Music

Music is to many a traveler a must, and is indeed a great way to kill time, relax to and/or to drown the deafening snore of other dorm room inhabitants.

Portable CD-players

If you are the type that likes to sample music from wherever you travel, portable CD-players lets you listen to CD's you buy while traveling. Keep in mind though, that portable CD-players are very inefficient when it comes to use of electricity, the device and CD's will take up considerable space, and players and discs are fragile. Unless you have good reasons for it, it is hugely recommended to switch your CD-player for an mp3-player.

mp3-players

Many travelers use iPods or other equivalent portable music players, often referred to by the term "mp3-players", as these devices can store hours upon hours with music. Some even let you make playlists to suit you mood. Unlike portable CD-players, which you can use to play just about any music CD there is by simply placing the disc into the device and pressing play, mp3-players are generally dependent on a computer to populate the mp3-player's library with music from CD's, music bought online, or acquired through other means. While this is usually a straight forward process when you have a computer at home, using the device to play music acquired while traveling without a laptop can be a hassle. Luckily, some mp3-players (usually those in the lower end of the price scale as well as in the lower end of the storage capacity scale) let you add music to your library by simply dragging mp3-files from the computer to the player. If it is a CD you wish to convert and play on your mp3-player, you are still left with the task of ripping the CD. Seeing as internet cafes often lets you connect USB-based devices, but not install software, you will need a program that rips CD's that can run from your mp3-player. CDex is such a program.

Depending on the mp3-player you might even need complex programs to transfer music to the device (as with the case of iPods tied with iTunes), which can be next to impossible on internet cafes. Again, depending on the mp3-player you have, there exist workarounds. iPods, being as popular as they are, are more or less completely hacked.

Lifehacker.com have a great article on how to create what they call a self sustaining iPod, located at http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/hack-attack-the-selfsustaining-ipod-151662.php This article also describes how to set up CDex to run from generic mp3-players, as described above.

Books

Books are a great source of entertainment when traveling. Books won't disturb others a book's battery won't even run empty of juice when it is at it's most exciting. In fact, perhaps the only hurdle when a book is to be read is to have sufficient lighting. To circumvent this, there exists bookmarks LED lights on them, lighting up the book without lighing up the whole, sleeping, dorm room.

Games

Playing cards.

Portable gaming devices like the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable.