Lessons from the road: the most common travel mistakes to avoid

travel

16 Mar

I’ve travelled enough to know that the journey rarely unfolds the way guidebooks or Pinterest boards promise. For every smooth connection and scenic moment, there’s a small embarrassment or misstep trailing behind, which you only admit after enough distance has passed.

The internet is full of lists highlighting the most common travel mistakes to avoid, but even with all that advice – and even when we try to travel with less stress – the most organised traveller will still make their own.

I’ve dodged the dramatic disasters like cancelled flights and lost luggage, yet my trips have still collected their fair share of smaller blunders – born from overconfidence, poor assumptions, or simply not paying attention.

So instead of pretending I’ve figured out the perfect system, I wanted to gather the common travel mistakes I’ve made, witnessed, or nearly walked into myself.

Here are a few of them.

The most common travel mistakes

1. Overlooking entry requirements

A friend once had a family trip to Thailand that didn’t begin as planned. She was travelling with her mum and sister, and everything was fine until they reached the airport – the place where inconvenient truths tend to reveal themselves. At check-in, her mum discovered her passport had less than six months’ validity left.

She didn’t board the flight. The sisters went on without her.

Passport validity is only one part of it. Some countries want six months, others want three. Some need proof of onward travel, specific visa types, or digital entry forms you’re meant to complete before landing. None of it is exciting, but all of it matters in a painfully practical way.

The lesson is simple: border control doesn’t care how long you’ve planned your trip or how excited you are. It cares whether the rules are met. Checking requirements early takes minutes; fixing a problem at the airport is nearly impossible.

2. Underplanning

On a family day trip from Tokyo to Nikko, I’d planned what I thought were the important parts: where we might find autumn leaves, the route to the viewing spots, the train connections… but completely forgot the part where humans need food. By lunchtime, the only plan was: hope something appears.

Underplanning – or simply forgetting to sort out the small but important details – is one of the easiest mistakes to make.

You skip booking tickets (“should be fine”), assume transport will sort itself out, or forget to check how to get from one town to another. Sometimes you arrive somewhere that’s cash-only with nothing but e-wallets; sometimes you forget to tell your bank you’re travelling and your card panics before you do.

None of these things ruin a trip, but they do make it unnecessarily stressful, especially if you’re travelling on a tight schedule rather than slowly wandering through a place.

A little research – opening hours, transport options, how to pay for things, whether advance booking is needed – goes a long way. Spontaneity is wonderful, but it works best when the basics are already taken care of.

3. Overplanning

If underplanning leaves you scrambling, overplanning can suffocate a trip in the opposite direction. Years ago, I went to Penang with my university friends. They’d mapped out everything – which bus we were taking, which cafe we were visiting, which activity followed the next one. It was meticulous, thoughtful, and honestly quite impressive.

And there I was, the ungrateful one quietly rebelling against the colour-coded itinerary, craving a bit of spontaneity. (There’s a reason I later wrote about why group tour packages don’t work for me.)

Overplanning often comes from a good place: wanting to maximise your time, avoid missing anything, and keep everyone happy. And to be fair, most people don’t have the luxury of slow travel. When you’ve already paid for a return ticket and you’re counting your days, it’s natural to want to make the most of every hour.

But travel rarely cooperates with rigid scripts. Delays happen. Weather shifts. Someone gets tired. A cafe is unexpectedly closed. A detour appears that’s far more interesting than the thing you scheduled. When every minute is accounted for, there’s no room for any of that.

Planning is useful. Overplanning is tiring. Even with a tight schedule, a little breathing room can often make the trip feel more memorable than squeezing in one more stop.

4. Overpacking

Overpacking usually begins with the same hopeful thought: just in case. I’m not immune to it. Every now and then I slip an extra item or two into my bag, convinced it’ll somehow save the day.

Thankfully my just-in-case tendencies are fairly mild that everything still fits into one bag. Years of living out of a suitcase taught me how quickly things add up, and how little you actually need.

But for many travellers, overpacking is one of the easiest mistakes to fall into. It’s a fear response disguised as preparation – the worry of not having the right outfit, the right shoes, or the right gadget. Before long, the bag becomes heavier than the actual trip.

The trouble is that overpacking doesn’t just weigh down your luggage; it weighs down the experience. Extra bags mean extra decisions, extra stress, and extra effort every time you move from one place to another. And most of the things you were so worried about not having never become problems at all.

Packing light isn’t about being a perfectionist or committing to strict minimalism. It’s about easing the load so you can move through a trip without feeling burdened by your belongings. A smaller bag is simpler to carry, simpler to manage, and far less tiring.

A simple packing list helps, or even just being stricter about what truly earns a place in your bag. Most of the time, “just in case” doesn’t justify the space it takes.

5. Forgetting travel insurance

Forgetting travel insurance is one of those mistakes that feels harmless right up until the second it isn’t. I’ve been fortunate enough never to need it – no sudden illnesses abroad, no broken bones, no flight cancellations that stranded me in a foreign airport.

But I still buy travel insurance every trip.

The temptation to skip it can be strong, especially when you’re already paying for flights, hotels, visas, and everything else. It’s easy to think, “I’ll be fine“, or “It’s just a short trip“, or “What are the chances? “

Yet travel insurance exists precisely for the things you can’t predict: medical bills that cost more than the entire holiday, lost luggage, trip delays, emergency evacuation, or an illness that appears at the worst possible moment.

Even if nothing ever happens on your trips – and I hope it never does – the peace of mind alone is worth the small cost.

6. Losing money in exchange transactions

Currency mistakes add up. I’ve made a few myself. Once, at the airport before a work contract, I suddenly wondered if I had enough foreign currency. Instead of waiting or checking my options later, I panicked and exchanged more money on the spot.

The rate, of course, was terrible.

Working onboard meant I could’ve withdrawn money later, but airport counters prey on tourists. The booths set up right outside the cruise ship aren’t much better – the convenience comes with a mark-up that feels unavoidable when you’re in a rush.

It’s a common mistake: relying on airport counters, cruise-port kiosks, or any overly convenient exchange spot.

These days, I carry a bit of cash, but mostly use e-wallets or multi-currency apps like BigPay or Touch ’n Go (I’d use Wise if either one isn’t available). ATMs usually offer better rates.

One more thing travellers often miss: when a card machine asks whether you want to pay in your home currency, always choose the local currency. Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) looks helpful but usually gives you a much worse rate.

The rule is simple: the more convenient the exchange counter looks, the more it’s probably costing you.

7. Not learning basic cultural norms

Cultural mistakes are usually unintentional, and sometimes you don’t realise you’ve made one until someone intervenes.

Once, while eating at a friend’s home in India, I reached for food with my left hand. My Malaysian friend nudged me sharply, and only then did I remember: in many parts of India – and across South Asia and the Middle East – the left hand isn’t used at the table.

Most cultural slips create small but uncomfortable moments. Wearing shoes indoors where it’s not done. Pointing without thinking. Speaking too loudly in a place that prefers quiet. Ignoring queuing etiquette because “it’s different back home”.

These are some of the most common travel mistakes simply because we assume our habits translate everywhere.

Learning basic cultural norms doesn’t take much. A few minutes spent checking dining etiquette, greetings, and local customs goes a long way – and makes it far easier to move through a place without causing offence.

Language is part of culture too, and learning a few key phrases helps. But sometimes the mistake comes from confidence rather than vocabulary…

In an eatery in southern China that specialised in chicken feet dishes, I ordered for my Indonesian friend and myself in what I thought was perfectly serviceable Mandarin:

“你好，请给我一个不辣的火锅，不要鸡脚。谢谢！”
(Hello, can I have a non-spicy hot pot, without chicken feet? Thank you!)

The waiter nodded politely while I pointed at 凤爪 on the menu, assuming it meant some kind of chicken skin. Later he returned with a steaming hot pot – piled with the one thing I insisted I didn’t want. My Indonesian friend looked horrified. So was I.

凤爪 translates to “chicken feet”.

You might also like: Travel etiquette tips to avoid being that annoying passenger

8. Not checking phone data plans

For a long time, I never thought much about phone plans when travelling. I assumed my SIM would work, or that public wifi would carry me through until I figured something out. Most of the time, it did – until the moments when it didn’t.

Arriving in a new place without data isn’t disastrous, but it’s undeniably inconvenient. No maps, no translation apps, no ride-hailing, no way to message anyone. And in many places today, no way to pay – cashless systems, QR payments, and app-based transport have become the default.

This is how many travellers end up paying unknown roaming charges or buying an overpriced data plan at the airport. Not because they planned to, but because they didn’t realise they needed alternatives. We assume our phones will simply connect, and only learn the cost of that assumption later.

There are plenty of options – local SIM cards, pocket wifi, and roaming packages – but these days I use travel eSIMs as my default. They’re predictable, easy to activate, and far cheaper than roaming.

I’ve mostly used Airalo, and it’s been reliable for my trips. If you want to try it, my referral code JOANNE7692 gives you a small discount on your first eSIM.

What’s your funniest travel mistake? For more travel tips, you might also like my guide on how to travel cheap without missing out, or the minimalist packing list I use for nearly every trip.