Travel Advice

Travel advice:

Some faithful readers have asked us for travel advice. The following are five nuggets of newly acquired wisdom. (written by Kate with one little injection from Andrew, can you find it?)

Ethiopian Makiatos

1. Drink and caffeinate locally

Different regions have different preferred methods for ingesting caffeine and alcohol. In Turkey, tea on the street costs about 50 cents. A coffee at the local Starbucks knock-off in Istanbul, however, will cost you $5. Go for the tea. In Italy, wine is almost always cheaper than water, but beer is pricey. We drank a lot of wine in Italy. Almost everywhere else in the world this is reversed. That meant in Italy I found myself craving beers and everywhere else a glass of wine, but these are small sacrifices. Makiatos in Ethiopia were an art form in themselves. They were cheap, beautiful and delicious. I developed a habit in their honor. Cocktails in Cambodia were affordable and tasty. That was not so true in Thailand. Andrew’s pastis in the south of France (the preferred drink of old men in undershirts sitting with their friends) often cost half or a quarter of whatever I was drinking. That said, I find pastis and its Turkish neighbor raki to be vile and disgusting drinks, so there is a limit to the drink locally plan.

Ethiopian Tej will get you the next morning, now you know

There is another exception to the drink locally rule: bad hangovers. Many local brews pack a nasty hangover. Raki did Andrew in one day. The Kili beer in Zanzibar was cold, cheap and deadly. The tej wine in Ethiopia fooled me; it wasn’t until I stood up that I realized I was drunk. Usually though there is a local brew that doesn’t pack a horrid punch the next day and it will be cheaper and better than a foreign drink.

If you stay too long in one place the storm troopers get you

2. Most places have three days

This might seem like blasphemy to some of you, but most places have three days (or less) of good tourism in them. There are notable exceptions to the three day rule: Tokyo, Paris, Bangkok and Istanbul come to mind. By and large, however, more places can offer 3 days (or less) of interesting stuff to do before they move into repetition. I am not saying don’t stay in the city for a longer period of time, just realize that, most likely, you will not be able to keep busy with tourist activities.

See, tank tops are never a good idea

3. Care about what you wear

There is a macho-ness about packing light. This does not necessarily help you travel well. It is easy to say to yourself, “I just want to be comfortable and not have too much to carry, I don’t care how I look.” I encourage you to get over that idea. Firstly, you should care about how you look. You are representing your people out there in the world and you want to represent them well. The man (I think he was Australian) in the fancy bar in the fancy hotel in Saigon wearing a tank top, shorts and needing a shave was not what I would call a credit to his race. I bothered to dress moderately nicely for that place and I wish he had too. It is a respect thing. (This brings up a side note: tank tops on men are almost never OK)

Secondly, you will feel more comfortable and be more happy if you are wearing the proper clothes for your destination. I have wandered around Singapore in worn out travelers’ shorts and I can tell you, I would have felt much better in city friendly clothes. I just wandered around Hong Kong in a cute dress and cute shoes and it made the experience much more fun. Similarly, the folks I saw wearing jeans on safari just looked miserable. It is hard to have just the right thing on a long trip, but it is worth a little more luggage (especially when your husband carries the bags) and a little more planning to have appropriate clothes.

Finally, they may be practical, but traveling vests are a bad idea. So are fanny packs. Have some self respect.

4. Learn how to say thank you in the local language

I used to learn how to say “thank you” and “two beers, please” in the local language of everywhere we visited. We hit a few too many language groups to keep up the “two beers, please,” but I still try to learn thank you. I certainly wasn’t perfect at this, but when I could master a nice ”Merci,” “Amesuganalo,” or “Akon” it got me far. In fact, most of the time, locals were way more impressed than they should have been.

Read a book, leave a book

5. Learn to love the “take a book, leave a book” shelf

Many hotels and guest houses, especially small ones, have a “take a book, leave a book” shelf. Often these are filled with the kind of crap books people bring on vacation, Danille Steelle and Terry Goodkind are popular, but there are also the unexpected gems. The “take a book, leave a book” shelf can be license to read something you would never normally pick up (I indulged in a good, but oh so bad, chick lit book that way), or it may force you into reading something of value even if you don’t want to. After a while it will also make you delirious with joy to enter even the smallest book store.