Travel contingencies
This page contains my various contingency plans when travelling abroad. It’s intended to act as a sort of runbook. The plans are tweaked based on my threat model for different destinations.
General tips
- Bring backups where possible. Phones, credit cards, etc.
- Don’t store the backup in the same place as the primary. Keep one card in your room, and one on your person.
- Store critical belongings on your person, not in a bag.
- Don’t store critical belongings in the same place on your person. For example, don’t use a phone case with a card holder; store both separately, in separate pockets.
- Depending on the threat model, consider more secure storage methods on your person. Zippered pockets, hidden clothing compartments, or pouches worn under your clothes.
Preparing for the trip
Store the following on your phone. Store it on paper, in phone storage, in email, and in a cloud service.
- Flight tickets, or other transport tickets
- Insurance details
- Photo of passport
- Vaccination certificate, if applicable
- Address of your local embassy
- Passport-sized photos (in the event of a lost passport)
Lost phone
Keep a backup phone in hotel room. Prepare it in advance so you can easily access your documents.
- Download your password manager file. Obfuscate the file name.
- Download your password manager.
- Download your backup Google 2FA codes. You won’t have your 2FA device if your primary phone gets stolen. Store them in your password manager.
Make sure to do a dry run for your lost phone contingency. You’ll probably need to sign in once in order to download the password manager app from the app store. Make sure to sign out after to avoid leaving an active account on the phone if the backup gets stolen instead.
Lost passport
Contact your embassy. Depending on the country you are in, a police report may need to be filed first.
Losing a passport may not be a big deal if you’re in a city where you have physical embassy presence. Just visit the embassy and they’ll help you out. This also means that if travelling somewhere without embassy presence, you’ll want to take even better care of your passport.
Lost credit card
Bring multiple cards. Keep a backup credit card in hotel room. Use your phone to cancel the stolen card.
Lost ID card
Contact your embassy. This is generally not a big deal. Some people prefer not bringing their ID card along, but I prefer to. Having multiple forms of identification, stored in separate locations is a good contingency to have in the event that your passport or phone gets stolen.