Frequent travelers can create electrical opportunities by unplugging vending machines in the absence of easily accessible outlets. Most airports restrict the number of outlets they make available to travelers.

Although many vending machine outlets are locked or bolted into the wall, look around other smaller devices such as lighted advertisements and video games.

This advice is best during non-peak airport traffic hours like when you’re spending the night. You can also check for specific outlet locations at the airport of your choice on the Airport Wiki (the site wasn’t working when I last checked though).

The AirPower Wiki chronicles the location of power-outlets in the world’s airports. Those of us who’ve had three hours to catch up on email and recharge before making another eight-hour flight know what it is to be a voltotropic voyager.

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The Lonely Planet writer, Thomas Kohnstamm, who admitted never having visited the countries he wrote about should have been writing about his adventures in lying.

He says that after having sex with a waitress on a table after hours, he reviewed the restaurant with the words “the table service is friendly”.

He also said he never visited Colombia, despite being hired to write about it.

Instead, the 33 year old writer says he got the information from a Colombian intern he was dating at the time – seriously hurting the reputation of the BBC Worldwide owned series. Had Kohnstamm said the same thing 50 years ago it wouldn’t even have been a story. As Tom Brosnahan once told me, before the 70s, most travel writers never left their living rooms.

Once the world began to open up, prices began to fall, and the global travel boom took off, tourists began flocking to the guides written by their peers who had actually been to exotic places. Over the last 4 decades, libraries, bookstores, and magazines have been flooded with entire sections devoted to first-hand travel guides. Kohnstamm’s problem was that he lied to fit in, when he should of been writing about why he stood out.

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