Travel in developing countries

Travel in low-income countries can be challenging to people used to the higher-income world. Infrastructure for transport, electricity, water, communication and money transfer might be deficient, and there may be problems with food safety, health care, and sanitation. Poverty might induce begging, scams and crime. In some places corruption is also a problem.

Preparation

Money

Main article: Money

Don't assume every shop in a foreign country will accept cards The concern regarding exchange rates and that (hard) cash is the preferred and sometimes only option of payment is especially true for developing countries. In some less-developed countries, the local currency may be so weak or so inflated that foreign currency (such as U.S. dollars) is used in larger transactions.

Many poor countries are high-fraud areas; don't be surprised if an attempt to use a payment card, make a VoIP call or access a password-protected website which always worked fine in your own country suddenly gets flagged as suspicious by your home providers just because you tried to get access while travelling to somewhere like Nigeria. Countries with widespread poverty, weak enforcement of criminal laws or ongoing corruption attract all manner of fraud. Contact your card issuers and the operators of any service you intend to rely upon while abroad, so that they know that you are travelling and can tell you if certain countries are blocked due to fraud and abuse.

Electricity

Main article: Electrical systems

Research the voltage and plug configuration before travelling with plug-in devices. It is rather frustrating to arrive and find that your most expensive item, some piece of electronics, cannot be recharged or used. "Universal" adapters with plugs for every conceivable outlet on earth are handy, but they tend to be heavy and expensive so if you know where you're going they're overkill – and adapters are not enough when voltage or frequency do not match your device.

Developing countries tend to have power failures more often than high income places. While Germany on the one hand has 15 minutes of power outage per year, some less developed places may have at least an hour without electricity per week. Also when there is power, there may be brownouts (lower voltage) and power spikes. Don't count on electricity "just working", bring patience and a flashlight. In some places, power is even switched on only for certain periods of time; check before you go, and in such locations, consider accommodation with their own generator or solar panels (usually equipped with batteries for the night but don't count on it), if available.

The quality of power supply can vary widely within a country. While an outage of a few hours in the capital may make headlines, more rural dwellers can only laugh as they read the ridiculously capital-centric newspaper's coverage by candlelight, themselves having such outages weekly.

For some places, it would be a fine idea to get a surge protector to keep your electronics safe from voltage fluctuations.

Vaccines and medications

Travel insurance

Main article: Travel insurance

Although travel insurance should be purchased regardless of where you travel, it is especially important when travelling to developing countries, especially since the cost of dealing with emergencies can add up quickly, In particular, since medical facilities in developing countries are often not up to the standards of more developed ones, you can likely get a better standard of care by being evacuated home, or at the very least to a more developed country by air. As medical evacuation flights are very costly, you should definitely ensure that your travel insurance policy covers this.

Get in

Visas

Main article: Visa

The availability of visas ranges from "no visa needed" or "visa on arrival for (almost) all high-income countries" to "tourists are a nuisance to our glorious leader". While much has improved since the fall of the Soviet Union, there are still corners of the world where letters of invitation are needed or an arm and a leg are charged just for the application and visas are routinely denied for no other reason than "We don't like your face" (which is how third-world citizens are often treated in the western world). Some developing countries may also be in different stages of conflict with other countries in the region or developed countries far away, resulting in visa trouble.

IATA (the International Air Transport Association) provides a database which is usually up to date and is the way most airlines judge whether you need a visa prior to boarding. If you lack a visa the database says you need, you will be denied boarding. You cannot directly access that database, but IATA have a travel information (dead link: January 2023) web page which covers vaccination requirements and customs rules as well as visas. Many airlines and some travel agents can also provide visa information, often based on the IATA database. Sites such as Project Visa or Visa Hunter also have databases of visa information for each country. However - mostly for legal reasons - none of these sources including IATA provide any guarantee for their information, so double checking with the embassy or embassies in question is a good idea if there is any doubt.

Not all overland or river border crossings are open or intended for citizens of third countries (i.e. a crossing between two countries may be able to handle citizens of those countries, but not citizens of any other country) and even those that are may not routinely provide visas on arrival, which may make your trip needlessly complicated. If you can, find out in advance what's the case and ask multiple sources. Try to get the answer in writing from as official a source as you can, which not only ensures smooth travel but will reduce the risk of being asked for a bribe.

There are two schools of thought for getting visas: one says to obtain visas as far in advance if possible, so you can buffer for unexpected delays, while the other says to obtain as close to your destination as possible, where you can get your visa rapidly and with less hassle as it's a more standard procedure. Ideally you can combine them by starting your trip at a "visa hub" city where you can get visas for nearly all neighboring countries (but some countries insist you get the visa at some specific place, depending on your home country). Some examples by region include:

Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Kyiv (Ukraine)
South-East Asia: Bangkok (Thailand) and Singapore
Southern Africa: Pretoria and Cape Town, (South Africa)
Latin America and the Caribbean: Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington DC in the United States; and Ottawa in Canada.

You can also obtain visas for almost any country in the world in Washington D.C., Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow and Western European capitals including London, Brussels, Berlin and Paris. You can also mail your visa application and passport to the nearest embassy or consulate (use registered mail). However, applications done this way tend to be time-consuming and expensive.

Mental preparation

Immigration troubles

Arrival

Some of the following is also advisable in some high income countries, but is often doubly valid in developing countries.

In many places any obvious tourist or newcomer will be swamped with offers of guides, hotels, and taxi services. It's important to look like you know what you're doing, and not be forced into accepting an offer just because you arrived unprepared.

In many places, it is better to avoid the people yelling "taxi?" inside the airport or train station; they are often touting for or driving unlicensed meter-less taxis. Furthermore, they often make their money by taking you to specific hotels, which give them a referral fee. You are better off taking the airport bus or going outside and looking for a real taxi with a license and often a meter. In some countries (Peru, Mexico, Colombia, etc) the real licensed taxis are only allowed to wait within a certain taxi rank, with a ticket seller or dispatcher there or inside the terminal building. You buy a ticket from the dispatcher or ticket seller and then hand the ticket to the driver at the taxi rank. If there is safe reliable public transit, it's often worth it to familiarize yourself with it and avoid the taxi altogether.

One way to avoid the crush, especially in India, is to use a local agent for booking accommodation or internal travel in advance. When you arrive at your destination the local agent will be waiting with your name on a notice and they will have a driver to take you to your hotel. It might cost a little bit more but it beats walking out of an air terminal at midnight after a long flight, into pandemonium.

A good arrival checklist for these situations includes all the tips for Arriving in a new city plus:

A plan. Know what you're going to do before you arrive. No matter how much you want to get off the stuffy bus or out of the crowded airport, you don't want to find yourself pondering your guidebook in the middle of a crowd of touts and hawkers. Everyone will insist on taking you to this guest-house or that hotel. Looking like you already have a goal and a plan (even if you don't) is your first line of defense against the rain of business cards and brochures. If traveling with friends, a good strategy is to leave the luggage with part of the group at a nearby restaurant or cafe while the other half gathers information on what's available. This gives everyone the excuse 'we are waiting for our friends' and will relieve some of the pressure. If you are traveling alone, just insist that you are meeting a friend who already has a room for both of you. As a last resort, don't hesitate to just ignore any especially insistent 'guides' or 'friends'. They will leave you alone, eventually. Sometimes just briskly walking through the crowd like you know where you are going, will do the trick. That is of course especially helpful if you do.
Knowledge of costs. Have some idea of what a taxi into town should cost (in the local currency), and enough language (or a piece of paper and pen) to negotiate it. Expect to be charged more than the locals, but at least this way you should get the right number of 0's. If arriving by plane, just ask someone on the flight. And of course, always negotiate the price ahead of time, before entering the vehicle.
Knowledge of alternatives While some developing countries don't have much public transport to speak of and taking it is usually not advisable for all but the most daring travellers, there are other places (especially big cities) with remarkably good public transport, especially to/from the main airport and/or bus or train station connecting to the city center respectively. Some public transport systems are a bit complicated or require a card or coupons for payment. Familiarize yourself with the local quirks and get a map of the system as soon as possible (they are sometimes available online, but even a city as big as Managua has none whatsoever). Be sure to have an idea of the situation on the ground before heading out. If public transport isn't an option or you just prefer a cab, familiarize yourself with the look of official cabs and modes of payment. Sometimes an airport taxi has to be paid with a voucher that you can only buy in the airport, sometimes there are "city" and "airport" taxis, both legal official and safe but only the airport taxis allowed into the immediate airport area and thus much more expensive. In general "unofficial" taxis are best avoided and you should have at least a general idea what a legitimate taxi looks like. (e.g. license in the windshield, a specific color, the word "taxi" on the roof or a variety of other markers)

Get a local data SIM card

Get around

Infrastructure in developing countries is generally not up to the standards of more developed countries. Visitors should plan more time to cover the same distance. Safety can also be an issue, particularly if air or sea travel is involved. Rail travel might be slower than buses or entirely unavailable if a network built in the colonial era was not properly maintained or updated since then.

Some remote inland locations may only be feasibly reachable by boat or air travel (possibly bush planes), with a corresponding increase in cost, hassle and time to get there.

Do some research before you go.

While sometimes the government subsidizes surface (and even air) transport, lack of competition can drive prices significantly.

Why is the one-hour hop on a Cessna $200 one-way? Perhaps the alternative is an old bus that takes at least 24 hours and may or may not break down on the dirt roads that get you there. In places like Cuba there are essentially two travel networks, one for people with hard currency and one for those without. While the former is often outrageously priced by local standards, the price may be reasonable to a western wallet if the perks (air conditioning, faster travel speeds, newer vehicles) are worth the extra cost.

On the other hand, you will most likely interact less with locals and get less of a feel for what living in one of these countries is actually like.

In some cities, such as Ho Chi Minh City, there are large and well-known taxi companies which are generally reliable, and with drivers that are more likely to be honest; it is worth doing some research to find out what those companies are, and to only take taxis from those companies when you are there. Other cities, such as Bangkok or Beijing, may not have those large taxi companies, but you can minimise your risk of getting scammed by avoiding the taxis parked outside hotels or tourist attractions, and instead flagging down a taxi cruising down the street, or catching one at a taxi stand used mainly by locals.

Talk

Sleep

Do not sleep on a mattress or pad on the ground in areas where you do not know the local fauna. If you are going to camp out, bring a camp cot or hammock to keep you away from snakes, scorpions and such. Use mosquito nets around your bed in countries where mosquitoes carry malaria, dengue or yellow fever.

In some countries there is more or less explicitly a distinction between hotels aimed at locals and hotels aimed at foreigners. While sometimes the distinction is mostly price, location and the ability of staff to speak English, in some cases you really should avoid the hotels aimed at locals, especially if they rent rooms by the hour.

Stay safe

If you are from the developed world, your income is likely enormous in relation to that of many people in some developing countries. The UN estimates that over a billion people live on under US$1 a day. If you wander into their territory waving around a camera whose price exceeds local annual income, expect a reaction. Even your backpack, boots, watch and clothes may each cost a few months' local income, sometimes even more than a year's income for the poorer locals. If you insist on using these items, consider altering them to (1) make them look dirty or rusted, and (2) reduce their potential resale value.

In addition, ethnic stereotypes and perceptions may affect how locals view you. For example, Chinese travellers may be stereotyped as wealthy businesspersons who habitually deposit and use large sum of cash, which makes Chinese more prone to burglary and corrupt officials.

Reactions vary, but be prepared to deal with:

aggressive sales tactics and being charged more than locals. See Bargaining for more.
police and other government officers requesting bribes. See Authority trouble and Corruption and bribery.
various scams aimed at tourists. See Common scams.
thieves. See Pickpockets.
beggars, including children being exploited by adults as street beggars. See Begging.
violent crimes such as armed robbery and snatch theft, particularly in big cities like Caracas, Johannesburg and São Paulo.

Take precautions, but do not get paranoid about it. Of course people want your money, but don't let that spoil a trip.

In parts of Asia and Latin America, aggressive dogs are another concern.

If travelling in a country that is experiencing widespread violence, such as a civil war, you need to take many extra precautions, see War zone safety.

Police

For more information on how to cope with corrupt officers, see the Corruption and bribery article.

One unfortunate fact of life is that police corruption is likely to be more of an issue the less developed a country is. As such, you should not expect much help from the police if you have been a victim of crime, as criminals often bribe police officers to avoid arrest. You should still make a police report as the police report would generally be required for you to make an insurance claim on the value of any items stolen.

It is also not uncommon for police officers in developing countries to ask for bribes, especially with regards to traffic offenses, crossing borders, problems with documents and the like.