When I went on holiday, because I had to work (usually I arrange these things better) I took a USB stick loaded with Portable Apps (Firefox, a word processor, Foxit PDF reader, all in a stripped down version) so I didn't have to screw around with settings on the borrowed laptop -- or the Internet cafe I ended up using.
It all went swimmingly. Now I'll keep the Firefox browser synced with my own using Google Browser Sync, so my history, bookmarks etc are always up to date. And just so I'm prepared at every possible moment, wherever I may be, I've just put the same suite onto my iPod, at a total cost of about 60 MB.
The irony being that I probably won't move out of this chair for the next six months. The more mobile among you might consider doing something similar. Every bit of it, except the memory stick and the iPod, is free.