You know how your mother always tells you to wear clean under wear in case you're in an accident, that's kind of what travel insurance is like. You have to have it just in case because should something unfortunate happen (cross your fingers, turn in a circle three times to the left and spit on your right shoe for luck) you are really going to want to be covered for it.

Something that you tend to think very unlikely but that is actually quite vital is medical emergency coverage. No one thinks that anything bad will happen to them while they are on holiday. Holidays are supposed to be happy times, nice, fun and relaxing times. No accidents will happen; no one will get sick, no legs or arms will get broken, no one will fall off a mountain and no one will need emergency triple bypass heart surgery, in an ideal world, which this is not. Which is why every morning we all make sure we put on clean underpants with no holes in them and why we should all buy travel insurance.

Accidents have been known to happen all the time that is the nature of accidents, their very essence. You don't even have to be on an action adventure, adrenalin-seeking holiday to go looking for trouble. Trouble can come looking for you in the quietest and most serene of destinations. Do you know how badly you can damage your muscles and ligaments at a yoga retreat if you don't do the positions correctly? At some places, at most retreats actually, you practice yoga outdoors, a bee could sting you and you could be allergic to bees. And yoga retreats, the proper kind, are quite far away from civilisation. Could take a while to get you to a hospital, you'll definitely need emergency care then. It would not be cool if they turned you away because you didn't have cover. Or perhaps they're actually a good hospital, more interested in helping people at first, than making money, but the bills will come. It would be nice to be covered for some of them.

Another example, you could be enjoying a nice island holiday, avoiding any dangerous activities like diving and snorkeling and paragliding. You could just be wading in the nice warm water and step on an anemone, which can be mighty poisonous. Going to want to be covered for that hospital stay, which could be lengthy while you recover. You might ever need to be transferred to a bigger and better hospital. You're going to want to be covered for some of that. Children jump on rocks, they jump on trampolines and they fall and they break arms. Sometimes strokes and heart attacks to happen. It's always best to be prepared.

There is also lost baggage insurance. This is little consolation when you've lost your entire winter/summer wardrobe, and you have no clean under with which to heed your mother's accident precautions. It does even less to calm your nerves and your anger and your frustration. Not even shouting at the hapless person behind the baggage claims counter helps that, well it does a little but then you just feel bad for yelling at someone who can't help their job and that makes you feel worse and makes you want to yell at someone else, and maybe kick something. But it does mean that you can at least buy some more clothes so the situation is not entirely lost. You can look at it as a good opportunity to up date your wardrobe and you were probably meaning to throw out half of your stuff anyway, you just never got round to it.

And then there is car rental insurance. Very important but only if you are going to rent a car. If you are not going to rent a car, you do not have to bother with this one. If you are going to rent a car it might be a good idea to get all three that way if you're in an accident, say another car accidentally drives into the back of you and pushes you into a river, and you are injured and some locals have to pull out and they only just manage to do it before the car is washed away. You are covered for your car, lost baggage and medical expenses. And if you were really smart and took your mother's advice you would have been wearing clean unholy underwear and would have nothing to be ashamed of. You're smiling all the way.

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