Travel Tips

1. Bring more money and less baggage. If you don't have it, you just might find you can live without it. If it turns out you do need it, you can probably buy it.

2. Make sure you have a camera that can use AA or AAA batteries. My camera, with one of those strange sized, expensive batteries, died when I was in Somalia. Suffice to say, there was NO WAY I was going to find that particular battery there...

3. SMILE. This is the best way to travel. Countless times, a big smile, and hearty hello in the lingua franca has broken the ice, and resulted in the best travel experiences.

4. Learn how to say the following words and phrases in whatever language you happen to be around: Hello,goodbye, Please, Thank you, May I have..., how much is..., numbers 1-100, I am from..., I like this, I don't understand, I don't know, pardon me, I speak a little (arabic, french, tagalog, etc), and not well...

5. Use public transportation when you can. Just get on a bus, and see where it goes. Get off, get on another one. Repeat until you eventually get back to some place familiar.

6. Journal. Keep a record of your travel experiences. Including keeping track of things you've learned along the way. I've got half a dozen or so different notebooks that I've used to keep track of the different trips. I wish they were all condensed into one, but maybe I'll do that this year...

7. Go away from the tourist areas. Get off the beaten track, and away from the places where tourists congregate. In some places, this is just the safe thing to do. In almost every case, though, this is where you'll meet regular people dong regular things. By doing this, I've had tea with Egyptian fishermen, ate breakfast cooked right in front of me with a Turkish family, hung out with Jordanian kids, eaten supper with Bolivian street urchins...the list goes on.