Recommended Travel Resources

Recommended travel resources for booking, travel gear, organising tours, insurance, trusted companies, and products. We recommend these items, methods, and companies to help with travel, life, learning, and travel blogging.

Hello! Welcome to our website. We’ve been doing this travel, nomadic, child-rearing thing for a long time so on this page we give you our favourite, most used, travel resources. These are the things we use, every day, to make our travelling lives easier, better, more active and more awesome. We talk about gear, apps, booking sites, books, items, anything and everything we’ve found that is useful, makes life cheaper or makes life easier. This page is always under construction, as we find new things, we add them. That goes for every page here at World Travel Family travel blog, we’re always trying to improve our knowledge to help you better. How do we do that? We travel more.

These travel resources page works for nomads, family gap year travel, long-term travellers, or holiday-makers. The same principles and needs apply if you’re travelling for a year or a week.

Some of the links on this page will be affiliate links and if you use them we make a small commission. However, this doesn’t affect our decision to recommend them. Our recommendations are based on honest first-hand experience, use, and findings.

Travel insurance is important and we needed a company to cover adventure or long-term travel. World Nomads travel insurance has been designed by travelers for travelers. If you leave home without travel insurance or your policy runs out, you can buy or extend while on the road. *World Nomads provides travel insurance for travelers in over 100 countries. As an affiliate, we receive a fee when you get a quote from World Nomads using this link. We do not represent World Nomads. This is information only and not a recommendation to buy travel insurance.

Travel Resources We Recommend

To make it easier for you to find the best travel resources, we've grouped a few favourites into the table below.

Item	View	Tips
Travel Organiser	Buy here on Amazon.	I've found my travel organiser indispensable over the years. In my carry-on bag, daypack, or purse, it keeps important items clen, tangle-free, protected, and easy to find. For ultra-light packing you won't want one, but for regular travel I take mine every time. This isn't the brand I own, it's a newer, more attractive version. I'd buy it for sure.
Wash Bag	Buy here on Amazon	The best wash bag, bar none, I've ever owned. Works for men or women or the whole family. Keeps small make up items safe too.
Family Document Organiser	Buy here on Amazon	This is the passport / document organiser my husband carries at airports. It has a pen, that's such a blessing when it comes to filling in immigration forms on the plane. It takes 4-6 passports, documents, cash, and keeps our stress levels down. RFID blocking sleeves and capabilities.
Packing Cubes	Buy here on Amazon	Life changing! But only if you're packing hold baggage, they waste your space and weight allowance for carry-on. We've owned and used this brand for almost a decade. We've found them super-durable. Multiple sizes are a must with the smaller ones being most useful.
Travel Insurance	We strongly recommend you get a free quote from World Nomads and see what they can do for you. At times they were the only insurance company that would cover adventure or long-term travel.	There are two travel insurance companies that we know of that support extended, nomadic, or unusual travel. Both offer Covid insurance, but this can depend on your location. Do your research well and double check all small print. SafetyWing were offering free child insurance.
Eye-Wear	Discontinued	Yes, mail-order eye protection is a thing and this is the brand we use. The advantages with this brand include, lifetime guarantees, deliverable almost anywhere in the world, custom colours in frames, lenses, etc. High performance for snow, trekking, water, sporrts. My husband uses them for Ironman triathlon. They also look cool.

FAQ s for World Travel Family, Gear We Use, Companies We Recommend

All of the apps we mention below are on my phone, right now. None of them are sponsored. All of the gear we recommend, we use ourselves, still, after years of travel and love. We only offer genuine recommendations.

If you don’t want to read, we have an easy-on-the-eye table for you, above, featuring our basic essentials and objects of desire.

We include some gadgets we use at home, just because they’re so good we need to share. If the products we use are old and no-longer available, we’ve found the closest possible product to include.

Please double-check all specifications for yourself, manufacturers have a habit of changing designs without telling me. The cheek of it. The table above will scroll sideways if I’ve added further columns of information.

Travel Gear We Use

• What backpack do I (Alyson) use for main luggage and for trekking? This one, an Osprey Aura, women’s 65L  and I’m IN LOVE with it. It’s been to Everest Base Camp with me and is my main daily luggage.
• Is there a men’s version of this backpack? Yes. Use the link above.
• Which brands do we recommend for outdoors and travel gear? Our favourite travel and adventure gear brands are Berghaus (fleeces, waterproof jackets, backpacks), Osprey for backpacks and luggage, Lowe Alpine also make good backpacks. For cheaper items we shop at Mountain Warehouse.
• What sunglasses are best for travel? We used to use these for travel, skiing, running, cycling, hiking, trekking and triathlon. We particularly loved these because they’re mail order and had an awesome guarantee, so wherever we were in the world, we could order more or request repairs or replacements. Also, you could mix and match colours and designs to create a custom pair. Every member of the family used to use this brand. However, we are big Oakley fans too, this brand costs more but they really are hard to break! View Oakley sunglasses here.
• What do we recommend to make packing simpler and more organised? We use a variety of packing cubes and pouches, I also carry a travel organiser in my day pack and have an extremely good, highly recommended, wash bag. Packing cubes and pouches are a game-changer, particularly with backpacks. These packing cubes are good, this is the wash bag, this is the organiser. BUT – if you’re travelling with just a carry-on bag, as I do often – packing cubes add to weight and space. Only use the cubes if you’re taking big luggage.
• Do we use a family travel passport wallet? Yes, we use this one. It holds all our passports, credit cards, cash etc. Blocks RFID and has a pen for filling in immigration forms – which is by far the best thing ever! If you’re only taking carry on, a small anti-theft purse does the job better at the airport and is more hands-free.
• Do we use travel towels? Yes, absolutely, we tested a few, and you’ll see which one won in our post here.
• Do we recommend power banks and chargers for travel? These are absolutely essential. We just bought new ones, but we’ve had lots of different models and often carried multiple units, solar, slimline and regular. (because kids!) Full post here.

Booking Accommodation

• What is our favourite booking engine for hotels, resorts, hostels, villas, guest houses, and more? We generally prefer Agoda. They are huge for bookings in Asia. We love them and their customer service, search here.  Booking dot com are also a solid company, we’ve never had an issue with them. We use Airbnb only if we have to, we prefer to book a hotel, apartment, or guest house through one of the platforms above. We don’t like the extra time, the approval process, nor the cleaning fees of Airbnb. The same properties are often on the other booking sites and we’ve seen them at better prices.
• What do we use for booking apartments and houses? Airbnb are usually our last resort. If you’re looking for an apartment or villa, they should be on the booking sites we mention above. If a property isn’t on one of these, we don’t book them. Direct booking are such a time suck and so inconvenient that we never even consider this method. That’s just how we roll. Because we booked accommodation for every night of the year, for six years or so, we found what was quickest, easiest, and cheapest, for our purposes.

Group Adventure Tours

Sometimes it makes more sense to travel with a group. Chef and I met on a group tour many years ago, so we think they’re great. If you’re a solo traveller, lack travel confidence, want some company or are just short of time, these tours pack a very big punch of experience, with no headache for you. Everything is organised for you and it’s normal to have a local guide who speaks the language.

Two companies we recommend are Explore!, and G Adventures. We find these two to be the best and they will both take families or older teens.

I took my teen to Bhutan on a group tour and previously we’ve hiked The Inca Trail and toured the villages of Northern Thailand this way. Check them out above.

Chef and I met on a Nile felucca sailing tour of Egypt with Explore, above. Some of these companies (Explore does) also offer family travel group tours for younger kids.

Travel Apps

I came late to phone-only travel but I’m a convert, if I can learn new tricks, so can you. These are the apps I need and use.

• Skyscanner Skyscanner helps us find the cheapest days, routes and airlines. If you’d like some pro tips on finding the best deals with Skyscanner we have a post on how to use Skyscanner to save money on flights. You can also search for hotel and car hire deals through Skyscanner.
• Air Asia I love this app for checking-in online and for doing away with paper boarding passes (this isn’t always guaranteed, sometimes you print at the airport from the code on your phone.)
• Currency Converter – Xe This is the one we use – super easy and quick.
• Uber and Grab Cars. Uber and Grab work brilliantly in some countries, in others, they’re useless. In some countries, there is a taxi mafia that doesn’t like Uber or Grab one bit (eg Bali ). In some places, Uber or Grab is more expensive than taxis. But get the apps. You never know when you’ll need them. We were big Uber users in Vietnam, big Grab users in Malaysia.
• AirBnb The Airbnb app is handy for managing bookings and travel plans, receiving check-in codes and keypad numbers, that sort of thing. We have used Airbnb from time to time, this platform just isn’t our preferred one.
• Agoda app to manage bookings.
• Booking.com app to manage bookings.
• GetYourGuide We use GetYourGuide a lot, for planning what we’ll do in a destination and to book tours, transfers, and activities. See them here.
• Viator
• Google Translate

House Swapping

We’re currently not recommending house swapping companies, sorry. Many exist, one of the biggest is Home Exchange. This is one of the methods people use when considering how to travel for free. Of course, it’s never truly free, there is always an exchange of some sort.

We find that having to organise exchanges months, sometimes years, in advance, and locking in dates, just doesn’t work for our style of travel.

House Sitting

We don’t recommend house sitting. We don’t enjoy it and it doesn’t work for us as part of family travel. Therefore it would be hypocritical of us to direct you to a house sitting website in order to collect the large affiliate commission on sign-ups.

The commission is huge, I think that’s why so many bloggers recommend this style of travel. If you’d like to read more about this, check out ” How does House Sitting Work ” and “Does House Sitting work for Family Travel.”

Booking Transportation

• What’s our favourite tool for finding cheap flights? Skyscanner. for researching best prices and best days. They will still help you find the best price.  
• Car Rental, budget or security? We’ve done OK finding cheap deals through a car rental comparison site but again, after a couple of bad experiences with cowboy companies, we try to use a big solid company and always reduce our excess to zero. We like Sixt. We also like Europcar and Avis/Budget.

Travel Insurance

• What travel insurance do we use? This one is simple, we used World Nomads. They did have COVID insurance (even for US residents, not Australians) but double-check the fine print, don’t take my word for it. World Nomads (get a quote here) offers simple and flexible travel insurance. Buy at home or while travelling and claim online from anywhere in the world.
• Another travel insurance company to consider is SafetyWing. In the interest of full transparency, we haven’t yet used them ourselves, but some of the benefits this company has told me about, other than pandemic related, are free kids’ insurance when adult insurance is purchased, and travel and health insurance designed for nomads, groups, families, and long-term travellers. Again, take a look and read carefully. You can even take out a monthly health or medical insurance through this insurance company. Look here.

Electronics

• The little microphone like the one below costs little, weighs next to nothing and takes any video you shoot, even just Instagram stories, to the next level. It’s a must-have.
• We swear by our gimbal to stabilise all phone video footage plus give us access to some great effects.
• Extra chargers and travel adaptors are of course essential, with USB chargers being most important for us. We often need to charge 3 or 4 devices simultaneously.
• These days – who doesn’t want a drone? The Mavic Air is a step up from both the Pro and Sprite, giving performance along with compact size.

Editing Photos and Videos

This will be overkill for most people, but some of these resources are free and if you spend any time posting holiday snaps or videos to social media, these could be useful. Of course, we are professional travel bloggers and we also help others in how to make money travel blogging, so a few more tips here.

• We love, love , love Animoto. It’s super easy to edit stills together with short video clips to make something that looks spectacular. You’ll see Animoto videos throughout this site. Our videos are a huge part of our advertising revenue through Mediavine. You must, absolutely must, have video. If you’re not on Mediavine yet, plan ahead, shoot video clips, you will need them later.
• We use Snapseed for editing photos on phones – it’s fantastic and free.
• For editing video on the phone we use InShot, this is great for Instagram stories. The version I have is also free.
• We have used PicMonkey Pro – a simple entry level photo editing tool and graphics creator.
• These days for photo editing we use Adobe Spark Post, the free version.
• We own Cyberlink Power Director for making involved videos with special effects.
• Sometimes we use Lumen 5 for converting blog post URLs into videos.

Blogging

• What hosting do we recommend? Site Ground is the best beginner-high intermediate hosting company we’ve used. Their customer support and service are superb. Buy hosting here. Today we use Agathon hosting, it’s fabulous, but its much more expensive, use a cheaper one before you commit.
• For themes we highly recommend Studiopress themes built on the Genesis framework. A big solid company, good security, good speed, fantastic support, and I’ve never had a problem with them. See their themes here. StudioPress (owned by WPEngine). Their child themes, the “look” of your site, is like window dressing. Studiopress runs on the Genesis framework and once you have that, you can change the look simply by switching child themes. A single child theme is maybe $30. Child theme plus Genesis, around $100, depending which theme you choose. For the record, we prefer Studiopress and Generate Press (they’re a lot cheaper too) to Mediavine’s Trellis, but it’s difficult to swap back If you want a free, fast, excellent theme, we use GeneratePress today, and love it, but it’s a little bit complicated for absolute beginners.
• Need a logo? We used Fiverr. Our logo cost $15. You can find somebody to help you with just about any online job on Fiverr, I had an Instagram manager on there at one point.

Education on the Road

I don’t have any particular products or resources to share with you here, but if you want to find our more about “worldschooling” and what it costs read our posts.

Our post on homeschooling while travelling does give a huge selection of educational resources we’ve used over the years. Then for older children and teens, there is a post on worldschooling teens, plus one on how my kids did eventually take and pass their exams.

There are many, many more posts on education and travel, how to worldschool, portable online resources, classes, tutors and more on this site. For most of the time we were travelling, we were very close to unschoolers, we picked it up in the final years of high school because of lockdown and the kids did brilliantly in formal, international, examinations. We explain all of that.

I have written or contributed to, several books on this topic. This best is “This is Homeschooling” which covers a variety of homeschooling methods, I wrote the chapter on Homeschooling, Joel Salatin covers Farmschooling, it’s an all-star line up of specialists in each field. Buy it here.

Books

Just a few books we recommend below. For travel, for kids, alternative education, for self-help, and insight. My book is here.

• The Four Hour Work Week will give you unparalleled insight into how to work faster and smarter in creating your online income stream
• Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk, peace activist, and teacher. My elder son and I visited his pagoda near Hue in Vietnam. He helped me enormously in just being. In focussing on how much we have even when we seem to have nothing, and in dealing with death. This is the book I found particularly helpful around the time of my mother’s death.
• A modern best-seller, Untamed, by Glennon Doyle, helps us see how huge our lives were meant to be. I’d already achieved so much, I ditched a soul-sucking marriage and job long ago to find my freedom and calling. This book covers those first stages but then takes it further. This is the book Adele is raving about, and now, so am I.
• The Explore! and Lonely Planet Kids books below, are our absolute favourite travel-related books for the boys. Educational, travel inspired, fun as read-alouds, or for the kids to read, enjoy, and learn.
• The last book, Dumbing Us Down, The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, is a classic by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto was a teacher in the mainstream, his observations of that system prompted him to become an advocate for freeing kids and a better way of learning.

As you can probably tell, we are still building our travel, worldschooling and blogging resources collection here. This is purely down to lack of time, we’re currently in the Himalayas. You will find far more information on the best tools, products and resources elsewhere on our site but this page, in time, will be your complete go-to list of all things excellent, tried and tested, by us. Thanks for being here.

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If you'd like to hire a car during your stay, use this car rental comparison tool to find the best deal!

We also suggest you take a look at this company to get a quote for all kinds of the more tricky adventure or extended travel insurance.

Try Stayz / VRBO for an alternative way to find rentals on homes/apartments/condos in any country!