I read the travel books, scanned Wikitravel pages and sought endless advice from travel agents. Still, there were things that I didn’t know about travelling before I set off, that I wish I did...

Pack lighter, Danielle!

It’s all too tempting to cram everything but the kitchen sink into your 70+10 rucksack, but do yourself a favour - pack light. You’ll be the one lugging that load around on your back, and trust me when I say, it doesn’t get any easier. It just gets sweatier.

Did I need five pairs of shoes? Nah. Was it necessary to pack the entire contents of my make-up bag (including bronzer)? Nuh-uh. So long as you’ve bagged the essentials, you can pick things up as you go – and often, for a fraction of the cost.

Plus, when you buy bits from other countries, they’ll serve as happy mementoes of your adventures. I picked up some cliché hippy pants in Malaysia and refuse to bin them, despite the fact they were (probably) dragged through piss multiple times, are four inches too long, and have a gaping hole in the crotch which exposes the entirety of my nether regions.

PACK your smartphone

A good idea, I thought, would be to lay my smartphone to sleep in my bedside drawer and buy a burner* from Tesco for my travels. I encouraged my other half, Lewis, to do the same. But, being the risky minx that he is, he took his smartphone along for the crazy ride.

...And thank F*ck he did. We relied on that digital device day in, day out – to book hostels, ferries, Ubers and overnight sleepers. To find places to eat, drink and party. And to make our friends and family back home feel jealous with regular photo updates (#nofilter).

Pack your smartphone, but be smart with it. Lew attached his to a lanyard which he tied to his belt loop (still with me?). It worked a treat.

Take more videos

No matter where you travel, you’re bound to experience several “Oh shit, look at that!” moments.

Now, I’m very much an ‘in-the-moment’ person. I like to see things with my actual eyes, rather than through a screen. Luckily enough, Lew was more GoPro-active (did I just make up a new word?) than me, so thanks to him, we can look back at photos and watch videos and re-live those moments. He saved the day again – as, if it were down to me, those memories would exist purely in our heads, and in the words in my diary.

Saying that, we wish we took more videos of our adventures – even those moments that at the time seemed pretty insignificant. I wish we had a clip of our Dutch friends kicking our arses at Shithead an hour after us teaching them it; a clip of us huddled under a shelter with a Thai family and our trusty moped, waiting for the storm to pass; or a clip of us chowing down on our first ever Roti Canai in the Cameron Highlands.

Years after our adventure, it’s the videos that evoke the strongest emotions. They help me to remember what it was like to be there, in that moment. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then I guess a video is worth a thousand pictures.

*At no point was this phone used to initiate a drug deal.