We all have that relative or friend (or maybe you are that person) who travels to some amazing destination and comes back with gifts for all of the people they know. And those gifts look like this:
Or this:
Or, God forbid, this:
I can’t tell you how many of these silly knickknacks I had lying around before I gave up and dumped them all in the garbage. Because why on earth do I need a kitschy keychain of a conch from the Caribbean?? And the part that makes it even more egregious is that you know that person bought one of these silly things for dozens of people on their gift list. So they basically just threw away money on junk. Now don’t get me wrong; if you want to buy me a classy silk scarf or a something handcrafted in that country’s traditional style, I’ll be grateful. But that’s going to cost more than the keychain (sometimes), and you wouldn’t be expected to get that for everyone on the list. So what do you do?
Don’t Travel with a List
There are maybe a maximum of 3 people that I will buy a nice gift for when I travel, and only then when I see something that I think they’ll particularly love. And I don’t expect gifts from others. In fact, with my mom, we have a rule (because she kept coming home with nice things for herself that I happened to adore): if she sees something, usually jewelry or textiles, that she knows I would love, and it costs under $100, she buys it and I pay her for it. It’s not a gift, and I get a memento from that country. And I do the same thing for her. But that’s the exception.
That also means that I don’t buy junk souvenirs for myself either. I don’t need another magnet, keychain, cheap shirt, baseball cap, etc. Instead, my souvenirs (because I do like having them) usually consist of two different things:
A Quality Product Handcrafted in the Destination Country
I budget into my travel expense planning the assumption that I will spend a couple hundred dollars on a few quality items when I travel. Sometimes this is a really stunning piece of jewelry from a local artisan. When I traveled to Turkey, the one thing I wanted was a Turkish carpet, and I planned for that (my budget only covered one that’s approximately 2×4 ft!). These are items that I plan on having in my home or jewelry box for the rest of my life. And ones that comes with meaningful stories. Like the glass sculptures from Swaziland that I saw being blown (is this the correct verb??) in the local factory, which trains and employs locals and uses all recycled glass. Or the wildebeest carving that I spent 30 minutes bargaining over in a roadside stall in Tanzania. Half of the value of these items is that they remind me of that trip; that adventure. They’re a touchstone to take me back to that place at will. A complementary touchstone (and one that is, honestly, even better) is my second type of souvenir:
The Photos
When I was in college (and not necessarily focused on frugal decisions), I bought my first DSLR camera with an upgraded lens. 
I’ve always loved photography; it’s one of the types of art that I actually connect to really well. I’ve seen photos that have taken my breath away, and I’ve always wanted to be able to create that reaction in others. Now, with my camera, half of my planning for trips is focused on what I want to take pictures of. And I can’t wait to edit my photos afterwards—sometimes, I carry my laptop with me on a trip just so I can edit the photos in Adobe Lightroom on the flight home. Having these images is a way to relive the experience, but also to appreciate it in new ways. And, it’s a way to share my trip with loved ones—no keychain required.
Photography is what works best for me to capture the moments, emotions, and memories of my trips. But it might not be what’s best for you. When I was younger, I would carry a journal and sketch parts of the trip (this was before I decided I was definitely not artistic enough to draw…). In the past, and still occasionally now, I’ll write poetry when something I see or experience inspires me. These are both ways of capturing that visceral feeling that can be so fleeting, when you experience something new and extraordinary. That moment happens once for each particular thing, and you can’t get it back, which is why I love having a way to capture it—like stopping time. I recently told a friend that I was jealous of her trip to Thailand. 
I’ve already been, but I was specifically jealous that she’d be experiencing the vast open-air market in Bangkok for the first time. I love the chaos of markets like that; the color and the noise and the humanity. The market in Bangkok was my first experience with that kind of setting, and I’ll never experience that “first” again (to make it even more galling, I didn’t even have a camera with me at the time). I was jealous of that discovery, and that for me the discovery was already past.
In some sense, that’s a big part of why I love traveling—finding those fleeting moments of discovery that take me outside of my norm; outside of my comfort zone. For anyone who hasn’t experienced this, I’d encourage you to give travel a try, and to take it a step further than the canned group tours of Western Europe. But for goodness sake, please don’t come home with twenty silly keychains…