I always try and travel on the lighter side in case you want to buy clothing while you’re on vacation and not have an overpacked bag on the way home.

A good pair of walking sneakers, jeans, one dress shirt, a bathing suit and lots of underwear and socks are essential. The rest you can determine based on your style, and what climate vacation you will be on.

One thing that people often wonder about when traveling whether it’s solo or in a group is how they can keep their valuables safe. Many people use a money belt, which is fine, but I personally don’t like them.

I recently traveled to Brazil solo and found two things that made me feel more secure about traveling around with valuables. I want to emphasize that I do not have an official partnership, nor am I a paid sponsor, I just found these two items to be extremely high quality products that did exactly what I was hoping they would do.

Fabletics Lined Shorts – There are a bunch of brands out there that have shorts like this, but I found these to be the most comfortable and exactly what I was looking for. They have a mesh inside to the shorts, where you can place your phone, wallet and other valuables in when walking around. This dramatically improves the chance you are not pickpocketed as it would be very hard for someone to lift up your shorts and then take them out of a skin tight material.

Randy Cow Bathing Suit – I have been looking for something like this for awhile. I knew it would come out one day. Waterproof Bathing suit! Let me tell you, it works. I had my phone stolen on the beaches of Barcelona. I was there once leaving it alone as I went for a swim. There were no friends to watch it, and I couldn’t bring it in the water. This is extremely helpful whether you’re with friends, or especially if you’re traveling alone and don’t want to leave your phone/wallet on the beach or by the pool. My only suggestion to them would be to get rid of the inner mesh and replace it with a nice athletic lining like birddogs has (my other favorite bathing suit), then they’d be even better!