Cotton wool – This is one just for the ladies. Which is kind of appropriate as it comes from the ladies who are high class professional escorts and travel the world looking good at a moments notice. To prevent your pressed powder or eye shadow from cracking during your travels, place a flat cotton woll pad in between the pressed powder and the lid.
Make sure to take your sex supplies with you – It is amazing how many people do not make sure that they are able to enjoy the intimate aspects of their holidays and trips. The same people who pack several kinds of sun cream just assume that they will be able to pick up their sex supplies everywhere at any time. This is – obviously – not the sort of travel mistake that girls who escort Malaga visitors for a living would ever make. No condoms, not job. No lube, and the job is more unpleasant than it need be. In some places condoms are only available in pharmacies, and their opening hours are unpredictable. Some locations will throw you a blank look when you try to ask for lubrication and perhaps suggest the local mechanic or garage. Forget the embarassment. If your sex life needs supplies, take them with you!
Do not bring the whole thing with you – Rather than bringing heavy guide books, just photocopy the essential pages that you will need. It will save space and reduce weight. There are two alternative ways to save the weight and space completely. The first is to buy an book reader – the obvious and best supported is Kindle. Then you can download several travel books (I have two Lonely Planet Guides for Goa and then Goa and Bombay, for example). You can also download all the fiction, history, or whatever else catches your fancy for however long your trip might be. The second electronic way – if you really do not fancy electronic books – is to photograph the relevant pages from the “real” paper books and keep them on your phone.
You can do the same with magazine articles and even web pages. Back that up with a pen drive (USB drive), SD cards or whatever and your information is pretty secure. Use a cloud storage server such as iCloud or Google drive (which come free with either iPhones or Android phones anyway) and you are good to go and can never lose the information.