Five ways to keep safe travelling

Be wary of flaunting your tourist status as it may encourage theft. Photo / Thinkstock

Megan Singleton has some handy hints to help keep your holiday on track.

Don't let your holiday be spoiled by having your stuff nicked, or worse, being mugged.

Here are some sensible tips for keeping everything you left home with intact so you can get on with creating awesome memories and Facebook updates to make your friends feel jealous, not sorry for you.

1. Don't look like a tourist. Ditch the bum belt and camera dangling around your neck. Twirling in circles with a map the size of a card table may elicit the responses of helpful locals (that happens more often than not), but it also pegs you as the tourist that you are.

2. Don't take all your money with you on a night out, or a day out for that matter. Lock up the cash and credit cards in your hotel safe and take only your ID and what you need for that day. Some people even carry a second wallet with mugging money tucked inside. While this might be quite extreme, in some countries it'll get you out of all manner of predicaments.

3. If you're visiting a country where English speakers are hard to find, write your accommodation details down in the local language (and not just on your smartphone lest you not feel so smart when that is stolen). You could also take a photo of your hotel to show a cab driver. Or a policeman.

4. Scan your travel documents and save them in the Cloud. That's a better use of cloud storage than naked selfies! This means that even if your car/hotel/person is ransacked and everything is taken, you can access your itinerary, passport, travel insurance paperwork and credit card details from anywhere.

5. Be wary of people acting nice. This sounds counter-intuitive, but there are too many stories of gullible tourists who happily allow "good Samaritans" to assist them as they simply get close enough to have one of them whip off with your wallet. Cue the bird poo on the leg story which is actually yoghurt squirted from a bottle to catch you off guard as they arrive with a tissue to "help".

Click here for Megan's tips on saving money while travelling.