Friday, April 6, 2012

FAVORITE TRAVEL FREEBIES

I love travel freebies! When traveling, most likely, you’ll find yourself doing two things: staying at a hotel and shopping. Believe it or not, these are the best playgrounds for finding awesome travel freebies worth snatching and taking home with you. From my travels in China, I’ve managed to find the best travel freebies that are worth your while and incredibly useful. Here are my favorites:

Beauty Product Samples
Who doesn’t love getting free product samples? When shopping at cosmetic counters, don’t be shy to ask the sales person if you can get a few product samples, especially after you’ve bought something. Usually, they are happy to give product samples to keep customers like you coming back for more. Beauty product samples are great for short out-of-town trips and for times when you just don’t want to bring that huge makeup bag and all your heavy skin care products.


Beauty product samples
I managed to get from Sephoras around China

Honey from the complimentary breakfast buffet
If your hotel room includes complimentary breakfast, you are in for a real treat. At the breakfast buffet, I always get 2-3 sachets of honey to take with me, or better yet, if you find tiny complimentary honey and jam jars at your table, take the small honey jar home with you. Honey is one of nature’s best moisturizers and is extremely beneficial to the skin because of its healing properties. Spread a thin layer of honey over your face for 10-15 minutes then rinse with warm water. See your skin glow!


A tiny Bonne Maman Honey jar
from the InterContinental Nanjing's breakfast buffet

Tea Sachets
Most hotel rooms give free coffee and tea sachets. The tea sachets sometimes come in interesting flavors and blends and very good brands. If you’re a tea drinker like me, go ahead and grab a few sachets to take with you and add to your tea sachet collection at home.


A black tea sachet I snatched
from my hotel room in Shanghai

Tiny lotions
Hotel toiletries are some of the best amenities available. As much as I love the shampoo and conditioners, I always end up using them up since my hair is long and thick. So the tiny lotions are really the only ones worth taking. Small lotions are extremely handy because of three things: you can never have enough lotion, you can put them inside the tiniest bag, and you can take them with you wherever you go.

My collection of lotions
 from various hotels around China

Hotel postcards and pens
I love collecting postcards from my travels, so I automatically take the postcards if they are available in a hotel room. When it comes to ball pens, not all hotel pens are particularly nice or even write very well. I’ve had some where the ink lasted a day! But if you find a good quality pen, it can be a really good souvenir. 

A postcard from Crowne Plaza Nanjing and
an InterContinental Nanjing pen

They say the best things in life are free. Hugs and kisses, leisurely strolls through a park, giving and receiving a smile, and.…who knew? Really great travel essentials too! Bon voyage!

No comments:

Post a Comment