2 hours ago
1
September 18, 2025 — 5:00am
It starts with one small, critical mistake: leaving my phone behind at the gate. During a layover in Doha, I’ve plugged my phone in to charge and closed my eyes to rest while waiting for the next leg of my journey. But groggy from my 14-hour flight from Sydney, I continue on my next flight to Madrid, while my phone is left all on its lonesome in Doha.
If you’re travelling solo, it turns out it’s not an easy situation to remedy. For better or for worse, we’re now tied to tech when we travel: from the live updates we get about delays to the tap-and-go digital wallet for our credit cards and even the alarms we set on our phones, the travel e-sims and the downloadable guides and tickets we keep in our digital wallet.
But sitting on the plane to Madrid, I decide I’m not going to let this mishap ruin my trip: the ground crew has already located it before take-off, so I just need to make do without a phone during my trip.
I have $200 cash, one debit card, and an older laptop, prone to tantrums, for my 10-day tour in Spain.
The first hurdle comes when my husband panics that he hasn’t heard from me. After 34 hours of travel, my laptop refuses to connect to my hotel’s free Wi-Fi. Exhausted, I head to bed, planning to work it all out in the morning. At 4am, he starts calling the hotel. His Spanish is limited, the concierge’s English is non-existent, and the hotel’s phone system is ancient, so not only can they not connect him to my room, they won’t.
The next morning, I sit in the hotel lobby on the antiquated guest computer. Jet lagged, I cannot for the life of me remember any of my logins for my social media, email or banking accounts, and the two passwords I do remember go straight to two-factor authorisation on my phone (which of course, is buzzing in a backroom somewhere in Doha).
Fed up with the stress it’s causing, I splash some serious cash on a new iPhone16, assuming it will sync with my laptop and miraculously deposit all my social media accounts, emails, apps and contacts onto my new phone.
This does not happen.
It doesn’t get better from there: I buy a travel eSIM to use with the new phone. But when trying to download the app to use it, I lock myself out of my Apple account. I create a second Facebook profile to message home: they shut me down for unusual activity. My bank then decides to lock my debit card, leaving me grateful that my tour includes all meals.
The truth is, I could have easily coped with this kerfuffle, except for my kids: they’re grouchy, they can’t chat with me, and I’m miserable with worry that I’m cut off from them. And for the first time in years, I have a bit of a cry.
Luckily, my situation is remedied when another mother on the tour takes pity on me, handing me her phone and telling me to call home. It’s a small mercy, but one I’m incredibly grateful for. In the end, it isn’t the apps or phone banking, selfies or social media I miss most — it is the connection to the people back home. Knowing they were safe saved my trip and made me ever so mindful to always double-check my belongings before I board.
The writer travelled as a guest of Tourism Espana.
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