Top Backpacker Souvenirs to Collect While Traveling

Top Backpacker Souvenirs - what to collect while traveling around the world.

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While traveling the world, you’re going to come across lots of travel souvenirs that would help you commemorate your trip. Everything from tacky magnets with your destination’s name splattered across to high-end handicrafts made by indigenous tribes. You might be tempted to buy all the backpacker souvenirs you see at tiendas and markets, but a) you can’t afford to and b) you don’t have enough space in your backpack.

Trust me.

You don’t need to buy every souvenir you come across to remember your trip. After all, everything you did will be stored away in the back of your mind (everything you did while you were sober, at least).

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy anything to commemorate your ’round the world trip. Here are some of the top souvenirs for backpackers traveling around the world.

 

Top Backpacker Souvenirs to Collect While Traveling:

 

Top Backpacker Souvenirs - what to collect while traveling around the world. T-shirts and singlets make great souvenirs for backpackers.

 

Singlets, Tanks, and T-shirts

Clothes are the perfect souvenir for the backpacker. Not only will they remind you of that great night out in Cambodia, but they are functional: both at home and on the road. Everywhere you go will have t-shirts and tanks iconizing your favorite beer. Whether it’s Chang in Thailand, Beer Laos, or Toña in Nicaragua. You can also pick up tees for completing a bar’s drinking challenge, going on a pub crawl, or doing something epic like biking Death Road or volcano boarding. Bar crawls, benders, and bucket lists: show the world where you’ve been and that you’ve survived with a t-shirt.

 

Top Backpacker Souvenirs - what to collect while traveling around the world. Friendship bracelets make great souvenirs for backpackers.

 

Friendship Bracelets

Look at any backpacker and they will have an arm full of braided bands. The more someone has, the longer they’ve traveled. Whether you’re a guy or a girl, you will surely pick up friendship bracelets along the way. They are cheap, easy, and sold everywhere. Guys can pick up one for every country they’ve been in the local flag’s colors. Girls can cherish the one that Italian gave them who after promising they were soulmates (and then mysteriously disappearing from Facebook). Show off where you’ve been and who you’ve been with with friendship bracelets as a souvenir.

 

Musical Instruments

There’s nothing like traveling the world to convince the average Joe that he’s Joe Perry. He might pick up the occasional guitar in a hostel and play a concert for an unsuspecting audience, but why not take it a step further? Musical instruments are a great souvenir. Be it an Arabian oud, Australian didgeridoo, Bolivian charango, or Ecuadorian rondador. Who cares if you can’t play? You’ll learn…some day. In the meantime you can just tell your friends back home, “that’s what it’s supposed to sound like.”

 

Top Backpacker Souvenirs - what to collect while traveling around the world. Foreign alcohol makes great souvenirs for backpackers.

 

Alcohol

Why just wear your love of local hooch on your sleeve when you can get some down the hatch? Some local beer or hard alcohol is the perfect souvenir for backpackers. Crack it open when you’re back home and miss being on the beach. Or share it with friends to show them what they’re missing by not traveling. Sang Som, Flor de Caña, Aguardiente, stock your home-bar with essentials from around the world. If you don’t finish them on the plane.

 

What’s your favorite souvenir to collect when backpacking?

 

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Top Backpacker Souvenirs - what to collect while traveling around the world.
Top Backpacker Souvenirs – what to collect while traveling around the world.

 


Photo Credits: Sunyu, Toa Heftiba, Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, Pablo Rebolledo


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One response to “Top Backpacker Souvenirs to Collect While Traveling”

  1. I like having small things that I can either use or put in a small box for display. For example, I have Turkish peshtemals (bath towels that are taller than me yet fold up smaller than a standard hand towel, in a gorgeous hand-woven design), Turkish evil eyes (religious clay ornaments meant to ward off evil spirits), a few pins on a lanyard from various places, and a reusable grocery bag from the Space needle that rolls up into a ball that I can put in my purse.

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