Flip flops, bit of soare change and sun cream.

Defo won't need sun cream in the UK hahahahaha

I left my mobile in the hotel room in Honolulu, Hawaii. I realised when I got to the airport and rang the hotel from a pay phone. The person I spoke to said it wasn't there. I remembered exactly where I had left it so I guessed an employee had taken it. They were in for a shock though as it was one of the early models that wouldn't work in the USA.

I only take a small digital camera with me anywhere , the wife has the big camera that I wouldn't even know how to switch on , but somehow I always manage to forget my camera , I've left in the desert in Dubai and also in the First cabin on a flight , the poor thing always ends up back here in a draw in Kent .
I reckon it's got a mind of its own rather than my complete absent mindedness ?

First time we took portable CD player with us to Greece ~ 2001, we left a full wallet of CDs in the hotel room. However, the hotel staff found them and the Thomson rep. brought them back to the UK when she returned at the end of the Summer and posted them to us. Ah, the days of true Customer service!!

The only thing we've ever left behind was my new, (brand new, was gutted) zip up Next top that I left hanging up in the wardrobe. It was too hot to wear to the airport so was supposed to carry it 😞😞

The only time I've ever left something behind by mistake was a matching linen skirt and top that ended up on the wrong pile on the bed and so didn't get packed in the case when coming home from Cuba. In other words it got mixed up with stuff that I was planning on leaving behind anyway. It was at a time when I really did need to lose weight that had accumulated over the years and the Cuban 'diet' consisting of eat what you like but do a 3hrs dance class every morning and go dancing for at least 2hrs every evening always resulted in me dropping a dress size on every trip! And more to the point I was then managing to keep it off between trips.

So I was planning on leaving behind the stuff that by the end of the holiday didn't fit and couldn't be easily altered such as the inexpensive lightweight drawstring trousers I wore for classes, the vest tops that after a fortnight of Cuban laundering would not only be too big but stretched to a size bigger than they'd started etc. So all that was being left behind for the Aunt of a friend as larger size women's clothes aren't easy to come by out there and the fairly expensive skirt and top ended up in that pile when I had intended to take it home because it could have been altered. She was so thrilled to find it amongst the other stuff that I didn't have the heart to say anything!

And I always take a well stocked 1st aid kit with me because things like antiseptic wipes, plasters, small sterile dressings etc, things that we take for granted as being easily available here, can be difficult and/or expensive to come by in Cuba so I usually leave the contents of that behind too. I did the same in the Gambia after I realised that an antiseptic wipe and a plaster a day was being filched from it. I decided that any chambermaid who was willing to take the risk of being caught stealing from a guest needed the rest of them far more than I did!

Aww bless you SMa for the first aid kit & clothes.

SMa's post reminds me of my visit to Cuba over ten years ago, I remember leaving half of the contents of my case behind. I had bought some baby/toddler outfits and left them at a preschool that I visited. I left all of my toiletries and the vitamins that I was taking at the time, my sandals , some clothes and a small hairdryer. Before my trip I had read about the shortages and decided to leave what I could.
It's always been something that travellers to third world countries have done I remember on a trip to Cambodia going to a medical facility and seeing the primitive equipment that the staff were using and visiting a school on Tonle Sap lake where there was only one teacher for the whole school and the pupils in each class shared notebooks and pencils. I had read about the lack of supplies and half my case was filled with pencils, sharpeners, notebooks etc. that I gave to the teacher.
During a trip to Laos a few years later I took some medical supplies with me and gave them to the staff of a small clinic that I visited in the remote highlands.

Yes, I tend to forget about a lot of the stuff that I take out with me specifically so that I can leave it behind :-) Now that I'm retired, I don't have the same access to text books for primary school pupils and teachers or language tutors so I no longer have to try and sweet talk my way into being able to check in an extra case full of books! I think my best effort was when I flew Cubana and was able to check in 55kgs of luggage and used every gramme of it having been given every single one of her sample books by a retiring rep for a children's book publisher! They were very much appreciated because English had just started being taught from 7yrs up in Cuban schools but the teachers had very little access to age appropriate English language story books etc. I gave the 2 full cases of books to one of my local contacts because I thought she would know the best way of sharing them out and 2 days later I had a little delegation of 3 headteachers who came to thank me for them along with some thank you letters - in English - from the children. It was quite humbling because the books would probably have ended up being pulped for recycling if I hadn't taken them but they were received like treasure.

Nothing so noble as books for school children, which I think is brilliant, but I was gutted at having to bin a bottle of Aftershock at the airport in Feurteventura after being assured at the shop that I'd have no problems carrying it on to the plane. Pretty naive of me to be honest. We've also left a plethora of pool toys, suncream and novelty towels that we were definitely going to bring home and use all the time!

We have lost alcohol before. It was pretty stupid of us but we had landed in Mumbai at midnight and got a cheap airport hotel for a few hours before our 6am flight to Goa. So I put it down to being tired.cWe had put our bottle into cabin bag at Heathrow and then forgot about it. Was kicking myself for being so stupid when it was confiscated at the domestic airport. It was actually in a sealed bag.

We left our beach towels on the balcony in Ibiza earlier this year even though both myself and my husband had both supposedly checked.

Hi Angela- thing is you just got used to seeing them there every day

Books, inflatables when the kids were little.

I have also deliberately left clothes behind in Thailand.

Luckily, I have never accidentally left anything behind.

That's probably very true actually