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Travel Tips

Since there are always those among us who are planning to take a trip, I think I can help you with some handy travel tips, especially when in a country foreign to origin. Consider these:
I know this first one to be true of Europe, especially Scandinavia…

Bakeries

Maybe in some restaurants, but especially little bakeries where coffee and tea are served, there is a basket of pastries placed on the tables, like they do with bread here. I, wanting to try them all, but not wanting all the calories, decided to take only one bite out of each pastry in the basket. I mean after all, they were there (and so was I) and I wanted the full Danish experience. So I did just that. Can you see the logic here?

Don’t do this. The waitress comes over after you make it known that you want the bill, and she counts all the ones that are missing—or at least that have been destroyed from being re-served. It counts in this category if you have chomped on each one. You pay for all that has had a part removed. Yikes! Who’d have thought?

As a guest…

Sometimes as a guest, you are served something you don’t necessarily like, but are too gracious to say anything about it, so you figure you will just chow down to get it over with and not have to worry about it anymore. This is an unsafe method, even in this country. When the hostess sees that you have no more of this item, she, delighted that you enjoyed the cuisine, wants to make sure you have a delightful dining experience She thinks you view it is extra delectable and heaps more onto your plate or in your cup. It’s better to dally with the things of which you aren’t that fond.

In the Orient and elsewhere

It’s customary to have a display of things in the window of restaurants in the Orient so that diners can make their selections even before they go in to the establishment. I advise that you always find out what it is first. That makes sense, right? I mean, just because something looks good, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something you would eat if you knew what it was, even if it looks similar to things with which you are more familiar. In Thailand, there is even a dish including ground cockroach.
In China, bird’s nest soup is made by boiling a bird’s nest so as to get the regurgitated saliva the bird uses as the glue that holds the nest together. Who dreams up these recipes anyway?

In a little primitive, 3-walled restaurant in Bali, Indonesia with about 3 picnic tables and food cooked over an open flame, the menu was a typewritten page in a page protector with about 10 items on it.
One visit to this neighborhood diner, I splurged and ordered the most expensive thing on the menu: a steak sandwich for 20 cents. What a deal! It was good too. It tasted like meat—(some kind of meat.) It wasn’t until a few years later I realized that there are a lot of stray dogs in Bali that don’t seem to belong to anyone. I also realized steak doesn’t have to be beef. A steak sandwich for 20 cents? I’m not sure what I ate. Sometimes you just can’t trust a menu.

Electricity

Speaking of Bali, though this is probably true of many other impoverished areas, lighting is very poor and almost non-existent after dark, so have a small flashlight. Streetlights render very little light, almost too little to see, and only exist on paved highways. Smaller neighborhood streets, most often dirt, have no lighting at all, though snakes love to stretch across the dirt for the warmth left by afternoon sun. Some of these snakes are extremely poisonous and they aren’t inhibited to bite, so don’t go for strolls after dark, at least without a flashlight.

Even in the rooms, the lighting wouldn’t amount to that of a Christmas tree light bulb, so reading is totally out of the question after dark.

If you plan to use any electrical items, get converters at a travel store for that country so that you can use them safely. Converters are usually available in sets containing various ones for different countries. Otherwise, you can burn out your electrical item or cause a fire.

Train travel

For train travel in some countries, at least in Thailand where trains are a luxury with so few people having cars, reservations have to be made well in advance. One can’t just show up at the train station and expect to buy a last minute ticket and climb aboard a train. The seats have been reserved for weeks or even months ahead of time.

Such lack of knowledge denied me a ride on the train for which I paid, however, I was informed that another train would be leaving for my destination (Singapore) in 4 hours. Because all the passenger seats were taken on that next train, I wound up in a cargo car with crates of chickens and ducks. It was an adventure, even though I had to pay a bit extra to the conductor because this train was considered an express train. The top of a wooden crate became my perch for all the hours of that long overnight train ride, including my place to stretch out for the night and use as a bed. This ‘express’ train, however, broke down about 2 hours south of Bangkok and they had to radio to Bangkok for another engine part to be brought and installed, all of which delayed the trip by several hours. Not only that, but my movie camera was unloaded (on purpose, I’m sure) during one of the cargo stops in the night as I unsuspectingly slumbered atop a crate. I should have wadded my coat over it as used it as a pillow. This was a practice I always did with my purse, thankfully, or I’m sure I’d be without that too, (which included my passport.)

Two lessons here:
#1 Make sure to make your valuables secure and totally inaccessible by others, by sleeping with them at night and not leaving them in your hotel room unattended during the day.
#2 Remember that in impoverished countries especially, people are often looking for a payoff or to steal something. The money the conductor insisted on for the privilege of riding on an express train, despite it was in the cargo car, probably went straight into his pocket, especially since the ticket was already purchased at the train station. But what can you do? If you want to ride, you must pay when he calls the shots.

Air travel

In many countries, especially in the Orient, it has been my experience that one has to call the airline a day or two ahead and confirm their seat reservation. Basically, you have to call and say, “Yes, I’m still planning on flying out, so don’t give my seat way”. There were a lot of passengers who arrived at the airport and despite prior reservations, found their seat had been given away because they had not known to do this.

Bus travel

When in the waiting area for a long bus trip, look the crowd over to select someone with whom you want to ride and wouldn’t mind sitting with for the next few hours (or couple days.) Choose someone clean and who doesn’t appear to be smacking gum. Begin a conversation with that person. If the bus is so crowded as to require 2 people to a seat, that’s who you will sit with, and if it gets crowded on the way, you will at least be with someone you have chosen. If you get seats to yourselves, fine, but make them close enough to double up when it gets more crowded.

Bear in mind that anyone you speak or respond to, will plop themselves next to you because now that you’ve had a conversation, they feel they know you better than anyone else. Don’t be real friendly with people you think would make poor seat partners for the duration. Don’t let anyone carry your luggage onto the bus. A man may offer this as then the next step is to sit with you, which is most likely his ploy in the first place.

The old ‘sleep trick’
If you wind up seated with someone, especially of the opposite sex who is attracted to you, they will always use the old sleep trick. That’s the one where they put their seat back and pretend to fall asleep, then they, in their supposed slumber, will eventually wind up flopping onto your shoulder.

Here’s how to avoid that. As soon you are seated, put your seat back as far as it will go, which still keeps you in a seated position. Most people do that immediately, so they will be doing the same thing. So when they flop over onto your shoulder, you reach for your seat adjustment handle and pop that seat back into the upright-most position. Boy, does that wake them up fast! Their head hits the side of your chair and they feign innocence, but it doesn’t happen again, and if it does, you do it again after your seat is back into reclined position. As unlikely as it seems, a reclining positioned seat is the most efficient way to rid yourself of creeps because they always recline theirs, then you have the advantage. It doesn’t work in reverse, if you start out in an upright position, because your seatmate will too, and there’s no place for you to go but back. If you do that, he will flop right over onto you.

If all else fails, you can get up and change to another available seat, and if none are available, tell the bus driver you have to change your seat because you are being bothered. He’ll stop and switch a man to sit with the creep. I never had to do that on a bus, but did on a train once and the conductor switched me immediately.

Phones

Familiarize yourself with how to use the pay phones in the country you’re in before you make a call. In some countries, when you make a call, you can hear the person answer, but they can’t hear you until you do something or other to the phone, even if you’ve already put your money in.

Bathrooms

Be sure when you arrive in any country, you have a stash of local coins to put into the pay toilets of public establishments. I’m not sure how much they cost now, but it’s nice to be able to use the johns when nature calls, and you can’t if you don’t have proper change. There is often a lady in the bathroom guarding them so make sure no one tries crawling under the door. I’m not sure that they have change either. They are basically there to be mean to would-be offenders. They also expect a tip for this meanness.
Make sure, concerning bathrooms, you know what the words for ‘men’ and ‘women’ are in the country you are visiting. In Germany for example, ‘herron’ is not an elongated form of ‘her.’

Speaking of tips

Anyone performing any service, including being guided on a small boat down a river in Brugge, Belgium or Venice, Italy, even if you bought the ticket fare and square, will be expected to be tipped. I was on a boat with about 4 or 5 other people and one generous man made it clear that the money he was giving the boatman was to be the tip for all of us. The boatman accepted the tip graciously, then proceeded to chase us each down and yell “tippe, tippe, tippe.”

Parking

In my experience in Tijuana a time when I drove in from California, I couldn’t find a parking place that allowed as much time as I wanted. I didn’t want to have to come back to keep feeding the meter. A man nearby who appeared to be working at a store in front of my parking place offered to do that for me if I gave him the money. Well, silly me. I gave him $5 and he agreed to keep the meter up. He didn’t, nor was he anywhere to be seen when I got back several hours later. I was fortunate not to have gotten a ticket!

Luggage and what to pack

Take a tiny suitcase if possible. The worst thing in the world is to be bogged down by a bunch of luggage and besides, it can be carried on a plane that way and you don’t have to check it through baggage.
Take things that can be washed out at night and dry by morning. I took 2 changes of nylon underwear, a bathing suit, a dark brown pair of polyester slacks, 3 nylon dresses, a skinny, not bulky pair of tennis shoes, a pair of low-heeled shoes that would be appropriate for dress and polyester slacks, you say!! You wouldn’t wear them here, but after all, you’re traveling and need something that dries overnight. The dark color hides the dirt. They don’t get wrinkled, even crammed in a suitcase. Two pairs of dark colored nylon jogging pants would be great too, one flannel-lined for cold days and one unlined for warmer days. They dry very fast. I would forget about blue jeans altogether. If you’re traveling fast and only spending a day or two in each place, you don’t need to worry about being seen in the same clothes, but lugging an arsenal of wardrobe—well, you’ll be sorry. It ruins the trip.
Bring a few plastic bags for anything you wash that isn’t dry when you leave the hotel.
Wear a trench coat and a cardigan sweater. Then you can use the sweater as a coat liner, or wear each separately, depending on weather. Besides serving as an all-weather coat, the trench coat also serves as a pillow on a train, a blanket, a bathrobe—even a beach towel.
And don’t bring any jewelry. It’s only something to get lost or stolen and could label you as a target for theft. You don’t need to impress anyone, and traveling, you would be better off not to.
Pack a comb, but you don’t need a brush, unless it’s one of those tiny collapsible ones. A regular size brush is too bulky.
Women: a small purse with a shoulder strap instead of a big bulky wallet, a coin purse for bills and change. Don’t carry a big purse thinking it will be handy. You’ll get bogged down by its heaviness and wind up ditching it for a small, lighter version.
There are belts available to be worn under clothing that hold passport and money too, to minimize being targeted for theft.

Get the most of your luggage

You’d be amazed at the tremendous amount of things you can get into a small suitcase if you roll each article of clothing like a hot dog!

Keeping track of people and places

Take a new address book and write the names of people you meet and want to keep in touch with by country in the lettered sections.—(Someone from England would go in the E section, etc.) When you get home, you’re more likely to remember where people are from than their names. Then when you want to contact them, go to your book and look their names up by country instead of personal name.

Journaling

Take a thin journal and write faithfully in it every night before you retire, about the day’s events and people you met. You can also jot down their names and addresses, if you have gotten them, on the margins of your journal. That way, you will always know where you can find the info if you want to refer to it later. I use those thin ‘Record books.’ They take up little room, are easy to carry on a plane or train outside a suitcase, and if you always use the same kind of book, they are all uniform on a shelf when you get home. Write start and finish dates inside the front cover, so later you can tell at a glance where into within certain timeframes will be. Use dates at the top of each entry, but also a header like ‘Barcelona—fountain and nice English people’ or anything necessary to jog your memory for highlights when you’re trying to find something later in the book.

Photographs

Keep a list of people you take pictures of, names, where they are from and what shows up in the background of the pictures, maybe even the clothes they are wearing in the picture. You think you will remember, but when you get home, they will all blend together in your mind and you may not know one from the other or where you were when you took the picture. With places, if you write the things on a list in the order they were taken, you will remember what and where things are, just by the sequence you wrote them on the list.

Purchases

Check out Pier One, T.J. Max or other places where imported items can be purchased before you leave to get an idea what can be obtained here before you cart something all the way across the globe or have it shipped for far more than you paid for it. You may find after you get back, that you could have gotten it at home and saved lots of effort and money by buying it here. I bought a little broom with crescent-shaped bristles in Bangkok thinking it would be great on a hearth someday. I found a place that tailor-made boxes for any item you wanted shipped, then mailed it for you. I did that, then found the same brooms in Pier One when I got back. But by golly, the one I shipped from Bangkok is on my hearth. I have no choice after all that.
If you are buying anything at all that may be questionable like a zebra skin or something made from an elephant tusk, check with the American embassy first to see what the rules are for the item leaving that country or entering ours. Some tanning standards for skins, for example, aren’t up to par with those of the U.S. and certain procedures are required before they are let into this country. Other things may be from animals that are on an endangered species list, and even though they are for sale, they aren’t supposed to be (though that’s not the story you will get from the seller) and that would mean really big trouble for you either when you leave that country or enter this one.
It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the whereabouts and points of contact to the nearest American Embassy to wherever you are.
Contact the American Embassy for things that are typically sold in countries you are visiting. Some things indigenous to certain countries can be expected there for good bargains. Amber, for example, in certain Caribbean islands, opals in Australia, diamonds in certain places in Africa, etc.
When you arrive in a country, call the American Embassy there to find out which local establishments the employees there buy their things of that country. In Bangkok, for instance, where there are an overwhelming amount of jewelry stores, I did this and got the name of which jewelry store they used. I was very pleased with the store and felt this minimized the chance of being ripped off there. You should mention when you get to the establishment that you got the recommendation from the American Embassy. They won’t want to mess with someone who might have connections there and wouldn’t take the chance of jeopardizing future business with potential embassy recommendations or embassy employees.

Write it down

Perhaps in the back of your journal, start a page of food items you liked, simple recipes or preparation methods and ways of doing something that isn’t done in your home country. It’s amazing the easy and clever things that we never thought of that make life so much easier. It’s fun to refer to that later and you will know right where to find these tips if they are all on the last page or few pages of your journal.

Don’t speak the language?

If you’re in a country whose language you don’t speak, go into most any large hotel or department store to ask directions or questions. These places most always hire someone who speaks and understands English.

Lost or need direction?

If no one is available to ask and there are no large stores or hotels around to ask directions, stand looking at a map and try to appear as befuddled as possible. Someone will eventually stop and ask if they can help you. (They seem to be able to tell who the English-speaking people are and they will only stop if they know they can communicate with you, so this weeds out all the non-English speaking people.

Venturing out from your hotel?

Take something along with you when you leave your hotel that bears its name, address and phone number so you can show it to someone if need be, to get back. This is especially true if you are in a country where the alphabet is different than yours and you can’t read or pronounce anything

Need guidance or a personal tour?

In some foreign countries, Japan for sure, students love the opportunity to show others around for the mere cost of the public transportation to escort you. They relish the chance to learn and practice their English. There is usually a tourist information place where these students sign up to be on a list this place can call to arrange to take people around.

Just in case

Always travel with travelers checks (free to car club members at most car club offices.) Record numbers of checks spent in a place other than with the checks.
Leave some money in a joint account with someone you trust back in your country of origin so that you can have them send you more in case of emergency.

Receiving mail
      If traveling with an unpredictable time schedule, your correspondents can address mail as such:
                                        Name of recipient
                                        % of General Delivery
                                        Name of town
                                        Country
               It will go to the general post office in that city and allows the addressee to pick it up whenever they get there with proof of identity (passport.) Most places keep mail for at least a month before returning it to sender. www.usps.com is the postal service web site for any more information

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