Articles tagged with "Travel Tips"
You do not need the language. You need about a dozen phrases said badly, and a translation app with the language downloaded. The phrases are the signal that you made an effort.
Conversation is what travelers remember and where curiosity most easily becomes intrusion. The test is simple: a question you would be pleased to be asked at home is fine, and one you would not is not.
Some places on an itinerary are where atrocities happened. They are open because the people who keep them want the history known. That is an invitation to witness, with an expectation attached.
Community-based tourism at its best is a community deciding what visitors see, running it and keeping the money. At its worst it is the same visit with none of the ownership and the same vocabulary.
Two things can go wrong with a souvenir and one is a criminal matter: the object does nobody any good, or it is protected, stolen or illegal to export and customs will seize it.
Almost every argument about responsible tourism reduces to one question: what proportion of what you spend stays where you spent it? That depends on ownership, and it is four decisions made before departure.
Dressing appropriately abroad is a scheduling problem more than a wardrobe one: what to wear on the day you visit a mosque in the morning and a beach in the afternoon, in heat, from one suitcase.
The first question at a religious site is whether it is a monument or a place of worship, because many are both. Behaving as though the second is true costs nothing and is almost always right.
Two rules cover almost all of it: ask before photographing a person, and accept a refusal without negotiating. The rest is knowing where a camera is unwelcome and where it is illegal.
Etiquette is a small number of moments repeated: arriving, greeting, sitting, eating, giving and receiving, leaving. Each has a local form and each can be observed before you have to perform it.