Open up every travel guide and there is a section about safety. I explore personal security on Safety, but this page is about possessions. Depending on the destination the guides will remark on a range of scary stuff (except, my favorite, Uruguay “where crime, outside the few big cities, is virtually unheard of”), and always, always include pickpocketing, hotel room theft, and other crimes of opportunity. Presumably these things occur in your home country, and we seldom even think about them.
My experience in the world is that the vast majority of people are honest, and very many go out of their way to help. From the kind people in Monaco who alert you to a dropped item, to the Albanians absolutely refusing to accept more money than the stated price, to the Transnistrian postal worker who chases you down the street because they accidentally overcharged you, the world is overwhelmingly good. So the notes below are based not on general distrust, but on a simple desire to avoid catastrophic loss.
The high level concepts I practice are redundancy, compartmentalizing, and prudence.
Redundancy involves having multiples of crucial resources. Three cash cards, three credit/cash cards, two phones plus ipad with cell service, two passports, back up pair of glasses. Many discrete stashes of different currencies. If one fails, or is lost, there are others to perform the same function.
Comparmentalising. Physically separate crucial items. Dollars in left sock, euros in right sock, small local bills in left pocket, large in right. $100 folded in a passport, $100 tucked in document envelope, some cards in backup billfold in my pack, others in dopp kit. Perhaps 100 Euro behind the address label on my backpack. Just in case someone gets a hand in my pocket (or much more likely something falls out on a bus ride) I lose only a relatively small amount that does not compromise my travel. This extends to my digital life – each virtual wallet, travel app, online marketplace has a subset of my information, so that if (when) one is compromised I do not lose access to all my resources at the same time.
Prudence. This is about where and in what manner I whip out cash. In my tourist days I mindlessly fanned bills that summed to the monthly wage of many people around me. Not only was it incredibly insensitive, it set up temptation in people where none had previously existed. I now try to stash cash for specific expenses, ensuring that I am not flashing too much. Prior to the bus tour to Volcano de Fuego in Guatemala I had three $20 bills folded in thirds in my pocket to pay my way. Next to them I had perhaps $20 in Quetzals folded in half for drinks and tips. Even in the dark I would know which was which.
Many of the places I travel to are populated by desperately poor people. As modestly dressed and equipped as I am, everyone there knows immediately that I am 10,000 times more wealthy than they are. I am simply trying to avoid displaying the trinkets of wealth – photo drone, huge lens cameras, using iPad as camera (yes, people do this). Most crimes are crimes of opportunity. Someone has made it too hard for another person to resist.
Prudence also includes making it easier for people to reunite you with anything that has gone astray. Scatter cards that include your ‘phone number, e-mail, and mailing address (I love Moo mini cards) in each of your bags, sub bags, envelopes and wallet. Be sure to write your contact information in your passport (a surprisingly high percentage of people do not do this). Slip a business card from your hotel in your wallet. Make sure that your ‘phones have contact info as wallpaper on main screen, and engrave ‘phone number and email on the back. In less connected areas I use a photo of my hotel as wallpaper, so everyone will know where to deliver it. Be sure to have ‘find my phone’ activated on all devices and test it out before you go – then make sure you know how to use it on any computer.
There are products that promise to reunite you with your lost or stolen possessions, notably tile. They are radio frequency crowd sourcing ideas that rely on a critical mass of other people to cast a net of coverage to ping nearby IP addresses. I tried them and I could not consistently locate my keys in my own apartment. Internationally they were completely useless. I do not know how effective the Apple AirTags are now.
One tiny tweak that has helped me twice is to take a picture of the license plate of any vehicle that I climb into – be it bus, taxi, tuk-tuk , collectivo, lorry. I very narrowly missed a catastrophic loss in Suriname and learned from that experience. From simply finding your minibus in a sea of identical Toyota Hiaces in the car park in Cairo, to tracking down the taxi in Bonfacio that your friend left their cellphone in, a picture is invaluable.
I started out carrying luggage padlocks and an anchoring cable, expecting to secure luggage in bus storage or hotel rooms. I do not carry them any more. I think that if I spent a lot of my nights in hostels, with many people coming and going in shared rooms, I would still have this gear. Instead, when I spent a week in a dormitory in Bolivia I bought a couple of $3 padlocks, and gave them away when I left.
I read a suggestion to put a piece of duct tape on any piece of expensive electronics, with the idea that potential thieves will see that object as damaged and thus less valuable. Perhaps.