The worst in travel hacks – avoid being hated, or hating your vacation.

Le Classy

Lets start with a few classic bad examples, may have been formerly good advice, but in the modern age, are not the best. 1. Don’t bring your modern phone, just bring a flip phone. Yeah because pictures of important documents, e-visas, directions to places, and taking pictures are all super unimportant. Nobody in the country you’re going to has ever seen a smart phone, and doesn’t have internet, and they’re 100% gonna steal that iPhone 8 you’re rocking. 2. Print out the directions to your hotel, and everywhere you want to go. This kinda goes with the first one, cause slapping a SIM card into your phone for a bit is too much work, lets just visit our old friend MapQuest, and carry around a whole manifesto worth of paper to get around, super easy! 3. Rolling up your clothes instead of folding them so you can cram 200 lbs of stuff for your 7 day vacation. You’re going to feel great being able to pack half your wardrobe into a suitcase, and avoid some wrinkles, but will get charged $75 (or a bunch more on frontier I’m sure) for an overweight suitcase. You don’t need 7 pairs of shoes or your 12 matching outfits, be a little practical and just bring the basics.

4. Over or double booking travel, going from one city to another? You better make sure you book multiple options, and don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t take an entire day on hold with customer service to get a refund.

5. Shipping your stuff to a hotel or airbnb to avoid bag fees, this is a new one to me, and I’m absolutely certain that most hotels would not be super happy with this, and may even refuse shipment. This would promptly put to into villain territory with any airbnb host, I could even seeing them cancel/refuse your reservation over this, and what happens if a porch pirate steals your package? Bummer dude.

6. Marking all of your luggage as fragile will make sure that everything is handled with the greatest of care. This may be of absolutely no surprise to you, but baggage handler really don’t pay much attention to what labels are on bags, so unless its in a crate, or has biohazard symbols, they’re not going to care when they chuck it at 1500 meters per second into that plane. We’re all just hoping that nothing gets stolen.

7. Schedule something for every waking moment you’re on vacation. Nothing sounds like relaxation more that sticking to a tightly regimented schedule, with no room for deviation or error.  A minute-by-minute itinerary is exactly what your partner wants, no need to consult them, just go for it! Or, just maybe, chill out a bit. Just a thought.

8. Basing your travel on exactly what you just watched, because nobody has watched Under the Tuscan Sun and booked that identical trip, NOBODY! Do not, I repeat, do not follow anything from Eat Pray Love, this is your only warning. But seriously, don’t.

9. Memorize a few basic phrases in the local language, but be sure to NEVER learn to say them correctly, preferably not even close. Practice is for losers, and we’re winners! Remember, being considerate of the local culture and customs isn’t important, not even a little. But if respect is your thing, maybe try some duolingo or something.

And finally, Don’t go to any countries that the US has had conflict with in the last 50 years. Doesn’t matter if that’s been resolved, a few generations have passed, it has amazing food, beautiful scenery, and the kindest people. What might happen if you go there?!? Kidnapping, of course. Just stick to Canada, the UK, and North Korea. No problems there.