may not be your thing, but for me it was the highlight of the trip. I was meeting local people who rarely saw a white face, and kids who rarely saw a camera and – as soon as I took a photo of a group of them and showed it to them – were all very keen to be photographed. I got the name and address of one of the parents and posted a bunch of prints to her after I got home. I suspect that was the highlight of their week too.

45

The cheapest way to get cash

The cost of getting local currency can range from the very reasonable to the extortionate.

The very worst way to get cash is a currency exchange at the destination airport. Those places play on the fact that anyone who gets cash at that point thinks they don’t have any choice – needing it for a taxi from the airport – and probably has no idea what the rate should be because only the most inexperienced travellers ever patronise such places. At best, you’re going to get a very poor rate with very high charges; at worst, you’re going to be completely ripped-off.

If you do ever find yourself in that situation – needing cash for a taxi and not having any on you – just ask the taxi driver to stop at the ATM of a major bank en-route.

Second-worst is a currency exchange counter at your home airport. Those will be properly regulated, but the laws in most countries still allow them to get away with ripoff rates and commissions so long as both are clearly displayed. Caveat emptor.

The cheapest method is just to withdraw cash at a local ATM using your normal debit card. Always a debit card, never a credit card: the latter usually have high charges and no interest-free period for cash withdrawals.

Carry some US dollars

Whatever the official currency, US dollars are widely accepted in many countries around the world – and often at a better rate than you’d get paying in the local currency, as many prefer dollars. I tend to keep $100-200 in my travel wallet.

Credit cards designed for travellers

But the best deal, and definitely worthwhile for frequent travellers, is to avoid cash wherever possible and use a card specifically designed for travellers. In the UK, for example, the Halifax Clarity card guarantees you an exchange rate with no loading at all (you get the same rate banks charge each other) and no charges for foreign currency transactions. Set up a direct debit to pay it off in full each month and you’re sorted.

But do remember that it’s a credit card: never use it to withdraw cash, or you’ll pay a hefty rate of interest from day one.

46

Buying things overseas

I have extremely fond memories of the days when a combination of big international price differentials and a strong pound meant you got real bargains when buying gadgets from places like Hong Kong, and even the USA. Prices of some consumer electronics products were less than half the UK price, so even after you’d handed over a wodge of tax to the government on your return to Heathrow, you were still well up on the game. Sadly, those days are mostly gone now.

You can still save a lot of money on some purchases – clothing, for example – but care is needed to ensure you really are getting the bargain you think you are.

Research

You need to do your research, to find out whether something genuinely is cheaper. For example, if you compare the prices in the Apple Stores for UK and USA, a Brit visiting New York could easily think they could save a fortune by buying there. The reality is slightly different.

Apple’s US prices don’t include sales tax, because those vary by state. UK prices, in contrast, do include our sales tax – VAT – because that applies throughout the country. Take the 11-inch MacBook Air for example. At the time of writing, UK pricing starts from £749, which is (again, at the time of writing) around $1140. In the States, however, that same base-level machine costs just $899 – a big saving!

But there are two problems with our sums. First, when you go to pay for your MacBook Air in a New York store, they will add 8.875% sales tax, bringing the cost to $978 – or £643. And no, you can’t claim back the sales tax when you leave the USA.

Still a worthwhile saving, you may think, but the second problem hits when you land back in London. There, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs will smile pleasantly and present you with a bill for £128 VAT. So your total cost is £771 – or £22 more than you’d have paid if you’d bought it in the UK!

Now, if a little freelance tax evasion doesn’t trouble your conscience (in which case, don’t ever complain about companies who avoid tax perfectly legally when you’re willing to break the law to do so), you may be thinking ‘How will Customs know if I sneak it back into the UK in my luggage?’. Throw away all the packaging, and they won’t be able to tell that you didn’t take it out there with you. And anyway, how many people get stopped?

The counter question to this is: do you feel lucky, punk? Most Customs officers are very good at their job. Their entire job, 40 hours a week, is spotting people who seem a little shifty, a little nervous, pulling them politely to one side and having a little rummage through their luggage.

A quick serial number check will typically reveal the country of origin, but with your MacBook Air they don’t even need to trouble themselves with that: the US keyboard is an instant giveaway.

Happily, my own interactions in the red channel have been more entertaining – stories we’ll get to shortly.

Fake products

The other issue, with some products, is the risk of not getting what you paid for. Counterfeit products are extremely common in some countries, and the more expensive the item, the more convincing the fakes tend to be.

Some products are virtually guaranteed to be fake if bought anywhere other than from official outlets. Swiss watches are an obvious example. Not only are there very cheap and obvious knock-offs, but there are also extremely close copies that are so convincing only an expert can tell them apart. Do a YouTube search on ‘fake vs real Rolex’ to see many examples.

Designer clothing and bags are another very obvious one, and again the very best fakes can be hard to spot unless you know exactly what to look for.

Pirated media is also an entire industry in some countries. In Thailand, for example, you’ll find music, films and software for sale in all kinds of unlikely places. Some of the packaging is extremely crude, with no attempt made to pass it off as the real thing, but the more sophisticated operations have packaging that looks real even down to convincing holograms.

Again, even if the moral issues don’t concern you, you simply have no way of knowing what you’re buying. The software may or may not pass activation checks. The movie may turn out to have been filmed on a camcorder from the back of a cinema. Or the DVD may be completely blank or have completely different content. There’s just no way to tell.

Some counterfeit products can even be dangerous. Supposed designer sunglasses fitted with lenses without UV protection, for example, can damage your eyesight.

Bottom-line: if you’re after branded products, buy them from an official dealer, otherwise you stand a very high chance of ending up with a fake.

47

"That then, this now"

Back in the days when consumer electronics in Hong Kong were literally half the UK price, I arrived there with a long shopping list – both for myself and several friends and colleagues.

I was there for a fortnight, and my first opportunity to have a wander along Nathan Road – an area noted for its gadget shops – was on my first day there. I took my shopping list from store to store, each one vying to beat the best prices I’d been offered by their competitors, and finally shook hands on a deal with one of the larger independent stores.

As I didn’t really want lots of boxes littering up my hotel room for a fortnight, I asked the manager if I could return on my last day, when I was on the way to the airport, and buy everything then, with him honouring the prices we’d negotiated. I was assured this would be no problem.

You can, of course, see this coming – but I was young and naive. When I returned, stopping off on the way to the airport, the prices had magically increased significantly. I pointed to the piece of paper where he’d written out all the prices we’d agreed.

“That then, this now.”

I had no time then to begin the door-to-door process again. The prices were still very good – just not as good as they’d been a fortnight earlier.

48

"Sir ..."

I was taking part in a management training course. One of the themes we were exploring was how people relate to rules, and being told what to do, and we were given some homework to carry out in the week between two sessions. The homework was to obey the law, to the letter.

I’m a reasonably law-abiding guy, but will confess to considering the spirit of the law more important that the letter, and it was a very interesting exercise to see just how often most of us do things that are technically illegal, whether it’s feeding a meter or employing a somewhat liberal interpretation of the speed limit on a nice stretch of open road.

One of the days between the two sessions, I had a meeting in Rome. It was a same-day trip – first flight out, there for a few hours, back in the evening. The meeting was unexpectedly efficient, and I had a little time to spare, so wandered the local shops and found a rather lovely small handbag which I bought for my partner. It wasn’t expensive, costing just a few pounds more than the limit on gifts that could be imported into the UK without paying any VAT or duty.

I confess that I might normally have taken the pragmatic view that it was just a few quid, and they likely wouldn’t want to bother with the paperwork, but I was obeying the letter of the law. I went into the red channel at Heathrow, showed them the bag and the receipt and said I’d like to pay the duty on it.

“Don’t worry, sir, that’s fine.”

He smiled and waited for me to leave. This felt very silly, but I stood my ground.

“Um, this is going to sound odd, I know, but I’d really prefer to pay the duty.”

The Customs official clearly still thought I hadn’t understood.

“No, sir, it’s fine. You don’t need to pay anything. You can go.”

For a Brit, making a fuss is somewhere up there with mass-murder, so I was really cringing as I persisted. For a minute or two we had an awkward conversation where he kept trying to make me go away and I kept trying to pay the two or three quid that was technically due.

I did eventually give in, when he made it very clear the conversation was over. His tone was still extremely polite, and I rather liked the final word.

“Fuck off, sir.”

49

"It's a car roof"

I used to own a classic Porsche. If anyone ever suggests you should do the same, by the way, run very rapidly in the opposite direction: it was a money-pit.

One of the many things that needed to be sorted out was the targa roof, a removable vinyl cover that converted the car into an open-top one. It was very tatty and failed to keep out the rain, a task I consider fairly high up on the list of things I expect a roof to achieve.

Porsche is very good at continuing to manufacture brand new parts for very old cars, but the targa roof was an exception. Every secondhand one I could find seemed to be in similar condition to mine. Which was when someone on a web forum put me onto a California company that made aftermarket replacements, in fibreglass. These were $600, which – in the Porsche scheme of things – felt like an acceptable price for not being rained on.

The problem was when I asked them to quote for shipping to the UK. That would, they informed me a few days later, cost $600 – doubling the cost. The problem, they explained apologetically, was that it was a large item that needed polystyrene packing all around it, making it even bigger. International courier companies treated it as an outsize item and charged accordingly.

Which was when I came up with a cunning plan. I had a business trip coming up in New York a fortnight later, so I asked them to quote for shipping it there. That turned out to be really cheap. So I phoned my airline, gave them the packed dimensions and asked them if that would be allowed as hold baggage. They asked me to hold, then came back and said that it was fine. The plan was coming together.

But there was an additional issue: fibreglass is fairly easily damaged, and my view of baggage handlers is that they are all frustrated demolition derby contestants whose greatest pleasure is to reduce anything on which they lay their hands into the greatest number of component parts. So I asked the airline if they could offer insurance.

That resulted in a longer hold, but they eventually came back and said yes. Not many people used it these days, but you could buy insurance at the airport. They couldn’t give me an exact price, but they thought it would be $20-30. All good.

I phoned my hotel and asked if it was ok if a package arrived a few days before I did, and they said it was fine. My plan was complete.

I’ll gloss over the entertainment involved in finding a car to the airport large enough to carry the roof. I’ll do the same for arranging the insurance at the airport. I’ll say only that it took half an hour, five airline staff, two computer terminals and one incredibly thick manual that looked like it had last been opened in 1972 to calculate that the premium was $4.

I arrived at Heathrow at 7am and waited for my roof to reach baggage claim – which actually turned out to be very quickly as it didn’t fit into the conveyer-belt system and someone brought it direct from the plane in a van.

I put it awkwardly onto a baggage cart, got out the invoice for it and walked into the red channel to find a bored-looking Customs officer.

“Morning, sir, what have we got here?”

“A car roof,” I told him.

I swear he didn’t even blink. Those guys have seen it all.

He had a quick look at the invoice, and sent me on my way. I wasn’t about to start demanding to pay duty.

50

Travel photography

I could write an entire book about travel photography, so I’ll have to force myself to be relatively brief here! It’s also odd to talk about photography without examples (for reasons given in the Foreword), so I recommend viewing my travel slideshow before reading this chapter – the points I make will then make much more sense.

http://www.beautifullytold.com/travel/

Travel photography is a surprisingly controversial topic. There are those who argue that photographing our travels mean we only experience it through a viewfinder. That the camera gets between us and the place we are going to. That carrying a camera marks us out as a tourist and we miss out on the interactions we might have with local people.

That may well be the case for some people, and if it’s true for you then leaving the camera behind is absolutely the right thing to do.

But for me, it’s the opposite. Viewing the world with the eye of a photographer, I notice things I would otherwise miss. Especially beauty in the small things. A flag fluttering in the wind with the sun behind it, for example. Most people walked under it oblivious

And because I like to photograph people as well as places, and generally ask permission to do so, I interact with people a lot more than many.

But even if these things weren’t true, I would still take plenty of photos. I blog my trips, partly to share them with friends, but more so to allow me to relive the experiences later. When I’m sitting in my rocking-chair aged 90, I’ll still be able to enjoy the memories even if I don’t have any by then …

Which camera?

There are different approaches you can take to cameras, each with pros & cons …

Cameraphones

At one end of the scale is a cameraphone. The great advantage of this, of course, is that it’s nothing extra to carry. We tend to have our phone with us at all times, and as the saying goes, the best camera is the one we have with us at the time.

The cameras in high-end smartphones are remarkably good these days. Take a little time to familiarise yourself with its settings, then use it in good light for landscape shots, and you’ll honestly be able to get a decent-quality shot every time.

But cameraphones fall down in two areas:

Shallow depth of field

Low-light shots

Shallow depth of field is pretty much a must for people shots, when you want to isolate the subjects from the background. The tiny distance between the lens and the sensor means that cameraphones can only do this when you get really close to the subject. Fine for flower macros, but not really up to the task for portraits.

The second weakness of cameraphones is for night shots. Their sensors are small, which means low-light images have to be amplified, and get noisy. Top-end cameraphones like the iPhone 6/6s have become remarkably good at addressing this, but none of them come anywhere near replicating the capabilities of a proper camera. Even camera apps that claim to offer long-exposure shots don’t really: they just layer a whole series of short-exposure shots on top of each other, and the results don’t even come close.

DLSR

At the other end of the scale is a high-end DSLR with a good selection of lenses. This will get you the best possible results, allowing you to cope with everything from a wide-open landscape through a night cityscape to portraits. The downside, of course, is the amount of kit you’ll be carrying.

I’ve done trips like this, where I had a complete camera backpack with a couple of bodies, half a dozen lenses and a couple of flashguns. Sure, I was prepared for anything, but it’s a lot of bulk and weight to be carrying – especially in a hot climate. It makes travelling handbaggage-only challenging, and with five figures worth of camera kit on you, there are probably going to be some places you won’t want to go. Discreet it is not.

The compromise option: a high-end compact camera

Personally, I’ve now settled on the middle-ground: a high-end, large-sensor compact camera with a single zoom lens. My own choice is the Sony a6000 with 16-50mm lens, which is the 35mm equivalent of 24-75mm – a range that pretty much does it all for my types of photography. You can add a longer lens if needed.

I call it a compromise option, but these days it really doesn’t feel like one. Large-sensor compacts offer similar low-light performance to DSLRs, they offer genuine manual exposure and reasonably shallow depth of field (f/5.6). Sure, the glass isn’t quite up there with my Nikkor lenses, and there are times when f/2.8 would be nice, but f/5.6 is my go-to aperture for people shots.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that a compact can replace a DSLR for everything. I wouldn’t want to attempt to shoot a wedding with one, for example. But for 99% of travel shots, the Sony gets the job done incredibly well.

The convincer for me was night cityscapes. As I’ve mentioned, I’m a huge blue-hour fan, that light you get 30-40 minutes after sunset. To capture that light, you need a 30-second exposure – something the Sony can do. I'm honestly as happy with its blue-hour performance as with my Nikon D3.

There’s one additional benefit to a high-end compact that only a few of the latest DSLRs match: built-in wifi. If you want to post to Facebook or Twitter, a cameraphone is obviously the most convenient way to do it. But if you want to share a higher-quality photo, a wifi-equipped compact is almost as convenient. I can connect to my Sony a6000 from my iPad, grab the photo or photos, do a quick edit if required and then post to Facebook there-and-then.

One word of warning on this: to keep transfer times short, most cameras send only mid-sized preview images via wifi. Don’t transfer to a tablet and then think you can delete the shot from your camera! This is another good reason to travel with a laptop: back at your hotel, you can transfer the day’s photos via cable, ensure that they are backed-up on an external drive and/or a cloud service like Dropbox – and then format the card in the camera ready for the next day.

Think about what to photograph when

Time of day can have a huge impact on the type of photos it will be possible to take. If there’s a particular view to photograph, then you’ll generally (though not always) want the light behind you. That will dictate the time of day you want to be there.

Conversely, for sunset shots, you’ll want the sun behind the scene you want to photograph – which will determine where you need to be. In the case of a very popular sunset viewing point, like the Bund in Shanghai, you may need to stake out your spot early. In my case, though, my fondness for the blue hour means that many people will have drifted away by then.

If the geography makes it impossible to get the sunset behind the scene you want to photograph, then emergency measures will be required! To get a shot of a dancer with the sun behind in DC’s Reflecting Pool, I had to get up at 4.45am (and the dancer had to get up even earlier as she was driving in from further out) to use something I learned was known as ‘sunrise.’

There may be times when you do or don’t want people in shot. For a close-up of the Sydney Opera House, I didn’t want anyone in shot – so took the photo at midnight, when there were very few people around and where a 30-second exposure effectively removed anyone who walked through.

Conversely, there may be times when you actively want streams of people, when commuting time is ideal (which may vary by country). This was something I wanted for Tokyo’s Shibuya pedestrian crossing, for example.

For my favourite blue-hour cityscape shots, there’s only one possible time of day to take those – which means being in the right place at the right time. An essential part of my own travel research is identifying the tallest building open to the public. That may be an observatory, but is very often a hotel bar. In the latter case, I consider the cost of a glass or two of expensive wine as the admission cost, when it then seems remarkable value for money!

The weather can also make a massive difference. While landscapes can look great with brooding skies, cityscapes to me look best in clear weather. So if you’re planning on photographing both, let the weather dictate your schedule where possible.

But even with the best weather forecasting, you can rarely tell precisely what the weather will do at any given location: there are just too many variables in such a short space of time. My usual approach is to be in place half an hour or so before sunset, and take photos during as well as after just in case the clouds obscure the blue hour. As always with photography, be prepared to be flexible.

Of course, all this talk of perfect times is academic on business trips when you get what you’re given in the way of free time, but then you just have to apply the thinking in reverse: given the time you will be free, which shots will and won’t be possible?

How to take great blue-hour shots

If all my talk of the blue hour has persuaded you to try it for yourself, here’s a quick how-to guide …

You’ll need a tripod. This immediately poses a problem if you’re following my advice to travel handbaggage-only, as Security won’t let you take tripods on board with you. Even if the airline will – but we’ll get to that story shortly.

In the days when I travelled with a DSLR, my approach was to buy a cheap-and-cheerful tripod from the nearest camera store on arrival. This could usually be had for $25-30, so could be treated as just one of the expenses of the trip, leaving it behind when I left.

Cheap tripods are, of course, horrible things. As the old saying has it, there are three things you might want in a tripod: stable, lightweight and inexpensive – pick any two. So your cheap, light tripod won’t be stable. But this is something that can be addressed, so long as it isn’t windy! Usually hanging a bag from a tripod will give it sufficient weight to stop it moving around too much. You may also find it wants to tip over with a heavy lens, so adjust things so that the lens is facing directly over one of the legs.

But this is also a huge advantage of the compact camera approach: they are small and light, so a pocket-sized tripod works fine. There’s no difficulty taking those on board an aircraft, though a plastic one is recommended. I use the Manfrotto Pixi (UK: http://amzn.to/1LvWxgw, US: http://amzn.to/1YpEB0t).

Use the following camera settings:

Manual mode

Flash off

100 iso

f/11 or f/16

30 second exposure

The exact exposure will depend on the light, but blue hour light is remarkably consistent, so you’ll be amazed how often the above settings will be perfect. If it’s too light or too dark, then adjust the aperture to suit: f/8 will let in more light, f/22 will let in less.

If you’re on a rooftop, then a pocket tripod will need a base. With the New York skyline I used to illustrate the capabilities of a company camera, for example, I was on the upper level of the roof of the Rockefeller Center, where there are large square blocks.

If there’s glass in front of you, you’ll get reflections unless you can block out the interior light. This isn’t always possible, so you may have to edit out the reflections you can and live with the rest. But if possible, get the camera lens right against the glass and wrap it in a sweater.

Photographing people

I love to photograph people as well as places, but this is an area where some degree of caution is needed. Some people won’t be happy being photographed. This can be true anywhere, but there are often particular sensitivities in developing countries where people may feel you are viewing their poverty as a tourist attraction.

There are two different approaches you can take when photographing people. The first is a long lens and distance. With a 200mm (or equivalent) lens, you can be a long way from someone and still get a good shot. If you pan around, you can do it in such a way that it’s not obvious who or what you are photographing.

Personally, though, I much prefer the second approach: talking to people. If you get chatting with someone and tell them you’d love to take their photo, people more often than not happily agree. Sure, that may not get you the artistic ‘gazing off into the distance’ shot you had in mind, but when I review my people shots from a trip, it’s almost always the ‘looking straight at the camera’ shots that have the greatest impact.

Language can, of course, be a barrier. But my ten-word phrasebook works remarkably well in these circumstances. Having said ‘Hello’ with a smile, then a ‘Please’ and gesturing to your camera and to them is a pretty universal form of communication.

I had some Moo cards made up with my travel blog address, and I hand these to people I photograph, letting them know they’ll be able to see their photo there later. Be very wary of promising a print: if you promise it, you must do it, and international postage to some countries can be unreliable.

I used to carry a polaroid camera when visiting more remote areas of developing countries, where a camera was a novelty. You do quickly learn with kids to invite all the kids present to pose for a group shot, then find a parent to give the polaroid to. These days, there’s a digital polaroid that I’ll probably invest in for any future such trips.

Sensitive places

One final word of warning: there are sensitive places where photography is either viewed with suspicion or prohibited entirely. There are some obvious ones that are fairly universal: army bases, police stations, prisons, airport Security areas and so on. But there are others that vary by country and may not be obvious.

In some countries, for example, there is a blanket ban on photography anywhere inside an airport terminal. Photographing police officers is best done only after asking permission. Some government buildings also don’t permit photography. When in doubt, ask.

I did once have a rather entertaining conversation with a cop in an Eastern European city. I liked the way the light was striking the doorway of an anonymous-looking building, and was framing a shot. A cop rushed up to me, made gestures that photography was not allowed and – once he had established I was English – asked if I had taken a photo. I said no, and he made me run through the photos on the LCD screen before he was satisfied. I said I hadn’t realised it was a sensitive building and asked what it was. He immediately changed manner, shrugged and said it was just an ordinary building. I never did find out what it was.

51

"The tripod story"

In the days when you could still take a small, lightweight tripod on board, I was returning from Koln-Bonn to Stansted with Germanwings, with an example of same in my hand-baggage. Germanwings flew from terminal C, but I had an hour to spare and access to an airline lounge in terminal D, so I went there first (having this time ascertained that I’d be able to get back out again …).

You of course had to go through Security to enter the terminal, which was done without any problem. I relaxed in the lounge for an hour before heading to terminal C.

At terminal C Security, however, they told me that I couldn’t take the tripod onto the plane. I told them I flew over with it. They told me that new rules were in place. I asked how new, pointing out that I’d flown over with it on the same airline to the same airport on Friday.

They backtracked a little and said they are not allowed to let people in with tripods at Koln-Bonn, even if they were allowed at Stansted. I told them I just came from terminal D, where I took it through Security an hour ago without any problem.

They backtracked some more, and said that they were only allowed to let tripods through if the airline gives permission. So off I went back to Germanwings check-in.

The check-in woman glanced at the tripod, told me it was fine and put an 'Approved Cabin Baggage' tag on it, stamping it with an official stamp. Back I went to Security.

To be told that I can't take the tripod through. I explained that we just did this, and that I was told to get approval. I held out the properly stamped ‘Approved Cabin Baggage’ tag. I tried to point to the guy who I dealt with last time, who’d said it would be fine with permission, but there was no sign of him and no-one else knew anything about it.

They called a cop over for advice, so I repeated the whole story to him. The cop pointed to the tag and said that if the airline was ok with it, it is allowed through. The Security guy still refused. He said that I could have put on the tag myself, and he wouldn’t accept it without proof that the airline approved it.

The cop was being helpful, so he offered to return with me to Germanwings to ask them. The Security man said that if the cop confirmed, then he would allow it. So, back to Germanwings check-in once more, this time with my own personal police escort. This did mean no queuing: I highly recommend a police escort in crowded airport terminals.

The same Germanwings agent was thankfully still there, and she confirmed all was ok. By this time, the flight was due to start boarding, but my police escort got me past the Security queues. And ... the second Security guy was no longer there! No-one there knew anything about it, again!

The cop explained everything to the third Security guy, but this one was adamant: no tripods, with or without permission.

By this time, the cop had seen my routine several times, so he did it for me, showing that the tripod had no spikes, explaining that I flew with it on Friday, that I went into the other terminal with it, that if I wanted to use it as a truncheon my camera weighs much more than the tripod, that the airline had okayed it and that two of the Security guy’s colleagues have said it's ok with airline permission.

The Security guy simply shrugged and said Nein.

The cop got on his radio then explained to me that he had asked the Germanwings agent to come to Security. She arrived, said it was ok.

The Security guy still said no.

So by this point, the cop and the Germanwings agent were arguing with the Security guy and I was merely a spectator. The Germanwings agent made a radio call, and the cop explained to me that she was getting a message to the captain of the aircraft to ask if it was ok with him. After an impressively short wait, we got a message back that the captain said it was fine.

The Security guy still said no.

The Germanwings agent was by now exasperated with the Security guy and had clearly made it her personal mission to get my tripod onto the aircraft. The Security guy told her that it had to go in the hold; the agent told him that I had no baggage and it was too small and fragile to go on its own, so they would not put it into the hold and they would take it in the cabin.

The cop had also had enough with the nonsense by this time, so said something very fiercely to the Security guy. (He was helpfully translating most of what was being said along the way, but he didn't translate that bit ...)

There was some three-way discussion, and finally the security guy said 'Ja' so I thought he had finally agreed.

No: what he had agreed to was the cop going to the gate with me and personally handing it to the captain!

The cop said no, but the Germanwings agent would take it to the gate and hand it to a Germanwings gate staff person who would hand it to the captain. The Security guy still wasn’t happy with this plan, but reluctantly agreed.

So, off I went with my airline escort to the gate, and we reached passport control. This controlled access to just two departure gates, but there was a big queue there. However, an airline escort works as well as a police escort and we went marching up to the front of the queue.

She had to go through a side gate for staff, and she waved to the passport man to let me through. She got to the other side and the passport man said 'Nein'. I thought he was telling me I couldn’t jump the queue, and started to explain. But no, the problem, and the reason for the queue, was that the passport control computer had crashed and they couldn’t let anyone through ...

So by this time we had the airline agent in the departure gate lounge, and me just outside. She came back out and discovered the problem. The problem then was that she had to hand the tripod to the gate person in my presence. I said that didn’t matter in the slightest, but she was German, and the rules said that she must.

She got on the radio and the cop from the Security gate arrived. I was now cringing at all the fuss this had caused. The cop talked to the passport cop and they waved me through into the completely empty gate lounge. It seemed some rules could be overlooked.

The agent handed the tripod to the gate lady, told me I could get it from the captain at the far end, and off she went. The aircraft was by this time ready for boarding, but I was the only passenger in the departure lounge because the passport computer was still down and they still weren’t letting anyone else in.

Various officials and Germanwings staff had conversations at the passport control, and I could see them pointing at me at various points in this conversation. I was hoping I was merely being used as part of a 'Well, you let one person in, so you must let them all in' argument, and not as a 'Look, the whole trouble started with that guy, just arrest him and let's be done with it' line. It was apparently the former, as everyone finally started coming through.

We landed at Stansted, and while we were taxiing in I asked the cabin attendant to ask the captain for my tripod once we reached the gate. She looked at me blankly and asked: “Tripod? What is tripod?”.

I quickly reviewed my German vocabulary: a room for the night, red wine, petrol, fried egg with bacon, steak on hot stone ... nope, definitely nothing about tripods in there. I simply said “Just ask the captain for the tripod: he will know.”

So finally, after the involvement of three security guys, two cops, two Germanwings ground staff, one Germanwings cabin attendant and the captain of my flight, my tripod and I were reunited.

Oh, one last thing I should probably mention: during my stay in Germany, I didn’t actually use the damn thing even once.

52

Staff travel, the hidden extra travel class

You might think there are a maximum of four classes on an airline – first, business, premium economy and economy – but there is effectively one extra hidden class: staff travel.

You may also think that this chapter is irrelevant to you if you don’t work for an airline, but not necessarily …

Most airlines extend staff travel privileges not just to staff, but also to their immediate family members. In addition, when airline personnel are flying on a staff travel ticket, they can usually book friends in on the same deal too, to travel with them. The most generous airlines even allow staff to nominate an extra person to travel on their own as if they were staff.

So, it’s not impossible that you could find yourself flying as staff even if you’ve never worked for an airline in your life.

I describe staff travel as effectively a fifth travel class, but it’s not one that fits neatly into the rankings. Indeed, it is a rather schizophrenic experience, with both good news and bad.

The good news

Let’s start with the good news. First, cost. Most airlines allow staff a certain number of ‘free’ tickets per year. I put ‘free’ in quotes because you will always pay Air Passenger Duty or your own country’s equivalent, and you may also pay airport security fees and perhaps fuel surcharges. The UK has the second highest aviation taxes in the world (only Russia is worse). All the same, you are typically looking at a total bill in the £1-200 range – not something you can complain about for a return long-haul trip!

Once the annual allocation of ’free’ tickets is used up, you can usually get additional ones for a small fraction of the normal fare.

Second, depending on the seniority and service length of the member of staff concerned, you may be entitled to space-available upgrades to either premium economy or business class. So the relatively small amount you pay for taxes and charges looks even more of a bargain when this is the case.

Third, there are no penalties for indirect routings. For example, I flew to Boston, stayed there a few days, got a domestic flight to New York (on another airline, which I had to pay for) and then flew home from New York for exactly the same price I would have paid for a direct return flight.

You could also say that there are no penalties for changing your mind on destination or timings, but that’s really an artefact of the bad news, so let’s get to that …

The bad news

Staff travellers fly on standby tickets – and are absolute lowest priority when it comes to any available seats.

Booked commercial passengers of course come first. Next come any commercial passengers without confirmed reservations, including any bumped from earlier flights or on flexible tickets that allow them to swap flights. Where airlines are part of alliances (and almost all of them are these days), you guessed it, any alliance passengers wanting to switch to the flight are also ahead of you in the queue. Everyone is.

It’s actually worse than that: you are not only less important than any paying customer, you are also less important than their excess baggage. With some routes and aircraft, the limiting factor may be the all-up weight of the aircraft rather than the available number of seats. If there are free seats but lots of hold baggage, the baggage makes it on board and you don’t. Same same if there is a lot of cargo: it is paying for the ride, you aren’t.

And if you do make it on board, that may not be the end of it. If a last-minute passenger arrives – one who wasn’t expected to make it to the gate in time – you may be paged and discreetly asked to leave the aircraft. You’re not safe until the door closes and the aircraft pushes back.

Even then, don’t get too comfortable in that seat just yet! If the flight is full and a paying passenger has a problem with their seat – it won’t recline, or the entertainment system is broken, for example – you may be quietly approached and asked to swap seats with them.

Another possibility is that you may be offered a level significantly below economy in terms of comfort: a jump seat. These are the fold-up seats cabin crew sit in for take-off and landing. (Pre-9/11, you may also have been offered a jump seat on the flight-deck, but these seats are now available only to those with CAA/FAA clearance.)

If all the seats are taken but the aircraft is ok for weight, and if there is a spare jump seat, and if you have been cleared to fly in a jump seat (airline rules vary), and if the captain okays it, then this may be the thing that saves you from being left behind at the airport. It is not a comfortable way to fly: the seats are designed to be sat in for very short periods of time, with hard backs and minimal seat padding. But it beats not getting there at all.

Note that if you do get a jump seat, you effectively become part of the crew for emergency evacuation purposes. A cabin crew member will brief you on what’s expected of you. This may be nothing more than getting out first so you don’t block the escape route, but they are likely to want to ensure that you know how to open the door and activate the slide in case the crew member sat next to you is incapacitated.

Finally, whichever class you fly, the cabin crew will aim to treat you well, but there is a tacit understanding that you won’t push your luck. Even if you’re in business class, you need to be undemanding and easy to please, and you won’t get all of the amenities, like a sleep suit.

This chapter is primarily aimed at those who get staff travel via a family member or friend, but there is one additional piece of bad news for staff themselves: failing to report for duty because you didn’t make it back from a staff travel trip is usually a disciplinary offence. (Actual staff members do get a few more options, like booking very cheap standby tickets on other airlines, which they can get refunded if unused – and so are expected to make sufficient contingency plans.)

The bottom-line

Staff travel can be … interesting. The mix of good and bad news is why I describe it as a schizophrenic experience. In the best of cases, you waft on board into a business class seat, enjoying it for the duration of the flight, having paid peanuts for the experience. In the worst of cases, you are left sitting at the gate as the aircraft pushes back without you. In that instance, you’re not a paying passenger, entitled to compensation and hotel expenses: the airline owes you nothing more than a shrug. It will usually come with a sympathetic smile, but that’s just a bonus.

No matter what happens, you need to accept it with good grace. If the check-in staff say sorry, the flight is full, you are expected to say ‘Thanks anyway’ and trudge away without fuss. If you’re told that the flight is really packed and you’ll have to check your hand-baggage because the overhead lockers will be crammed, you need to cheerfully agree, pulling from it the bare essentials you’ll want during the flight. If you just got booted out of that lovely business class seat because a frequent flyer had a problem and the cabin crew decided to upgrade them, your job is to smile and say ‘Sure, no problem’ as you pick up your things and begin the walk of shame back to economy. If there is a shortage of a popular meal, you may be asked to wait until paying passengers have made their selections before you get what’s left, and – you guessed it – the appropriate response is an understanding smile and a polite ‘Of course.’

All of which means that, fabulous as it sounds, staff travel isn’t for everyone. You may or may not get to your destination. Equally – and this is the part you need to think harder about – you may not get home again. You may have to wait until the next day. Or worse – as I described in The Dubai adventure. You may get to fly in any class – even Jump Seat Class. You may not get the same on-board experience as paying customers. And whatever disappointments come your way, you have to smile and suck it up.

So, if you’re fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity, don’t just automatically accept.

When to say yes

I would say ‘Yes, absolutely’ if you can confidently state that you …

are ok with the financial realities (see below)

are a flexible person, good at coping with last-minute changes of plan

can work from anywhere, or have an understanding boss who can also cope with last-minute changes of plan

can remain cheerful and good-humoured in the face of disappointment or adversity

are a confident traveller, who won’t get flustered if you get stranded somewhere for a while

can shrug it off if your trip ends up costing you more than it would have done just to pay for it in full

know how to be a no-hassle passenger

To test whether you really do have the necessary flexibility, check out my own approach below, and see whether you’d be happy doing the same.

When to say no

However great the idea may sound in theory, I would turn it down if you …

don’t have the budget for multiple trips

realistically don’t have the flexibility to be able to take advantage of last-minute opportunities

are someone who needs everything to go to plan

won’t enjoy it if your planned long weekend in New York turns into a short weekend in Miami because that’s where the availability is

will throw your toys out of the pram if you don’t get to go away at all because the flight is overbooked

are rude to staff looking after you

If you get automatic entitlement by virtue of being a close family member, then there’s no harm in having the facility even if you can’t use it. But if you’re someone the member of staff needs to nominate, it’s not fair to either them or the next person in line if you sign up and then fail to use it. Generally they can only name a new person once or twice a year.

This is not to say that all is lost if you decide it’s not for you: airline staff can usually buy discounted confirmed tickets for friends. These will be significantly pricier than ‘free’ tickets, but the experience will be almost identical to that of a passenger paying full-fare (you will, though, still be low down the pecking order if there’s a significant problem).

The financial realities

While staff travel is usually a significantly less expensive way to travel than paying full-fare, it isn’t free. You still have to pay £1-200 for the ticket, and everything else costs you as much as they cost anyone else. That includes travelling to/from the airports at both ends, hotel costs, sightseeing, local travel, meals out, wifi and so on.

If you get stranded at the destination for a day or five, you will incur additional hotel and living expenses – together with daily travel to & from the airport. If this happens in a city like Tokyo, things can get very expensive very fast.

In the worst case, when all the flights home are overbooked for the foreseeable future, your only way home may be to book and pay for a last-minute single ticket on another airline – which may well cost more than it would have cost to buy a full-fare return ticket in the first place.

Finally, remember that you will – to take meaningful advantage of the opportunity – be making multiple trips during the year, so all of these costs get multiplied by the number of trips you take. Staff travel is a tremendous opportunity, but it isn’t a cheap one.

My approach to staff travel

I learned the hard way that just because there are lots of spare seats on a flight a week ahead, that doesn’t mean there still will be on the day. Not getting to your destination is disappointing; not being able to get home again can be … inconvenient.

My approach is four-fold. First, I check projected availability for a trip I’d like to take. If you’re not the member of airline staff, this is something they will need to do for you. Surprisingly, airlines have a reasonably good idea how full a flight is likely to be several weeks ahead, both because many people book further in advance, and from historical patterns. If projected availability looks good, I make tentative plans but book nothing.

Second, I literally leave it until the day before to turn my tentative plan into a firm one. The day before, the airline will know how many people are booked, and how many are on standby (which will include other staff). If there are more spare seats than there are standby passengers, you should get on.

Third, I book only very short trips . My personal limit is five days, but I’ve done more than one weekend trip. This of course fits perfectly my ‘short, sharp trip’ approach. When checking seat availability, I check not only my intended return flight but also the next couple of days after that, so that I have a plan B and C.

Fourth, I usually book only to destinations with daily flights (or better). I did make an exception to get to Jamaica, but there I flew out on the Friday and home on the Sunday night to guard against the possibility of getting stranded there for weeks.

Only once my flights are ‘booked’ (which really means ‘requested’), do I book hotels. Doing it this late means that you can’t take my recommended approach of hitting hotels.com on a daily basis, but I’ve always managed to find something at a reasonable price – well, except for Manhattan, where there’s no such thing no matter when you book …

Dos & don’ts

You should get a detailed document with the Dos & Don’ts of staff travel on the specific airline concerned, so I’m just emphasising here the most important ones that are likely to apply to any airline.

Do …

Dress for business class – even if you’re only entitled to economy. If there’s one free seat in business class at the last minute, there may not be time to upgrade a paying passenger, so you may get lucky. If that’s the only free seat and you’re not dressed for it, you won’t get on.

Let gate staff know you’re willing to take a jump seat if necessary. Note that some airlines require you to register in advance for jump seats, and there may be qualifying criteria.

Be friendly, cheerful and helpful with both ground and cabin staff – even if they are delivering bad news.

Read carefully and adhere strictly to all the specific rules of the airline concerned – from how to check in to the dress code.

Remember than if you break any of the rules, or behave badly, you may not just lose your travel privileges, but your staff member friend may get into trouble as they are held responsible for your behaviour.

Don’t …

Act entitled. You aren’t.

Be remotely problematic toward anyone – whether it’s ground staff, cabin staff or fellow passengers.

Let paying passengers know you’re flying for free – understandably, this is likely to piss them off.

53

"Jump Seat Class"

I said that a jump seat is not a comfortable way to travel, but there can be exceptions. One flight, two of us got jump seats. We were seated in jump seats in the business class section. When the meal service began, the cabin crew said they would come back to us when they were finished serving customers, and we could have our choice from whatever business class meals were left.

When our time came to eat, there was only one main course option remaining, but it was extremely good. The cabin attendant kindly said that there was no-one at the on-board bar, so we could sit there to eat. We’d have to return to our jump seats if customers wanted to sit at the bar. As it turned out, none of them did – at any point during the flight. Aside from the take-off & climb, and the approach & landing, we spent the entire flight sat at the bar, enjoying the very lovely snacks and drinks.

Jump Seat Class can sometimes be a great way to travel.

Afterword

With The Gentle Art of Travel, I’m conducting an experiment: offering the book as trustware. You get to read the book first, decide what it’s worth to you and then pay that amount.

You can pay literally any amount you like (including nothing at all, if you consider the book worthless). All I ask is that you think about the difference you think the book will make to your future trips, and pay the amount you think accurately reflects the benefit you will receive. For some, this may make it an expensive book …

To pay for it, please visit http://www.airbookpublishing.com/tgaot/, press the Pay Now button and change the amount from £0.00 to the amount you wish to pay.