5 Travel Non-Negotiables I Never Skip, Wherever I Land

My travel non-negotiables are not the famous sights. They are the small rituals that make a new city feel like mine for a while (and stop me from coming home more tired than when I left).

Itineraries change, flights get rebooked, and sometimes I book the wrong city entirely. But these five stay. Here they are, in no particular order, except the first one, which is always first.

1. Visiting an English Bookstore

My first travel non-negotiable is finding an English bookstore, even in a country where I can’t read most of the shelves. I have treated bookstores as sanctuaries my whole life. Sarinah Kinokuniya in Jakarta, Borders at Wheelock Place in Singapore, Ampersand in Sydney. I still consider some of them sacred.

In Santorini, I nearly lost it when I found a “closed” sign on Atlantis Books in Oia. A quick search said it had moved to Firostefani. It was our last evening, so Fafa gave me two options, a sunset dinner in Oia or an expensive Uber into the wind to a bookstore I had never once mentioned to him. No prizes for guessing.

It was small, warm and full of kindred souls. For a moment, among all that Santorini blue, I was home.

KK tip: Look up the bookstore before you land, and check the address twice. Bookstores move.

2. Journaling

Journaling is the travel non-negotiable that ties the rest together, because half my blog is built from notes I scribbled in a café on the road. Hot chocolate at Vascobelo in Amsterdam. A tired afternoon at Wolf Café in the Jordaan. A postcard and journaling session in a wooden Airbnb in Furano after a night of Instax photos with friends.

For five years I was a Black Expanded Moleskine purist. Then Atlantis Books happened, a small blue journal, locally made and stamped with the shop’s seal, and the floodgates opened. Fafa has been my official journal buyer ever since.

KK tip: Write on the trip, not after it. The details you think you will remember (the smell, the price, what the waiter shouted) are the first things to go.

3. Visiting a Local Market

A local market is one of my travel non-negotiables because it shows me how a place actually eats, shops and talks. Some markets hug you. In Fiji and Samoa I was met with smiles and long conversations. Others do not.

At Port Moselle Market in Nouméa, the coconut man barked “No card!” without mentioning the ATM right behind his stall. We came back with cash anyway (the coconut was worth it). I left with a soft pink rose tucked next to Miaw on my backpack, a Tahitian pearl, a couple of overpriced magnets and a baguette with papaya jam, the one fruit I have hated since childhood. It was heavenly.

KK tip: Carry cash and go early. Markets wind down well before you think they will.

4. Yoga

Yoga made my travel non-negotiables list because I have a bad habit of abandoning every routine the moment I board a plane. I wrote about it in Amsterdam, over that Vascobelo hot chocolate, feeling old and tired and a little self-sabotaging. My routines were not travel-proof.

Yoga is my fix. It needs no gym, no booking and no equipment beyond a towel and a patch of floor. A few slow stretches in a hotel room after a long flight, or on an Airbnb rug before the day starts, and my body remembers that it lives somewhere.

KK tip: Keep it small. Ten minutes on the trip beats the hour-long class you planned and skipped.

5. Staying in an Airbnb

The last of my travel non-negotiables is staying in an Airbnb for at least part of the trip, because a home teaches you more about a city than a hotel lobby ever will. I want the neighbourhood supermarket, the strange appliances and the window onto someone else’s street.

My favourite Furano memory was not the lavender at Farm Tomita. It was the night inside our wooden Airbnb with Vi, Charles and Yin, drinking, snacking and taking Instax photos until we crashed. And in Amsterdam, I still daydream about a canal apartment in the Jordaan or De Pijp, second or third floor, watching street life from above.

KK tip: Book somewhere with a kitchen and a supermarket nearby. In small towns especially, restaurants close early and you will want onigiri for breakfast.

What Are Your Travel Non-Negotiables?

A bookstore, a journal, a market, a stretch and a borrowed home. None of them are on a top ten list, and all of them are why I come back from a trip feeling like I actually went somewhere. Tell me yours, I am always looking for new ones to steal.