Everyone naturally wants to travel safely and also be safe while traveling. Traveling safely with your day bag is a must for a pleasant and worry-free vacation. I’m happy to share these safety tips for your bag during travel. I’ll also give you a tip about which bag is safe to use while traveling. Because when you’re backpacking or taking a beautiful road trip, you don’t want to worry about theft.
That is why it is important to think in advance about how you are perceived by a potential thief. Put yourself in the shoes of a thief or pickpocket.
What opportunity do they see to steal something from your bag? Where do you give space to a potential thief to take something from your bag or maybe even steal your entire bag? Are you aware of these dangers? Do you see what they, the thieves or pickpockets, see?
7 Safety Tips for Your Bag While Traveling
You can imagine that a potential thief is looking for different things than you are. You’re looking for that beautiful shot to take, that beautiful vantage point to capture a building uniquely, and meanwhile your bag is hanging on your back. Maybe even with the zipper open because you just took out your camera.
Are you still aware at that moment of what’s happening around you?
Because you’re not always aware of your surroundings and don’t want to be while traveling, it’s good to prepare yourself well in advance. You just want to enjoy your surroundings!
Safe Traveling with Your Day Bag
The question is: Do you have your bag 100% under control or are there moments when you’re not in contact with your bag? And where is it that you’re not completely in contact with your bag? How many people are in your vicinity then… And especially… Which people are they? These are the moments when you need to be aware of whether your bag is closed… who can reach it and would I feel it if that happened?
I’m also aware that I unconsciously scan my surroundings more. And based on that scan, I assess my environment differently for safety than someone else would.
I’d like to take you through these safety tips for your bag and how best to handle your bag. In different environments and different situations wherever in the world you’re traveling!
Becoming aware of how you handle your bag is the first step toward Safe Travel
The first safety tip for your bag is the fact that it’s always good to keep your bag in sight. The bag that contains your wallet, your passport, and other important things that you really don’t want and can’t lose during your trip.
Tip 1 of 7 safety tips for your bag while traveling
Keep your bag in sight
Keep your bag in sight where your important items are. Carrying the bag on your back is therefore not always convenient. On the other hand, it naturally walks nicely, you’re balanced and don’t have trouble with the bag. But when you’re walking in a city, you don’t always know who’s walking behind you. You don’t know who paid attention to you during your last payment and thus knows where you put away your wallet. Someone like that can easily, especially if they’re a trained pickpocket, pickpocket your wallet from you.
But if this wallet is neatly and deeply tucked away in your bag, they may choose another, easier prey.
Read these 5 Tips for recognizing a picketpocket
Also when you’re traveling by bus or train. Make sure you keep the bag with you and maintain contact with your body. Put a hand on it, put the strap around you, or keep the bag on your lap.
And also when you go out to eat, do you pay attention to where you put the bag down? How do you position the bag so that it becomes more difficult for a potential thief to reach it unnoticed? For example, don’t put the bag on the ground so you no longer have sight of it. Hang it on the chair in such a way that it doesn’t hang completely behind you but that you could still see movement with a sidelong glance. I often sit alone at a table while traveling and can therefore use the chair next to me for it or even put the bag on the table.
Do you know the purse hanger? That’s a handy little hook with which you can hang your bag on the table wherever you sit so your bag remains in sight. I had one in my bag for a while, but everyone has different things that are useful. The purse hanger wasn’t my thing, I didn’t use it. Maybe you will?
Being conscious of what you do and why you do something is an important point. Then your brain registers something that doesn’t go as expected sooner. It’s nice that you can partly rely on that.
Always close your bag
Always close the zippers of your bag. Also the zipper that’s inside the bag… Don’t leave them open so a pickpocket can easily reach in. Even if it’s a zipper behind another zipper. You don’t want to make it easier for the pickpocket. They’re trained to get into your bag quickly and easily. If a second zipper has to be opened and your wallet is just around a corner / in another compartment, you make it a bit more difficult for them. The more likely it is that you’ll feel that someone is rummaging in your bag.
There are more and more bags on the market that have an extra compartment for a wallet and other valuables. Make use of that… Or better yet, take that into account when purchasing your new day bag!
My tip: If a bag doesn’t have extra compartments on the inside that you can close with a zipper, it’s out for me. I want to put my wallet, keys, and if I take my passport with me, in a separate closed compartment in my bag. That’s possible in a bag with multiple compartments.
Check out this shoulder bag model with lots of compartments and zippers where you can safely store all your valuables. And if you’re lucky, you might get a nice color. The one I have is no longer available, I see.
How do you carry your bag with you?
How do you carry your bag with you? With shoulder bags, you can carry it in front of your body, on the side, or at the back. If you carry the bag in front, you have sight of your bag. You feel it constantly because usually a hand or arm is against the bag. The same applies if you hang the bag against your side. There is a small disadvantage to that… part of the bag tends toward your back side and thus out of your field of vision.
Is the zip pull to open the zip on your bag out of sight? Then it is useful to hang the bag around your neck. This ensures that the zip pull is at the front and not at the back, behind your back.
So make sure the zipper pull stays in your sight if you hang the bag on your side.
There are of course other ways to open a zipper, for example by sticking a pen in it and then unzipping it. This does take some work with someone who’s still moving and busy. This happens more with large bags and suitcases that are in storage. Think of airports, bus terminals, etc.
For more information, read How to Travel Safe by Bus or Train / Do you use the TSA lock on your luggage?
Do you have your bag on your safe side?
Make sure your bag is in a place that’s not at a public passage. Such as at the front or back of a terrace where the public walks past. This is difficult to control because if the public constantly walks past your bag, it’s harder to see if someone lingers a bit longer or if someone takes your entire bag. Keep your bag in front of you and thus in sight. If you’re sitting on the bus or train, make sure your bag isn’t at the aisle but by the window, for example.
Are you always in contact with your bag?
If you stay in contact with your bag, you have a better chance of feeling that someone is in your bag or even trying to take your entire bag. You can naturally stay in contact with your bag in multiple ways. Hang the strap over your knee, or make sure a body part (arm/leg) is still through it. Put the bag on the chair you’re sitting next to or in and thus remain fully in (visual) contact with your bag, or keep the bag on your lap.
Try to get used to doing these things so that you don’t have to think about them so much and you just do them automatically. Travelling is so much easier when you don’t have to think about whether you’ve got everything with you every time.
In closing, I want to emphasize this point once more. I think this is the most important. Make sure you hide the most important items in your bag behind the extra zipper.
Important items behind an extra zipper
You can never be completely prepared for trained pickpockets. But to make it easier for them than they make it for themselves? Make sure they can’t grab your wallet with one reach into your bag. Also make sure this compartment is on the body side of your bag for extra feeling with the piece of bag where you keep your important items.
Read these 5 Tips to Protect Yourself Against Pickpockets.
In this photo, you can still see my old blue Kipling bag. It was nice and small and also had many different compartments to store everything well. Multiple zippers and closures to put the important items behind double zippers. You can tell, I’ve been a fan of this brand for years.
Check out the Gabbie Kipling. Also a very handy model with many compartments and zippers to carry your belongings safely with you.
A bag I’ve been using a lot lately is the waterproof backpack from Osprey. You can take a bit more in it, also on hiking trips during your journey, and it has multiple compartments. In addition, when you’re not using the bag, you can fold it into a small package. This is of course ideal when you travel as light as possible. If you close the bag as it should be closed for this waterproof bag, it simply can’t be opened by someone walking behind you.
This Sea to Summit version is a bit less pricey (saves 25 euros). Also handy to take in a small bag and yet always have a 22-liter backpack at your disposal.
As a last tip in these safety tips for your bag…
Money pouch or money belt?
It’s a good idea to store money extra well or to wear everything that’s very important on your body. At the same time, you don’t want to make it difficult for yourself and be too busy with these kinds of things during your trip. To travel safely with my day bag, I rarely have much money with me. I often hear that people don’t want to pay too much for ATM transactions at a bank. For that reason, they then walk around with more money than necessary abroad. Fortunately, we can increasingly pay everywhere easily with a card and your smartphone. So you don’t need to have that much cash with you anymore.
Yet I have adopted the habit of hiding some money in my backpack. Somewhere there’s an envelope or small wallet or just a 50 bill hidden. And it’s often in a non-logical place. I’ve never lost this money, although I have forgotten about it. I found it a year later. It has never been taken from the bag that sometimes sits at a hotel for days or stands unattended in a bus for hours.
Additionally, I do see people on the street rummaging in their money pouch or money belt that should actually remain hidden from everyone. If you do it this way, I think you might as well just carry the money behind that extra zipper. Carrying an extra supply like this, it can suggest that you’re carrying a lot of money.
If you just have your money in a place that’s easy for you to reach and for which you have to perform 1 action, you don’t attract attention. No one gets the suspicion that you have a lot of money there or that you’re hiding something else there. You don’t have to search and don’t take out other items from your bag that then come into the sight of the potential thief.
Be structured in that!
Hiding money in a non-logical place?
What is a non-logical place then? During my former job, I did visit people at home who had been burgled. The places where thieves search are usually in the closet, between your underwear, nightstand, and the bathroom, etc. So? I would hide money at home between the pots and pans in the kitchen, for example. Or with the cleaning supplies. You can also think of places in your bag that are non-logical. For example, your first aid kit? Rolled in two socks? You name it.
Be inventive and smart!
This handy bag also had multiple compartments and zippers. I used this bag model for a very long time and even had it made in a colorful fabric of my choice.
And yet it happened to me too… I was robbed of my bag in Namibia. Read more about it and find out if I lost everything…
7 Safety Tips for Your Bag While Traveling
Have you had an experience with a pickpocket or theft during your trip?
Want to read more about Safe Travel?
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And then this one… The safety instructions at the start of your journey!