Travelling to your next destination can be an exhausting journey. Buses sometimes take over 10 hours, but also spending several hours at an airport can feel like a waste of time.
That’s why we created a top 5 list of things to do, that you can get the most out of your travel time:
1. Sit back, relax and listen to your favourite travel playlist
Travelling always sounds fun and relaxing and that’s what it is most of the times. But sometimes it can feel great to finally have a few hours of rest. Getting up early every morning to see the sunrise or doing hours or more of trekking can be exhausting.
The time when you hop on the bus is the time to finally relax. Put your seat back, put on your favourite playlist on Spotify and let your eyes glaze over the landscape while the train or bus passes through the rural area’s of the country.
Tip : Check out the GeckoRoutes playlist for our favourite travel songs!
2. Curate your pictures and videos
After each destination, you will likely have a huge stack of pictures and video’s from your phone, GoPro, Camera or even drone. Leaving them all on your device and only start to sort them out after your trip is not the best way. You will end up with hundreds or thousands of pictures and see it as a big hurdle to take the time to sort them out.
That’s why the journey can be an excellent time to sort your pictures and select your favourite ones. After you arrive at your next destination, you can upload them all to a cloud like Google Drive or Microsoft Onedrive so you will never loose them again. In case your luggage gets stolen, you will at least still have your favourite pics and videos of your trip!
3. Listen to Audiobooks
Reading a book can easily kill the time of your long journey. However, many people get car sick when travelling on a bumby road where the bus rocks you to all sides of your seat.
Luckily there is even a better alternative: audio books!
I personally enjoy listening to audible books a lot. It is a perfect way to spend your time when you are on the road or just want to chill with closed eyes. For a lot of people, it might sound not so appealing as they are not used to listen to books.
Promotion: For these people I got great news. With Audible you can now temporary sign-up for a free account and get TWO audiobooks for free!
Extra tip: Always listen to the narrator of the book you want to choose before you download it. Some narrators are that good that I wonder if it will be as good when you read the book. Take for example the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck“. The narrator really makes this book even more fun to listen to!
4. Update your travel diary
Each destination brings a lot of stories. The super-friendly host, the sunrises, the jungle treks, but also the time were you got lost and were panicking to find back the way to your hotel.
Keeping a travel diary is a great idea to never forget about all these small moments. A picture tells a thousand words, but doesn’t always tell the story behind it.
5. Plan which sights you want to visit
You likely already know a few things you can do or definitely want to visit during your stay. However, there are often many more things to explore.
One of the advantages of having a local sim-card is that you can spend some time researching things to do for your trip while being on the road.
On our website you find a great list of things to do for many destinations. Browse through them, check other websites and prepare your list of things you want to visit. This way you will make sure you won’t miss out on the top things to do or run short of time cause you didn’t know you could visit all these great points!
Based in Bali, Maarten’s passion for travel is undeniable. In 2016, he decided to quit his job as a stock analyst and started doing what he always dreamed of: travelling through South East Asia and helping other people plan their trips. When he is not working on Gecko Routes, you’ll find him surfing in the ocean or exploring the best gems of Indonesia.