Exploring places you’ve only seen on TV, eating food you’ll bore your family with when you get home, texting smug ‘thinking of you’ messages to friends back at work … travel can be bliss.

There are also elements that are annoying as hell.

Last-minute flight changes

Cabin baggage

Keen to fill a lull in dinner-time conversation?

Just say the words ‘carry-on luggage’ and voila, a heated discussion that could easily run until midnight.

Yes, we know airlines are working on ways to accommodate every passenger’s carry on, but how much longer must we persist with this high-stakes game of Tetris?

This is, after all, where we’ve been told to put our most essential items, which while travelling could mean anything from spare underwear to life-saving medication.

Overhead bins have become prime real estate. Photo: Getty

And when it really doesn’t fit? Watch as it’s tossed outside and pray it rejoins you at the destination.

Aeroplane toilets

Is any explanation really required? This is clearly an area in need of urgent innovation. And some higher-quality toilet paper.

Also, if there is a way to unsync all the passengers’ bladders, that’d be great. Those post-meal queues can be brutal.

Border control

Obviously, authorities need to make sure no one is entering their country with illegal intentions, or planning to overstay their welcome.

But the interrogations are getting a little intense, and none more so than in the US.

(Seriously, they think you want to move there? In this economy? In this political climate? Plus, having to tip at restaurants?)

Confusing taxi policies

There are many travellers who, on arrival in a distant city/state/country, would like to hop seamlessly into a taxi to their accommodation.

Good luck with that.

Some airports have done away with taxis altogether, in favour of Uber.

Others have moved their pick-up zone so far away you need a taxi to reach it in the first place.

Meanwhile, there are those with deli-style ticketing systems that you have to magically know about before joining the taxi line.

All in all, it’s becoming increasingly hard to leave the airport at all. (The premise, perhaps, for a reboot of The Terminal?)

Luggage

We’ve all heard lost baggage horror stories, so low-level anxiety for the entire journey now comes as standard, until that moment of sweet relief when you (hopefully) spot your suitcase doing the rounds at baggage claim.

Somehow, that’s the easy part.

Getting around with said luggage is the real issue, especially once you factor in a large suitcase, small suitcase, backpack or handbag, duty free, and so on.

Packing for every eventuality has its drawbacks. Photo: Getty

Hoisting it all up and down stairs on the London Underground. Strapping them to the back of a moped in remote parts of Thailand. Trying to avoid maiming other passengers as your wheelie case skates down the aisle on a New York bus.

These are moments when you’ll find yourself questioning every life decision you’ve ever made, while cursing every influencer who advised packing so many wardrobe *options*.

Hotel check-in times

Logically, you get it; hotel rooms don’t just clean themselves. And if a few hours between check-out and check-in times means you avoid finding a stranger’s hair on the shower floor, you’re probably all for it.

That doesn’t make it any less annoying when you’ve endured 20 hours in economy class, and all you want is some hot running water to feel human again.

Instead, with check-in at 2pm, you spray on some deodorant, drop your bags, and head out to start your adventure with swollen feet and clothes that deserve to be burned.

The hotel kettle

If you’re spending a week’s worth of rent on a hotel room, you want to make the most of it, and that includes the complimentary tea and coffee.

Not so fast. Your first task, through that fog of jet lag, is to ask yourself, “If I were a kettle, where would I be?”

By the room’s main power point? Too obvious.

In the bathroom? In the minibar? In the wardrobe?

Seriously, we don’t want to play hide and seek. We just want a cuppa.

(Or do we? Perhaps not, after hearing reports of travellers using the kettle to wash their undies while away.)

Card fees

You’ve made peace with the exchange rate at your travel destination, and you’ve come prepared with cash.

But plenty of countries are relying more heavily on card transactions these days.

If you’ve failed to organise a pre-paid travel card along with the million other things you had to prepare before your trip, you’ll almost certainly be whipping out your Visa or Mastercard occasionally.

Still, at least the banks get to benefit, right?

Other tourists

Why are there people everywhere?

Atop the Empire State Building tourists jostle with each other as they’re buffeted by fierce wind; at Nara Park, the deer have been so well fed that by the time you get there, they want nothing to do with you; and while Instagram posts promise a secluded scenic spot, you face a four-hour wait to take a selfie at Bali’s Gates of Heaven.

How do people find the audacity to travel at the same time as you? Photo: AAP

Of all the things we dislike about travel, fellow tourists are – by far – the biggest offenders.