Inspired by this post by amrussell, I thought it would be nice to collect a bunch of handy generic tips for people travelling to foreign countries; either just useful stuff you might not be likely to consider unless prompted, or stuff that might help you stay out of trouble.
So my opening contribution is of the latter kind.
If you’re unsure where you are going, by all means stop to consult a map, but get out of the way first - do not stand gawping at the top of an escalator - get out of the flow of traffic and find a quiet spot where you can unfold your map or look at your guidebook, without obstructing anyone else’s passage.
Train stations, harbors, airports, bus stations… usually have an information booth for the city. There’s often one or more throughout the city. Go there, ask for a map of the town and one for the PT system (many towns have a schematic for the PT which is not to scale, and the other one is only downtown). Get them to mark your hotel and any places you already know you want to visit. Ask them the best way to get from one to the others. They may not be sure of the details and tell you to ask again at the hotel, but if it’s something like “take the tourist bus” or a subway line, they’ll know it.
The people in those booths often manage to speak half a dozen languages between them; I had a hotel in Brussels where 95% of the guests at any time were Spanish and the only worker who spoke Spanish or English was… a Japanese receptionist in training! I still refuse to believe that my French is so bad that her colleagues couldn’t understand me even when I wrote down “une carte de la ville, s’il vous plait”.
OK, another one: The food to which you are best accustomed, back home, may not be available in your chosen destination - or it may be available, but vastly inferior to what you can get back home (where it is a speciality). Don’t let this surprise you, and don’t complain about it - try something that the locals appear to enjoy eating instead.
May we expand this to include people who are in their own country, especially in cars? PULL OVER, folks, re-orient yourselves, and let the rest of us move along briskly, and with purpose, as God intended. DO NOT drive slower and slower, all the while giving no indication of what your next move might be. Are you turning left? Right? Having a heart attack? Who can tell?
If you insist in eating “your” food or drinking “your” drinks, don’t be surprised at the dagger sticking through your wallet.
(Hehe, we keep giving each other ideas).
12 Spaniards in New York. Only two of us (curiously, the youngest) had ever been out of Spain before; both of us had been in NY before. The other 10 insist in entering a Spanish restaurant whose menu smacked seriously of “italian with some payeya thrown in”, of course refusing to read the menu. When they started asking for wine from Spain, us two veterans said “eh, let’s clarify something: who’s paying?” Each his own. OK. Wine from Spain. Beer from Spain. Horrible paella, so overdone it might actually have come all the way from Spain. Overdone fish. Herbals from Spain. Brandy from Spain. The bill… except for us two, the bill was high enough to use as an escalator to the Moon.
I’ll go one better - try your damndest to conduct transactions/ask questions/whatever primarily in that language until/unless that person shifts into yours. Yes, even if you have to do a refresher in a phrase book right before entering the shop (see above about getting out of the way), or pull out the book right there.
Again, if traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language: Please bring one phrase book at minimum. I ended up having to give a spare one to a sister-in-law on a family trip to Italy when I discovered she hadn’t bothered to prepare in any way language-wise. No, she didn’t know a bit of Italian.
The norms for public social interaction which you have lived and breathed your entire life are not universals. This maxim particularly applies to tipping and queueing. Don’t do what you do, do what the locals do. They are right and you, here and now, are wrong.
If possible get one of those miniature Berlitz guides
just read the back of it, it tells you about prices etc
When I worked in tour operating (back in the days of bi-planes) we did a deal with them, sent one out with every booking, but the info was so darn good (car rental, hotel room rates etc) that we got them to do a special print run with such competitive information edited out.
Read the Consular Information sheet on the country you’ll be visiting before you go. The U.S. State Department publishes these, and you can read them here. They include lots of practical information, including the contact information for the U.S. embassies and consulates in each country. I know that the UK and Australia publish something similar for their citizens going abroad.
Make two copies of your passport. Leave one behind with a friend or family member and store the other one somewhere in your luggage. If you lose your passport, being able to show the embassy a copy of the original will make getting a replacement much easier.
Conversely, if you know you won’t be able to say what you need in the local language, politely say “*sorry, I don’t speak (whatever). * English?”. Learning the part in italics in that foreign language is only one sentence, even the most language-null can learn one sentence.
I’ve run into people who insisted in murdering Spanish when I could not understand a word they were saying. I’m also currently living in a location where no phrasebook can cover everything I need to say, so I don’t have a problem conducting transactions in French or English (thankfully, the locals speak both much better than I speak German, which I’m also trying to refresh; since the move was quite fast I didn’t have time to do the refresher beforehand).
Go to www.onebag.com and take everything they say as gospel. Only packing advice anyone will ever need.
Keep your money well hidden- that means not a wallet in your back pocket (though fake wallets are great). Stash extra money everywhere. Keep locks or twist ties on your bags. Keep your bag touching you at all times- especially on public transport. Come to expect that everything you bring will either break, get lost, or be stolen, and don’t get upset when it does. Don’t bring things you would be upset to lose.
Have a sense of humor and try not to get worked up when things get wierd. Either things will work out in the end or you will end up dead in a ditch. And you arn’t going to end up dead in a ditch.
Don’t bring a music device. Nothing discourages those great conversations with the locals (and invites theft) like earphones.
For every person you travel with, you lose 10% of your trip to conflicting plans. Don’t travel in a big group.
Respect local dress norms. Wear nice, but comfortable, shoes. Don’t go out to a Muslim country in a belly top. It makes you look wierd. It makes life hard for the rest of the tourists. Looking respectable makes it far more likely you’ll be invited to share dinner in someone’s village, or won’t get barred from entering a church for being inappropriate, won’t get bad service or harrassed by authorities, and other good stuff.
Eat street food.
And by all means TRAVEL! Sure, you don’t have money for it. Sure you have this committment and that committment. You know what? That does’t have to stop you. Stop thinking of reasons why you can’t and buy that ticket. I promise, you will not regret it.
All airports, transit systems, etc are actually pretty similar. They are designed to be idiot-proof, and even the most daunting and complex of them isn’t really, if you stop and calm down for a moment or two.
If you are a man, alcohol, cigarettes, football (soccer), knowledge of a few swearwords, and body language which says, “Hey, check out those TITS” will break down all barriers.
Keep your mouth shut in the shower. (And, brush your teeth with bottled water!)
Never open your hotel room door, when woken by banging in the middle of the night! (Tell them to get the manager, even if they say they are the police!)
Always wear rubber sandals in ALL showers! (Any shower/tub can appear clean, it’s a tiny precaution that can save a lot of grief.)
Have a secret signal with your companion, especially for girls! (Like a head waggle that indicates, “Wanna go”, as in both, “Are you growing uncomfortable?”, and, “Do YOU want to accept this invitation?”. Being able to communicate this much, in front of other people, without their knowledge, allows you to access the spidey senses of both parties. This could be a life saver!)
Never let the foolish behaviour of other tourists sway you from what you know is right for you. (You will see people do things that you know are wrong, don’t let their cavalier attitude infect you.)
Carry toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you at all times–and probably a large handkerchief to wipe your hands on also. Paper, water, and soap are beyond the scope of public restrooms in most of the world.
More to the point; if you’re in another country, don’t be trying to eat “your” food. If you want to eat “your” food and have people behave “just like back home” then stay home. The point of travel is to experience new and different things, including new and different foods.