Most people go on holiday and try and always bring back a fridge magnet, a funny t-shirt, a pack of fags or generally something that they could easily find in the airport duty free shop. Us long term globetrotters though… we always have to be a bit different… and our collections are abit stranger.

I realised after a short time of backpacking that if I would buy regular souvenirs everywhere I went, my money would run out fast, my bag would get very heavy and eventually when im home again, my house would be full of crap… so I came up with some other ideas of what to collect!

Rocks and shells

When I started travelling and didn’t want to spend much money or add much weight to my bag, I would carefully select a pebble or shell from interesting places I visited. I had gravel from volcanic springs of iceland, and shells from ushuaia at the end of the world.

The initial intention was to end up with a beautiful catalogued display. Good intentions don’t always work out though.

For starters, many countries will not allow you to take out or bring in natural materials like shells. So you have to know the rules where you are.

Secondly, whilst pebbles are sturdy, shells tend to break, and when a shell breaks into hundreds of sharp small pieces in your bag full of all your clothes, you tend to have regrets.

The final nail in the coffin that ended my collecting these though was when i was moving around my boxes of rocks that had all been labelled with cute string tags. The box got shook, and all the labels fell off and so now all my rocks are without labels and I cant remember where each one came from. Rendering them abit pointless!

Passport stamps

After I got a very unique stamp in my passport from ushuaia, and after collecting stamps in my pilgrim passport during my camino, I started to get quite excited about getting my passport stamped at immigration.

I am now in a habit of counting how many passport pages I have left and how many stamps it might take to fill it. I have seven years left on my current passport and about six pages so im hopeful that I can fill it!

Its a bit bad actually as it makes me want do extra stops in countries just for the stamp!

Badges / Patches

I always felt a bit jealous seeing experienced travellers with so many cool patches or badges on their bags or jackets and so I decided to start collecting these.

I have a bright green 40L backpack and I want to slowly cover it with patches but the downside is that it takes a lot of effort to sew them all on, and eventually I will run out of space and have to start a new one… but then all my patches won’t be together.

I may have started something difficult to end, especially when your are a little OCD like me!

Postcards

A bit more of a standard one, one postcard per country is a nice way to have a really good photo at the beginning of my photo albums.

I love sending postcards even though it is getting more and more pricey for the stamps. I always buy an extra one for me just for the photo though.

Aprons

This one is not mine but I decided to include it as its a wierd one. Another traveller I know likes to collect aprons for her mum with the names of the locations on. This is because her mum loves to cook.

This isnt the easiest thing to collect though as its not the standard souvenir. I have been with her many times before when she has struggled to find one!

Basic words and profanities of different languages

I keep a note page in my phone of all the phrases (helpful, funny and rude) that I have learnt from my international friends.

It is always fun to suprise people by responding in their own language when they are not expecting it! The only problem is when they then try to have a full conversation with you and you only know the few phrases…

So far I have collected phrases in hindi, urdu, swahili, romanian, german, spanish, chilean slang, vietnamese, tegalog, and hebrew.

The amount of Indian friends I have now, I feel inspired to try to learn more hindi and I have already downloaded an app but we will see how this affects my spanish learning!

Ideas

Of course the one thing I end up collecting in abundance with each new place and new travelling companion I meet, is more ideas on where to go next. This is definitely my most costly collection but will also end up being the most memorable…

I’m curious to know what other travellers collect, leave a comment below!