BEFORE YOU TRAVEL – Things To Do

A Checklist For International Travel

Travel Insurance

  1. ___ Check amounts and terms of international coverage on health insurance policy
  2. ___ Look into travel insurance. Health coverage, emergency transport and general travel insurance
  3. ___ Buy travel insurance on big risk areas and large cost items, such as flights and cruises.

Make a Contact List

  1. ___ Update your phones contact file
  2. ___ Include Embassy and consulate numbers where you will travel
  3. ___ Look up and add emergency numbers for countries you will visit
  4. ___ Make hard copies of those contacts to carry on you
  5. ___ Add copies to carry-on and suitcases

Make Copies of Important Documents

  1. ___ Take photos with your phone of all your cards, passport, itinerary and bookings and store them
  2. ___ Make multiple copies of documents like passport, insurance cards, drivers license, visas and keep copies in your carry on and suitcase
  3. ___ Give digital copies to trusted friends or family

Money Belts and Bag Security

  1. ___ Carry cash and cards in a money belt or pouch. If you don’t have one, get one. Without question they are the safest way of protecting money, cards and ID.
  2. ___ Have extra security for wallets, purses and backpacks. Pickpocket proof clothes, wire reinforcement for straps.
  3. ___ Distribute your cash: Separate your cash and have an emergency stock in a place unlikely to be searched. Inside suitcase liner, in old socks or with toiletries.

Make Sure You Have The Right Debit and Credit Cards

  1. ___ Check your credit card terms and have one that doesn’t charge international transaction fees
  2. ___ Check your debit card and carry one that has international ATM service with which you can withdraw cash for free to avoid fees.

Also a credit card gives you a higher chance of claiming money back in case an airline goes bankrupt or fraud against the card.

Foreign Currency

  1. ___ Convert some money to foreign currency before you leave. Important for tipping, taxis and small purchases.
  2. ___ Look into the ATM networks recommended by your bank. That can save a lot of hassle and money.
  3. ___ Make and carry a list of exchange rates. This helps you understand the cost of things and know if the vendors are being fair.

Know Basic Phrases For The Countries You’ll Visit

  1. ___ Prepare a small cheat sheet of basic questions: “How much?”, “Where are the bathrooms?” “Is a service charge included?” Knowing how to call for help, ask for the police etc can make or break your travel safety.
  2. ___ Write down the address of your hotels and other important locations and destinations to show to taxi drivers etc.

Research Local Customs And Laws

 

  1. ___ Read up on local culture and manners to help you travel safely. You don’t want to offend anybody. For instance in Thailand disrespecting the money is disrespecting the King because his picture is featured. Be careful of religious culture in strongly religious countries.
  2. ___ Look into local laws.Ask questions or refer to travel guides. You do not want to break any laws unintentionally and end up with a hefty fine or in jail. An example is in Barbados it is illegal to wear camouflage clothing (fine and/or jail).

Keep Your Electronic Gear Safe

  1. ___ Get and install a VPN (virtual private network) on all devices that will access wifi (laptops, pads and cellphones.
  2. ___ Get and install a reliable anti-virus software.
  3. ___ Buy and carry a large capacity travel hard drive. Do regular backups and keep a backup system on it. Also never plug in unknown USB sticks (thumb drives).

Be Prepared For Eventualities

  1. ___ Know the costs of using your cellphone internationally. Being in Europe is not the time to learn that you calls are $3.00 a minute.
  2. ___ Discuss communications options with family and friends. Let them know if you plan on using primarily text messages.
  3. ___ Have a plan for when your devices cannot access the internet. Too many devices and apps today operate on the premise that they always have access to the web. Understand the ones that won’t work in such a case and find out if there are there substitutes?

Download Maps To Your Device Before Your Trip

  1. ___ Install a map app on your cellphone or use Google Maps and download maps of cities you will visit. Google will allow you to store their maps for thirty days and there are several apps that let you download maps that display using only GPS.
  2. ___ Get in the habit of picking up local guide maps and carry one as a backup for your phone. Having paper maps and even a compass on you can come in handy.

Using The Mobile Passport App (An Update)

Some time ago we did an article on the new Mobile Passport App. We were so excited about this new approach we immediately got ready to make use of it. At the time we published we had not actually used the app yet. Now it’s over a year latter and we have come through immigration seven times using this app. While it appears that you can make use of the app as “head of household” we both downloaded the app and registered our passports independently and have both used it at entry each time.

Good news and good news! First, in several entries using Mobile Entry it has not worked as intended yet. Talking to the agents they tell us that while they understand what it’s supposed to do mostly it doesn’t seem to provide the information at their station they were told it would but they generally accept that you have a valid entry. That being said every time we enter they examine the code displayed on our phones, take a quick look at our passport and wave us through – welcome to America.

The really good news. The way the system is supposed to work once you are heading towards immigration you follow signs to the Mobile Entry line. Sometimes it is also the same line that includes Global Entry. The big difference is that Mobile Passport is free and Global Entry costs $100 for 5 years. In most cases we have had nobody in line ahead of us when we get to the agent. Once or twice there have been no more than four people ahead of us. Once there, the agents look at our cell phone for a second and wave us through.

What we believe is supposed to happen is the agent uses a scanner to read the bar code off our phones, but that hasn’t happened yet. I doesn’t appear that Customs and Immigration have any plan to discontinue the app and system and so for it’s a big win/win.

Here’s How To Get Started

First you download the Mobile Passport App on your iPhone or Android device, it’s free. Use the App to take your picture and scan your passport and save the information.

Here’s what to do when you arrive back in the U.S. from the Mobile Passport website. Once you are at your port of entry (airport or sea port), connect to wireless or wi-fi and submit your data to CBP. Remember: when you submit, you are confirming under penalty of law that your information is correct. Within a few seconds, you will receive a CBP receipt with an encrypted barcode. Your receipt will be valid for 4 hours.

No more customs forms!

Next follow the Mobile Passport Control signs to the designated Mobile Passport Control line. Show your passport to the CBP officer and scan back the barcode on the digital CBP receipt. And that’s it!

The system is currently active at twenty-four U.S. airports and Ft. Lauderale’s, Port Everglades, with more coming.

We have one report that the system is a breeze. That may be because there aren’t that many users yet but hopefully CBP will expand to keep up.

 

A Final Note: Recently we were in Chile and before we boarded the plane I realized that I had changed phones from an iPhone to an Android and hadn’t loaded the app. Even with the slow 3G at the airport it only took five minutes to download the app, take my picture (it was terrible), scan my passport and register with the system. I would recommend avoiding that panic.

 

Love Locks – A Pledge of Undying Love

love lock Wurzburg, Germany
Wurzburg, Germany

Love Locks – Statement of Love or Vandalism?

A SHORT STORY

As we travel we have at times noticed collections of padlocks attached to bridges and other public structures. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what was going on by all the couples names engraved on the locks. But in the last five years or so it is becoming difficult to not notice these collections, they’re popping up everywhere.

The practice isn’t new but in the twenty-first century it has exploded worldwide. A love lock is a padlock which lovers lock to a bridge, fence, gate or monument to symbolize their eternal love. Recently the lovers’ names or initials, and the date, are inscribed on the padlock, and its key is thrown away usually into the river under the bridge to symbolize unbreakable love.

Dublin, Ireland

This simple and romantic practice seems innocent but more and more being treated by authorities as litter or vandalism, and there is becoming serious cost associated with damage and their removal. We’ve been told that there are places where authorities are embracing them as a tourist attractions.

A little research will show that love padlocks date back at least 100 years to a Serbian tale of World War I, about the bridge Most Ljubavi or the Bridge of Love in the town of Vrnjačka Banja. A local schoolmistress named Nada, who was from Vrnjačka Banja, fell in love with a Serbian officer named Relja.

Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin

In Dublin there is a famous pedestrian bridge called the Ha’penny Bridge. It is one of the more famous symbols of Dublin. Nearly 200 years old (1816) it is a protected structure, but in recent years Dublin City Council have had to remove thousands of padlocks from the bridge. They are considered unsightly and are causing damage by chipping paint and adding considerable weight to the historic bridge.

While the key to many a heart now lies at the bottom of the River Liffey where couples in love have thrown them after securing their love locks to Dublin’s historic Ha’penny Bridge, a group is dedicated to breaking that bond. Almost as soon as the lovers have left, an expert lock-picking group arrives to tear these bonds of love apart and stop the locks from making the bridge structurally unsafe.

love lock Wurzburg, Germany

“It’s a fairly constant churn,” said Seán Nicholls, who set up the group when he was on his way to a professional lock-picking meeting. “I was heading to the meeting one day and I walked over the bridge and noticed all the locks. That’s kind of where the idea came from,” he said.

Love locks River walk Wurzburg, Germany
River walk Wurzburg, Germany

Dublin City Council made the group official in the aftermath of a love-lock situation in Paris where the locks caused a section of the Pont des Arts bridge to collapse.

Traveling, Emergencies and Twitter

Twitter and the Traveler in Emergencies

Lately a few things have happened that have caused us to be more concerned about how to deal with emergencies while traveling in foreign countries. Letting family and friends back home know we are okay is one of those concerns.

Most people know Twitter as a social message sharing platform but it can fill other important roles. For those not familiar with Twitter it is used mostly for social networking, instant messaging and micro-blogging. Registered users can access Twitter through its website interface, through Short Message Service (SMS) or its mobile-device application software (“app”). Unregistered users can still read tweets by searching for a registered user or group.

There is an often overlooked place in an emergency situation for a Twitter account. If you recollect there have been some disasters and political upheavals recently where often what news did get out quickly came over Twitter. The technical reason for this can be found in the system Twitter employs for communication. Its foundation is in that protocol called Short Message Service (SMS). Often in an emergency voice communications both landline and cellular can get overloaded and fail. The same is true of the internet and cellular data systems. But SMS is a unique system designed to handle large amounts of short, simple text messages that by their very nature get through when other systems fail.

For this reason alone you should consider having a twitter account to use for emergency communications. The primary approach to accomplish this goal is to have family and friends use their accounts or have them setup Twitter accounts and make sure everyone follows everyone. In an emergency it is probably the quickest and easiest way to make notifications.

If you don’t like the idea of having your own Twitter account another approach is to setup a shared Twitter group account where everyone creates a user nickname to sign individual tweets. The process is pretty straight forward:

  • Go to Twitter.com. In your web browser, enter https://www.twitter.com.
  • Create an account for yourself or work with your group. On the homepage, enter your full name, email address, and preferred password on the given fields.
  • Choose a Username for yourself or the group. Make sure the username reflects the group; keep it short and simple so everyone will remember it.
  • Click on “Create My Account”

Keeping in touch with everyone, family, friends, work colleagues, becomes a priority during an emergency. If the land-line phones go dead and even your cell phone can’t make calls because everyone else is overloading the system, using text messages through Twitter can be a solution for those who need to inform friends and family online of current conditions and even needs. The great thing about Twitter is brevity. You still need to master important communications using just a few words, but Twitter could be the emergency information sharing option for you.

To make the best use of Twitter for emergency communications you need to develop some skills and follow a plan:

  1. Understand how you can send tweets to Twitter. You don’t need to be on a computer; you can send messages via your cell phone and its SMS/texting functions. You will need to enable the ability for your cell phone to receive Twitter updates via text message. Once done, this simply becomes one further method for you to add tweets, wherever you are.
  2. Establish an individual or group Twitter account. If you’re already a devotee of Twitter and have a group of followers with whom you regularly exchange tweets, you’ll be in the best position of all to make good use of an account in an emergency. Starting a group account is best for including users that generally haven’t made use of Twitter.
  3. Be comfortable with making tweets. The drill is 280 characters or less, including spaces and symbols. Once you’ve tried it enough times, you’ll master creating a meaningful message in few words. Make use of abbreviations to help compact content in the message. For example, “Road blkd SRS (serious) crash. I’m fine CUL8R (see you later) BFN (by for now)”
  4. Encourage friends and family to follow you on Twitter, so that they know they can find you on Twitter if you’re able to use it during an emergency. Encourage fellow workers to follow too. Twitter is a community and your message will spread often trying to find someone who respond respond and offer help.
  5. Tell friends, colleagues and family of your intentions to use Twitter in an emergency when the option is available. That will alert them to look on your Twitter feed if things happen and you could be involved. It will also help people alert authorities that you’re tweeting from an emergency.
  6. Don’t ever be afraid to use hashtags. Hashtags are keywords that people use to easily search for a specific word. In an emergency descriptive hashtags usually develop quickly.

If you really would prefer your main Twitter account to be left for specific friends, consider having a family Twitter account as well and use that during an emergency. Just be sure to remember which one you’re tweeting to – you may have to log out of one and into another.

It’s a good idea to set up Twitter on your cellphone using SMS.

Here’s how to Tweet via text message

If you add your mobile number to your Twitter account, you can tweet by sending a text message to a short or long code.

Sending a text message to any of these short or long code phone numbers will post your message as a Tweet to your Twitter profile (and it will be sent to all of your followers).

There are key differences however between using Twitter via short or long code:

Using a short code

Using Twitter by texting to a short code means you can perform actions and access content like you would via the web or a smart device.

When you use a short code with your Twitter account, you can post Tweets, receive notifications, and enroll in security features like login verification.

We currently support two-way Tweets (sending and receiving) via text message through short codes provided by our supported mobile carriers.

If you don’t yet have a Twitter account, read about how to sign up for a new Twitter account via text message.

If you already have a Twitter account and you want to start tweeting via text message, here’s how to get started:

SETTING UP short codes

Find your mobile carrier’s short code HERE. These are the short codes for the    U.S. – 40404      Canada – 21212       Mexico – 6464

Text the word START or SIGNUP to your mobile carrier’s short code.

If your country and carrier are not listed as having a short code, it may be possible for you to post a Tweet using any Twitter long codes.

Use these designated Twitter commands to perform actions from your Twitter account

How to use a long code

About Twitter SMS commands

You can perform certain actions, like following a user or liking a friend’s Tweet, by using the designated Twitter commands below.

When using these commands, do not append an @ symbol along with the command text. If you send these commands with an @ symbol, your commands will be read as a username and will not be executed as expected.

Example: If you want to turn on device notifications, send only “ON” and not “@ON.”

Turning mobile Twitter updates OFF and ON

ON: turns ALL your authorized Twitter updates and notifications on.

OFF: turns ALL phone notifications off.

ON [username]: turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: ON anna

OFF [username]: turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: OFF sheeda

FOLLOW [username]: allows you to start following a specific user, as well as receive SMS notifications. Example: FOLLOW sheeda, or F sheeda, for short.

UNFOLLOW [username]: allows you to stop following someone specific.

STOP: stops notifications, deletes your follower list, and removes your phone number from Twitter.

QUIT, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, or ARRET: stops notifications. If you completed the sign-up flow on the web, sending any of these commands to your Twitter short code will remove your phone number from the Twitter account most recently linked to your number.

Long codes listed below are one-way only. You can send Tweets that will post to your profile (and be sent to your followers), but you will not be able to receive Tweets or other Twitter notifications to your phone through this channel.

Note: For these reasons, we do not recommend features such as login verification for long code users, as the experience may be less than optimal.

Subscribers do not have to be in their home country in order to use one of the long codes, however it should be noted that you may be charged international message rates when using these codes. It is advised that you consult your carrier.

The Port of San Diego

Port of Call San Diego in Southern California

What’s not to like with a near perfect year-round temperature, 70 miles of coastline and beaches, a major U.S. Naval Base, an interesting historic area and world famous Balboa Park that features 17 museums, numerous galleries and performing arts venues including the incredible San Diego Zoo. It isn’t hard to fall in love with San Diego.

Popular with cruise lines for trips up the coast, over to Hawaii and south through the Panama Canal this is a world class port of call.

Where Your Ship Docks

Most cruise ships will dock right downtown at the B Street Cruise Pier. The pier features a cruise terminal with public facilities. Across the street from the pier are a number of good hotels and just another block up is a rapid rail stop. A little over a half mile south of the terminal is Seaport Village with an interesting collection of shops and restaurants also on the water. The aircraft carrier Midway Museum is also nearby along with a number of other historic ship exhibits.

Transportation

San Diego has an economical public transportation system featuring a light rail system that includes over fifty area stops. Just two blocks from the pier is a light rail stop where you can catch a trolly down to Old Town for a fare of $2.50. You can purchase one to 30-day passes for the transit system right from your smartphone and use them immediately using the Compass-Cloud app.

Old Town San Diego

Currency

The U.S. Dollar is the accepted currency with credit and debit cards welcome almost everywhere. Changing foreign currency can be a challenge with facilities available mostly at the airport.

The Del Coronado Hotel

Attractions

As already mentioned, San Diego has a lot to offer. There is a good hop-on hop-off bus that travels all around the city and out to Coronado. Coronado sits right in the middle of the harbor and often is referred to as an island but actually is attached at the southern end to the mainland. It is also home to a Naval Air Station, a Naval Amphibious Base and is home to the Navy SEALS. If you want to rub shoulders with a SEAL stop in at Mc P’s Pub, a local hangout founded by an ex-SEAL more than a few years ago. It’s not far from the “The Del” (Del Coronado Hotel) a famous hotel on Coronado beach.

The San Diego waterfront
The USS Midway Museum

If you are catching a cruise from San Diego we recommend allowing a couple of days to this beautiful city. Balboa Park is worth a whole day itself and try and fit in a trip to Old Town. For good food try the Little Italy neighborhood or head down to the waterfront for seafood.

 

 

Around The World in 130 Seconds

Let’s Call This a Short Story

Recently flipping through photographs and trying to put together a slide show I realized that what I was doing would take several hours just to see. While the photographs are good, who in their right mind wants to sit through hours of viewing slides? Welcome back to the sixties and speed seeing…

Take a peek at our world…

I lost count at 75 countries, hundreds of cities and places but I also decided our trips aren’t over yet. Plans for the next year include India, Sri Lanka(?), Israel, Malta, Paris, Dubai, Singapore…