Know what makes us sleep better at night?
We can tell you it’s not blackout curtains – we like to sleep with some light in the room (you would too if you have had our traumatising nighttime experiences from various hotel rooms 😬).
What helps us is knowing we’ve got travel safety alerts set up.
Weird?
Well, we kinda are. Welcome to our (weird) enchanted journey!
If you don’t get international travel safety alerts straight to your phone, we are here to tell you: 1. Why you should. 2. How you can set them up.
Prepare yourself – this is the free travel hack you didn’t know about (but you will be glad you’ve discovered).
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please read our Disclaimer.
Here’s a little bit about our journey, if you are new here! If you know us, feel free to skip this part.
After leaving our old life in Scotland in March 2022 (it rains too much there), we travelled full-time for almost 2 years. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it was. If you think that carrying overpacked backpacks in 45°C heat around streets that aren’t even on Google Maps is fancy. And that’s just 1% of all the fun we had! 😆
During the 2 years we volunteered in Italy and Bulgaria (free travel while learning new skills, anyone?), explored other amazing European countries and backpacked Southeast Asia. Even our secret wedding was more of an expedition than a wedding. 😅
And, of course, we researched and planned everything ourselves, because you gotta keep the budget low, right? If you are like us, you’ve come to the right place, because we want to share all the useful tips and info with you!
Excited? Good. Let’s get into it so you can go on your own adventures too!
Travel safety
We talk about travel safety a lot.
Why?
- Mirka is quite a worried person – anxiety and stress are her bffs.
- This isn’t helped by the fact that 💩 happens to us constantly. We aren’t even exaggerating – our bad luck is legendary. If you haven’t heard any of our “omg, not again” stories, give us a follow on Instagram where we share when they happen, which is (almost) daily.
- Over the years of travelling, we’ve been in quite a few bad situations and now try and do our best to stay safer.
All in all, you can check out our travel safety section to see the hacks we use to stay safer as we travel.
The other thing you can do when you travel?
Get insured!
A word on travel insurance
Travel insurance is not the most exciting topic – you’ve got to research different providers, read T&Cs and pay money for something you might never need.
This is exactly why we talk about it a lot – we feel like we’ve hacked it a bit and wanna spread the word.
Hacked it how?
Well, when we were going full-time travelling, we researched 23 different travel insurance providers.
It was painful, but worth it, because now we have two companies we can turn to who can cover us on our travels.
The two travel insurance providers we trust?
SafetyWing and True Traveller.
They are two awesome companies that understand travellers. How do we know this? Their founders are travellers too!
They also pass our 11-question test – you’ve got to check this out if you are buying travel insurance, especially long-term one.
Now, let’s talk about the travel safety alerts hack.
Travel safety alerts hack
This travel tip is mainly useful if you are visiting multiple countries during your trip, so an absolute must for long-term travel.
What we are talking about here are government-issued travel safety alerts that inform you about any major developments in the countries you are planning to visit (or are currently travelling in).
An example of travel safety alerts
If you are signed up for travel safety alerts for Thailand, you will be notified if an earthquake hits the country – like the March 2025 Myanmar earthquake, which saw a skyscraper in Bangkok fall.
Or if you were signed up for travel safety alerts for Iceland, you would have been notified in April 2025 about the volcanic eruptions happening on the island.
You can see some examples of the travel safety alerts we have received below.
What do travel safety alerts cover?
This will depend on whose governmental service you are using to receive the alerts – because, and this is an important point to make, you don’t have to just use your own country’s service.
The travel safety alerts we get from the UK government cover everything, from changes in the entry requirements to any disease outbreaks (funny how we all now pay waaayyy more attention to these, right?), natural disasters, political unrest and riots, terrorism or even an increase in criminal activities, like scams or muggings.
Why do you need travel safety alerts?
Here is the thing. If you are planning a long-term multi-country trip, you are planning in advance.
You might know exactly which cities you want to visit in Argentina in a year’s time, once you get there – so you can plan that. But you will not know what will be happening in the country at that point.
And we don’t know how about you, but we are not able to keep track of news from all over the world. Nor do we want to.
So if your multi-country trip covers 15 countries, a system that will keep you posted on what is happening in them is a pretty useful thing.
If you have travel safety alerts set up, you will be able to adjust your journey as you go.
A big earthquake hit a country you were planning to go to? You can quickly replan that part of the trip and go elsewhere.
Alcohol spiking or methanol poisoning problems? You will know to be more careful and avoid local brands of alcohol.
Honestly, this might not be something you have ever thought of, but it can be so so useful. Especially for long-term travels or if you are nomadic, knowing what’s going on in the countries you are heading to is crucial.
Best part?
This service is offered by governments so it’s totally FREE! And we love free hacks. They are our favourite.
How to set up travel safety alerts
Okay, now that you know what travel safety alerts are and you want to be getting them too (we get it, you also want to sleep better!), here is how to set them up:
- Figure out which country’s service you want to use. You can check the government website of your own country. Just search for the phrase: “travel safety alerts” or something similar, in your local language. Alternatively, choose a foreign country that offers this service and sign up there.
- Once you’ve chosen which travel safety alerts service you’ll be using, make a list of the countries you are planning to (or thinking of) visiting.
- Next, enter these countries into the government travel safety alerts system and sign up for notifications.
- Sleep peacefully.
Which travel safety alerts service do we use?
When we were planning our full-time travels, we wanted to double-insure ourselves (of course we did. You know us 😆).
Why? Because every government decides themselves, whether something is a safety concern. And reports on situations and incidents differently. If you are not sure what we mean, just think about how different countries responded to the Covid pandemic.
What we did
We wanted to subscribe to travel safety alerts from two governments: the UK and Slovakia.
As it turned out, the system in Slovakia is not as easy to use, as in the UK.
In Slovakia, you have to fill out an e-form, where you register yourself and your travel party. While that is okay, you also have to input specific dates for when you will be in each country – something most long-term travellers don’t know in advance.
This is why we decided against using the service in the end.
How to set up travel safety alerts in the UK
On the other hand, the UK travel safety alerts are super easy to set up.
All you have to do is:
- Go to the Foreign travel advice page
- One by one select the countries you are planning to visit
- Click “Get email alerts”
- Choose how often you want to be notified
- Enter your email address and sign up, like you would for a regular newsletter
Note: make sure to verify your email address afterwards, otherwise you won’t be receiving the alerts.
It is a bit of a faff, to do this one by one, if you are planning on visiting many countries, but the good thing is, once you do it, you will get the travel safety alerts forever – no need to input arrival or departure dates etc.
We have actually kept the alerts on for the countries we set up when we went full-time travelling.
That way, we are kept up-to-date on major happenings in at least part of the world.
Alternatively, you can easily unsubscribe once you have visited that country.
Something to be aware of
If your own government’s travel safety alerts service sucks (or there isn’t one), the UK one is a good option to go for.
The only issue is, the entry requirements will, obviously, be for British people.
Similarly, if there is a major incident, the contact information and instructions provided by the alerts service will be for British people – in that case, make sure to use the service as a source of information, but check with your own government or an embassy for information specifically for people of your nationality.
How to use travel safety alerts
First of all, sign up for them using an email you actually check regularly. Otherwise, they will be no use to you.
And then, build your travel safety.
What do we mean by that?
How to build your travel safety
Well, travel safety isn’t something you can just get.
It’s not like solid toiletries (btw give those a go if you are not using them yet, they are THE BEST).
Or the travel miracle that are packing cubes.
We so wish travel safety was like that.
You would buy a package and stay safe.
Sadly no. Travel safety is something you have to build.
How?
- Over time, by living and travelling, as you get more experienced (although, admittedly, this process does usually involve A LOT of times and experiences that aren’t that safe – that’s where the true growth happens).
- By learning about the different travel safety hacks and actually using them.
Now with point no. 2, we are not suggesting you become travel safety-obsessed. You’d never venture out of your front door then.
What we would suggest is, think about what makes sense for you.
Do you feel safer taking a taxi everywhere?
Sharing your location as you travel?
How about knowing that your backpack is safe – that gives us peace of mind big time.
Or the fact that if anything was to happen, someone would be able to locate us using this simple trick.
And then of course, insure it all by – you guessed it – getting travel insurance.
Just to remind you, we use SafetyWing or True Traveller on our travels (depends on the kind of trip we are on).
And btw, we did say “insure it all” but we don’t literally mean insure everything you possibly can. In fact we would advise against it. But that’s a topic for a different post, one that you can read here.
Have you ever heard about travel safety alerts? Let us know in the comments!
Stay safe and happy travels!
