Bob's Travel Recommendations

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So you've seen my Toilets of the World site and my other travel-related web pages, and you wonder how you, too, can enjoy such plush accomodations? Here's how to find the places where I've gone, sometimes more than once, and lived to tell about it.

Use at your own risk. Not responsible for financial loss incurred, mental anguish suffered, or diseases contracted. Your mileage may vary. Discontinue use in case of dizziness, blurred vision, inability to urinate, or inability to stop urinating.

Know What You're Doing

Read about where you're going. Attempt to prepare yourself. Get something like a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide book. If you need to sort out local minibus schedules, including how to pay for your ticket and how much it will probably cost, they will do the job.

Make relatively cheap calls while overseas:
How to replace a GSM SIM card and avoid international roaming charges

Is It Safe?

Of all the places I've gone, the most dangerous in several ways is the U.S.A. Really. The shuffling zombie armies of vagrants in Atlanta are creepy and threatening, and Washington D.C. is dangerous in multiple ways at once.

No, Seriously, How Dangerous Is It?

Also see Michael Wood's In Search of England, which tells us that in the 13th century 40% of all crime which came to court in England was larceny, largely of farm stock. 20% was burglary (forced breaking and entering), 10% was robbery. Homicide was nearly 20%! Compare that to today's U.S., seen as a violent society, where only about 0.5% of crimes are homicide. London had 5 murders per year per 10,000 people back then, while Miami ("murder capital of US" in 2001 when he wrote that) had 1.5.

Learn to Speak Something Vaguely Approximating the Local Language

At the very least, a basic greeting and the local words for "Please" and "Thank you". And then there are:

On the topic of languages, there is a wonderful passage in the "Languages of the World" article in Encyclopedia Britannica, in the section about Latin-based languages:

Many Romance dialects have virtually ceased to be spoken in the past century. Of these, Dalmatian is the most striking, its last known speaker, one Antonio Udina, having been blown up by a land mine in 1898. He was the main source of knowledge for his parent's dialect (that of the island of Veglia, or Krk), though he was hardly an ideal informant: Vegliot Dalmatian was not his native language, and he had learned it only from listening to his parents' private conversations. Moreover, he had not spoken the language for 20 years at the time he acted as an informant, and he was deaf and toothless as well.

Do not poop in the sink!

Americans really need to learn what a bidet is before venturing overseas. Read this explanation!

Maps

Hostel directories

Realize that American credit cards may have limited functionality

There's a traveler's inconvenience caused by the U.S. being a little behind the rest of the world in some ways: Almost all countries' banks now issue credit cards that are smart cards, with electrical contacts and an embedded chip. It's a very nice security feature, you must use a PIN to use the card and so a stolen card simply cannot be used. All Australian credit cards have been smart cards since 1985. The problem is that old-fashioned American credit cards don't work in a lot of the automated kiosks, for example, the handy system that sells tickets in French train stations. We have to go stand in line with all the other Americans at the staffed ticket window where we can still use our quaint no-security cards.

Citibank is a huge international bank, so, after returning from a trip overseas I went into a Citibank branch in Chicago and asked when they would be issuing smart cards. The teller didn't have any idea what I was talking about, so she called Citibank's regional credit card expert. Then he didn't know there was such a thing. The same thing happened when I asked in another Citibank branch in Chicago.

Later, when I was in New York, I asked in a large Citibank branch in mid-town Manhattan. Finally, they knew exactly what I was talking about! Citibank had experimented with issuing smart cards to their customers who live in New York, but they found that the American market really has no interest in such a thing. What is preferred in the U.S. is a card with an RFID chip, so you don't even have to take your wallet out of your pocket. Just stand close enough to the register and your card will be billed.

Travel Quotes

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
— Saint Augustine (354-430)
It is better to travel well than to arrive.
— Buddha (563-483 BC)
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
— Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
— Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.
— Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.
— Rudyard Kipling
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
— Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
— Friedrich Neitzche
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
— Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
— Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
He who would travel happily must travel light.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
[We travel] because we wanted to travel — because we believed, in the light of previous experience, that we should enjoy it.
— Peter Fleming, in News of Tartary, 1936
The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.
— Britney Spears (1981-), disproving Sir Francis Bacon's claim

Travel Suggestions
Alaska	Belgium	Canada	Egypt	Estonia	France	Greece	Italy
Japan	Jordan	Latvia	Lithuania	Mexico	People's Republic of China	Poland	Russia
Syria	Trinidad & Tobago	Turkey	U.K.	U.S.A.	Megalithic Travel
Strange signs seen while traveling				INFOSEC / Military History Tourism

Homicides per 100,000 people
	England	Netherlands & Belgium	Scandinavia	Germany & Switzerland	Italy
13th/14th Century	23.0	47.0	—	37.0	56.0
15th Century	—	45.0	46.0	16.0	73.0
16th Century	7.0	25.0	21.0	11.0	47.0
17th Century	5.0	7.5	18.0	7.0	32.0
18th Century	1.5	5.5	1.9	7.5	10.5
19th Century	1.7	1.6	1.1	2.8	12.6
1900-1940	0.8	1.5	0.7	1.7	3.2
1950-1994	0.9	0.9	0.9	1.0	1.5
Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, citing "Secular Trends of Violence, Evidence, and Theoretical Interpretations" by the criminologist Manuel Eisner, Crime & Justice: A Review of Research 3 (2003), also in "Violence and the Rise of Modern Society", Criminology in Cambridge, Oct 2003, pp 3-7.