> Crash a wedding. You are not a nuisance; you are the celebrity guest!
Urgh. Really?
50 Years of Travel Tips
41–50 of 217 posts
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#42I spent 9 months traveling from Mexico to Buenos Aires with a backpack eighteen years ago. Spent most nights in hostels in shared rooms for a few dollars a night. It was a great experience. Carried a MacBook Pro and a digital Nikon D70. Actually had the first iPhone but hardly used it. Do have a selfie of myself on a bus somewhere in Central America. These days I’m taking more expensive vacations in cheaper countries…
1/3 of 2000 USD is still 650 USD a night. This is quite a price. I am sure that plenty of people can afford it (I could if I wanted to) but this is rather expensive when you compare to, say a stay in Chamonix (French Alps, a "posh" station) where you can have a 65 m2 appartment next to the slopes in high season for about 250-300€/night.
I had a similar reaction. I think of Panama as being one of the higher COL areas in that region.
In a lot of areas in the US $650/night is a posh hotel/airbnb.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#43>Crash a wedding. You are not a nuisance; you are the celebrity guest! ... They will usually feel honored. You can offer the newlyweds a small token gift of cash if you want. You will be obliged to dance. Take photos of them; they will take photos of you. It will make your day and theirs. (I’ve crashed a wedding in most of the countries I have visited.) That will only work if a white tourist wedding crashes in a poor…
Yeah, a few of these items sound a lot like "white tourist in poor country".
Like the one about asking the taxi driver to drive you to his mom, like holy cow that's creepy. Imagine asking an American Uber driver "hey drive me to your mom's" and see how they'd respond.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#44>... I’ve seen absolutely no correlation between where you eat and whether you have intestinal problems...
Add to this one: always make sure your hands are clean before you eat. A little bottle of sanitiser will do wonders for your health in areas with poor sanitation.
Otherwise, one tip I would like to add - when in doubt, do as the locals do. Especially useful when you can't read signs.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#45Great read but I must say I completely disagree with: "the best way to avoid [[getting cheated/swindled]] is to give strangers your trust and treat them well. Being good to them brings out their good. If you are on your best behavior, they will be on their best behavior." As someone who's lived in London for 20 years, if you trust and treat everyone well you will lose all of your money, your watch, and phone. Unfortu…
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Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#46Lots of great advice here. But.. >In many parts of the world today motorcycles play the role of cars. That means you can hire a moto-taxi to take you on the back seat, or to summon a moto-taxi with an uber-like app, or to take a motorcycle tour with a guide doing the driving. In areas where motorcycles dominate they will be ten times more efficient than slowly going by car. I would be extremely wary about this. You a…
2 years ago when backpacking in East Africa, I went from "there is no way I'm ever doing this" to taking nothing but those moto-taxis ("boda bodas") even for 40 minute inter-city rides with a 12KG backpack on my back. No helmets to speak of. Except maybe in Rwanda. Part of the learning experience of such travel, is to see firsthand how the locals of these places perceive the risk. How they manage risk in general, and…
The combination of poor road safety, lack of protective equipment and lesser health care if anything goes wrong does not make it an attractive option for me. Each to their own, I guess.
Context: I used to have a motorbike. I always wore full protective equipment. Full face helmet, leather, gloves and boots. But I realize that is less practical in a hot climate.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
My counter to that is that, once you get out of major cities, even in the UK, there may be very few opportunities to pick up things including pretty routine first aid supplies. You probably also don't want to spend the first half-day of your vacation doing routine shopping. So, yes, you can often pick things up but don't count on it. If you're adaptable, you can probably manage (perhaps outside of some things like me…
My counter is if you can't produce it within a day it's most likely not a necessity.
There's a ton of medical and medical-adjacent stuff (both prescription and not) that isn't going to be easy to come up with in a typical village or small town. Good to have some basic things you can use to rig a backpack strap or hole repair. There are fairly essential clothing items you may not easily replace on foot in small towns; it's raining hard and you left your rain jacket at home.
Sure. If you have wheels, it's probably easier.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have one of these. It also tells me all the things I need to turn off / check are switched off in the house.
With the prices of electricity these days I turn off everything by remote control per room each time I leave the house for work etc. Not even extension cord lights are left on, only the very bare necessities - fridge etc remain on.
Ah but the genius of such a list is that it can also cover things like closing windows, checking the gas cooker is off, watering plants... anything that you might later think "did I remember to...?", while flying to Indonesia.
You might have left your fridge switched on, but did you close the door properly?
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#49"People in other places are not saints. You might get cheated, swindled, or taken advantage of. Paradoxically, the best way to avoid that is to give strangers your trust and treat them well. Being good to them brings out their good. If you are on your best behavior, they will be on their best behavior. And vice versa. To stay safe, smile. Be humble and minimize your ego. I don’t know why that works everywhere in the world—even places with “bad” reputations—but it does."
This just got me! Its so true. That's been my experience too.
Re: 50 Years of Travel Tips
#50Lots of great advice here. But.. >In many parts of the world today motorcycles play the role of cars. That means you can hire a moto-taxi to take you on the back seat, or to summon a moto-taxi with an uber-like app, or to take a motorcycle tour with a guide doing the driving. In areas where motorcycles dominate they will be ten times more efficient than slowly going by car. I would be extremely wary about this. You a…
2 years ago when backpacking in East Africa, I went from "there is no way I'm ever doing this" to taking nothing but those moto-taxis ("boda bodas") even for 40 minute inter-city rides with a 12KG backpack on my back. No helmets to speak of. Except maybe in Rwanda. Part of the learning experience of such travel, is to see firsthand how the locals of these places perceive the risk. How they manage risk in general, and…
There is no "the locals" usually. It sounds a bit condescending, like the article. If people look different than you it doesn't mean they are all the same. People have different life situations. Maybe even in your home country too.
If you go somewhere on a moto taxi in Bangkok all those taxis and fancy SUVs you see are not silly foreigners who are scared of motobikes, they are also locals who manage risk.