Always have a backup!

If there is one thing I have learned in my travels, it is that you should always have a copy of your important documents. This can include:

• Your Passport
• Drivers License
  
• Credit Cards
• Paper Airline Tickets
• Medical/ Travel Insurance
• Reservations
• Bank/ credit card phone #s
• Etc.
  

Trust me you will loose something along the way, especially if you are taking an extended trip internationally. Having a copy allows you to quickly deal with the situation, so you can get back to enjoying your trip. I always used to do this by photocopying these documents and carrying the copies in a separate bag from my originals.

So for this trip I had an issue, if I were to copy every reservation, airline ticket, insurance doc etc.. and carry all of them with me, it would be like carrying a huge text book in my backpack. The solution was right in front of me, GOOGLE DOCS. If you have a free gmail account, you can easily sign in a create a Google docs log in. This allows you a place to store all your important documents in word, excel, PowerPoint and yes adobe PDF. The last is the most useful format in that on most computers these days you can print or save to PDF format. So when completing a reservation on a website, just save the receipt/booking page to PDF and you will be able to open it on pretty much any computer in the world.

Check out the "Google docs in plain english" video below to learn more: