I've been living with Type 1 diabetes for years. I've injected insulin on the gravel shoulder of a road in Guatemala, in the rattling corridor of a sleeper train cutting through Vietnam, on the deck of a ferry somewhere between Greek islands, and once — in a moment that lives rent-free in my head — crouched in a toilet cubicle at Sydney Kingsford Smith that smelled like a servo pie reheated one too many times. Forty countries. Five continents. The insulin has been to every single one of them.
And along the way, I've been given some truly spectacular advice.
Not malicious advice. Most of it came from genuinely lovely people — worried relatives, fellow passengers who clocked my insulin pen or the CGM stuck to my arm, random strangers who felt compelled to weigh in. Australians especially. We can't help ourselves.
But some of it was so spectacularly, confidently wrong that honestly, I'm a bit impressed.
So here it is — the worst travel advice I've ever received about travelling with insulin — and what I actually do instead.
"Just chuck your insulin in the hotel mini-fridge. You'll be right."
Ah yes. The hotel mini-fridge — that optimistic little esky-that-isn't, stocked with fifteen-dollar Shapes and room-temperature sparkling water. Here's the thing nobody mentions: the temperature inside those things is a complete mystery. I have opened hotel mini-fridges that were, for all practical purposes, a warm box with an interior light and a strong sense of self-belief.
Unopened insulin needs to stay between 2°C and 8°C. Mini-fridges are built to keep drinks vaguely cold, not to maintain the storage conditions your medication actually requires.
Trusting your entire insulin supply to a hotel mini-fridge is a bit like tipping your super into the pokies and calling it a solid financial strategy. Very optimistic. Almost certainly going to end badly.
✅ What I do instead: I travel with a dedicated insulin cooler that's actually built for the job — something that holds a proper, consistent temperature whether I'm in a flash hotel or a guesthouse where the wiring looks like a dare. The mini-fridge can keep the overpriced snacks. My insulin has its own cooler.
"You don't need a doctor's letter. They never bother checking."
Yeah, nah. Sometimes that's true — plenty of times I've breezed through security without a second glance. But I've also been pulled aside for twenty minutes while a couple of officers methodically turned my insulin pens over in their hands and had a lengthy conversation about them that I was not included in. I've had my cooler opened, emptied, inspected, questioned, and — my personal favourite — photographed.
A letter from your GP costs nothing and takes about ten minutes to organise. It has saved me from an enormous amount of unnecessary stress, particularly when travelling through countries where security staff may never have seen an insulin pump or a CGM before.
Diabetes Australia recommends carrying written documentation of your diagnosis and medications every time you travel. That's not overcautious — that's just sensible.
✅ What I do instead: Before every trip, I get a signed travel letter from my GP listing my diagnosis and everything I'm carrying. Hard copy sits next to my passport. Digital copies backed up in my email. It has never once been a waste of time. The trips where I've been less organised? Those I do regret.
👉 Our guide on Diabetes Travel Letters covers exactly what yours should include — and there's a free downloadable template you can take straight to your next GP appointment.
"Pack your insulin in your checked bag — the hold stays cold anyway."
Hard no. The cargo hold of a commercial aircraft is not a cool room. Temperatures down there can swing all over the place — and at altitude, it can get cold enough to freeze your insulin completely solid.
Frozen insulin is useless insulin. You cannot thaw it out and carry on. Once it freezes, it's gone — and you're left with a very pricey, completely useless pen.
And that's before we even get to the fact that checked bags go missing. Your luggage ends up sitting in Brisbane while you've landed in Perth, and suddenly you're a Type 1 diabetic standing in an unfamiliar city with no insulin, no supplies, and a trip that's rapidly going sideways. This is not a hypothetical. It happens all the time.
CASA (the Civil Aviation Safety Authority) is unambiguous on this: essential medications go in your carry-on.
✅ What I do instead: Insulin goes in the carry-on. Every single time, zero exceptions. I also pack enough supplies for a few extra days, because anyone who's flown through a major Australian hub during a weather event or a strike knows that delays aren't a possibility — they're practically part of the itinerary.
👉 For a full rundown of what you can bring through Australian airport security — including your rights around liquids, pump screening, and CGM procedures — our guide on Airport Security Rules for Diabetic Travellers in Australia has everything sorted before you get to the terminal.
"Just hand your insulin to the flight attendant — they'll sort it."
Good instinct, wrong outcome. Most commercial planes don't actually have a fridge passengers can access. The ones that do have something resembling a cool storage area keep it strictly for crew meals and galley supplies — not for passenger medications.
So "handing your insulin to a flight attendant to keep cold" translates in practice to: your medication is somewhere you can't see it, stored in conditions you can't verify, at a temperature you have zero control over. On a flight that, because you're leaving Australia, is probably fourteen hours long.
I tried it once. Insulin came back fine. But the expression on the flight attendant's face when I rocked up to collect it at the gate — that flicker of "sorry, the what?" — was more than enough to cure me of ever trying it again.
✅ What I do instead: On long-haul flights — which, if you're flying out of Australia, is basically all of them — I use 4AllFamily's Pioneer PRO Mini Fridge. It runs off a portable battery, keeps my insulin properly refrigerated for hours, and slides neatly under the seat in front. My insulin never leaves my hands. Problem sorted.
👉 For a full guide to keeping insulin at the right temperature across an entire international trip — from leaving home to arriving at your destination — my guide on How to Keep Insulin Cool When Travelling covers every situation I've run into.
"Travel insurance for diabetes is a rip-off. Give it a miss."
Look, I understand the logic. Diabetes-specific travel insurance costs noticeably more than a basic policy, and when you're already staring down the cost of flights, accommodation, and travel itself, cutting it feels tempting.
But here's the thing that doesn't get said enough: Medicare looks after you here at home. The second you board a flight out of the country, that cover drops away almost entirely. A medical emergency overseas — or even just replacing lost insulin and supplies — can cost a genuinely alarming amount. Australia does have reciprocal healthcare agreements with a small number of countries, but they're limited in scope and useless everywhere else on the planet.
I lost a bag with three insulin pens in Morocco once. My insurer covered the lot. Without that policy, I'd have been scrambling around a foreign city trying to replace prescription medication under stress, in a language I don't speak well, in a country where the pharmacy system works nothing like ours.
✅ What I do instead: I get travel insurance that explicitly covers Type 1 diabetes and related emergencies — lost, stolen, or damaged medication included. Costs more up front. Costs considerably less than an overseas hospital bill you weren't expecting.
"Once the pen's open, you don't need to keep it in the fridge."
Right, so — this one's the sneaky one, because it's not completely wrong, which is exactly what makes it dangerous.
An open insulin pen can sit at room temperature. True. But "room temperature" means below 25°C, and only for around 28 days, depending on the type and brand.
Here's the problem: "room temperature" means something completely different depending on where you are. The temperature in your lounge room in Hobart in August is not the temperature inside a hire car parked in Cairns in January. It's not a tent at a music festival in the Hunter Valley in February. It's not the inside of your daypack after a day walking around Darwin in the wet season. As Australians, we of all people should know not to assume "room temperature" is some stable, predictable thing.
I've had insulin go cloudy on me mid-trip. If you've never held up a pen that should be perfectly clear and found yourself looking at something that's gone murky and strange — I genuinely hope you never do. Cloudy insulin isn't something you push through. It's done.
Always check the storage guidelines for your specific insulin. And don't assume "room temperature" is a fixed concept — especially not in this country, where the weather has never once behaved itself.
✅ What I do instead: Any time there's a realistic chance it'll crack 25°C — which, in Australia, is a solid eight months of the year across most of the country — my open pens go straight into a cooling pouch. When in doubt, the cooler's coming out. Simple.
"Your diabetes routine won't really change when you travel."
Mate. My insulin needs on the road look almost nothing like my insulin needs at home on a quiet Tuesday.
There's the time zone situation — and flying out of Australia, you're almost always crossing several at once. Sydney to London is a full day in the air across a complete reversal of your body clock. That wreaks havoc on basal timing and it's something to sort out with your endocrinologist well before you leave, not halfway over the Indian Ocean at 2am wondering why your levels are all over the shop.
Then there's the walking. I've done 25,000 steps in a single day on a city trip and been blindsided by lows I had no business having.
There's eating food you don't recognise at hours that don't make sense, the cortisol hit that airports reliably deliver, altitude on some destinations, and the general unpredictability of being somewhere unfamiliar and out of your regular routine.
Travel messes with your blood sugar. All of it does. Every bit of it.
✅ What I do instead: I pack at least 50% more insulin and supplies than I think I'll need — because when you're twenty hours from home, "I'll just duck to the chemist" is not an option. I check in with my endocrinologist before any big trip. And I've genuinely made my peace with the fact that my numbers will be harder to manage on the road. That's not a failure of preparation. That's just travel. The extra supplies are the whole point.
The Only Advice That Actually Matters
Forty countries. More close calls than I care to number. And here's what I keep coming back to:
Good travel advice for people living with Type 1 diabetes is deeply, almost stubbornly boring. It's a letter from your GP and a proper cooler and a travel insurance policy and a conversation with your specialist. It doesn't make for a great story at the pub. It makes for a trip that actually goes well.
- Get the documentation — and carry it every single time.
- Pack more than you think you'll need.
- Insulin travels in the carry-on. Full stop, no exceptions.
- Get an insulin cooler that's built for the job.
- Sort out travel insurance that genuinely covers you.
- Talk to your endocrinologist before you go.
- And know your rights at airport security — because getting through the terminal without dramas is one of life's genuinely underrated pleasures.
Everything else? That's just travelling.
And travelling — even with Type 1 diabetes, even with the prep and the packing lists and the backup pens and the cooler — is one of the best things going.
The insulin comes with me. The bad advice stays home.
💬 We'd Love to Hear From You!
Have you copped any truly terrible travel advice about managing diabetes on the road — or stumbled onto something that actually works?
Drop your story in the comments below.
