My Travel Secrets

• If you're walking a lot, use foot cream. Even if you don't have athlete's foot, it will put you back in touch with your feet. People think this is a stupid tip, until they try it, and then they think it's a miracle.
• At restaurants, sit at separate tables in groups of four or less. Faster service, easier to split the check.
• Tough, expensive shoes. One pair.
• White socks, white, tshirts, white underwear. Why? It's all one load of laundry. Shirts, pants, shorts? They all mix and match. Everything matches everything. Pants and shirts are all quick dry, wrinkle resistant. All.
• Squeeze the air bubble out of your travel-sized shampoo, etc. That air bubble expands in the low pressure environment of the airplane; it's what makes your toiletries explode inside the little plastic baggies you put them in.
• Getting over jet lag is a huge priority.
• If you want to avoid pick pockets, learn to think like them. If anything surprising happens to you, your first reaction is to cover your pockets and bats. Remember they never work alone; there's the one who's doing the actual stealing, and the partner who you don't see, who might have a knife. No heroics. Your gear is not safe unless you are physically connected to it and the zippers are under your hand.
• Don't watch anybody's stuff, ever. Exception: you can watch ONE person's gear if they're going to the bathroom (it's really easy to rip someone off when they're going to the bathroom). It's easy to steal gear from someone with a pile of gear.
• When traveling, there's a lot of hurry up and wait, and something always goes wrong. It's part of it. Don't expect everything to be the Love Boat unless you're acutally on the Love Boat.
• Plan your days around your meals. Not kidding. You might ride out jet lag, and you might ride out a blood sugar crash, but you're not going to ride out jet lag and crashing blood sugar on the same day. Not well, at least.
• Ditch the needy American committee at every possible opportunity.

time for bed.