Welcome to the Age of the Technical Nomad
These days technology has pervaded every aspect of our lives, traveling not excluded. To be honest, I do not understand how people travelled before without translating dictionaries and map apps. Here are my tech musts when travelling:
I cannot travel without a camera. Most people would agree with me, but I have met some who do not bring cameras with them or like taking pictures. I would NOT recommend the Panasonic Lumix. It took great photos, but just a few months after purchase it developed these awful spots on the lens, completely ruining my pictures, and Panasonic completely ignored my complaints. A 32GB SD card is necessary because I’m a big picture taker. Then I have my Jessops universal battery charger, which I absolutely love. I originally bought it because I lost my camera’s battery charger, but I love this one because you can charge any other battery in it. I did buy it in England so to use it, I need my universal converter. All together, it does get a little bulky, but the universal converter definitely comes in handy.
Unfortunately my iPhone has a bad battery problem and you don’t want to be stuck with a dead phone in a bad situation. Best to be safe so I have my back up battery with an USB port and 4 back up batteries. The iPhone, or any smart phone, is a great travel companion because you can take very good quality photos (although I brought my camera to save battery which is a problem for me), buy a local SIM card for easy communication with Couchsufers, headphones for listening to music and other general entertainment during long plane/train/bus rides.
Finally, the iPad isn’t quite a substitute for a computer, but its close and definitely worth the space saving quality when traveling light. Aside from entertainment purpose such as listening to music, reading books, games, and so on, the iPad is extraordinarily useful. Not just for accessing WIFI so you can reply to Couchsurfers and research how to get to your next destination, but because of this one app called, “MotionX-GPS.” It costs $2-3 and is worth every penny. You can download the map of the area you are going to ahead of time and the iPad has built in GPS so you can literally never get lost. Sometimes the map’s roads are a little lacking, but then you just resort to the traditional methods of asking a kind local. The app also tracks where you go so its a great souvenir of your travels!
