2009-10-31

Considering the place

Travel Considerations Provided by the Following...
by Ryan
Guest Post

When traveling abroad, your first course of action is to visit the U.S. Department of State travel page. It has important information about visa requirements and travel advisories, and lets you register your travel itinerary with them.
Visa Requirements
American travelers are lucky. Many countries around the world have friendly, diplomatic relations with us and will happily take our money. High-frequency travel destinations (Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand--and many places in Europe, thanks to the Schengen Agreement) have lax visa requirements for American visitors in town for a bit. For everywhere else, there's the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

There are gray areas. Online, you'll see it's "easy" to secure a short-term visa in Indonesia. Compared to Japan and Thailand, however, getting an Indonesian visa is not easy. You wait in one line to pay for it. Then you wait in another huge line that take up ninety percent of airport's international receiving room to pick it up. No air-conditioning, no ventilation. Two hours later, you leave the airport, sticky with sweat, visas in hand.

Of course, you can always secure a visa for many places in advance online.
Travel Advisories
Check out any international travel advisories before you leave home. It will prepare you for the unknown. Tourist havens aren't exempt; anyone who's had her purse or his wallet stolen knows. Moreover, criminals are often unique to an area. For example, in many places it's best to arrange a cab, e.g. through a hotel, rather than hail one off a street. In Indonesia, you may pay too much. In seedier parts of Mexico, it could cost you your life.
Register Your Itinerary
This may seem a little too "Big Brother" for you, but how else will anyone know you were kidnapped and imprisoned in North Korea? Bill Clinton won't know where to rescue you from. Register your itinerary online, and you'll be in a better position, should you get in hot water.

And leave the recreational drugs at home. Singapore would imprison you for even having illegal drugs in your system, let alone on your person. Would you trust an OTC detox kit to save you from prison abroad?

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