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Travel tips are the first thing I consider when I plan to go somewhere new. I have traveled extensively, mostly within the continental United States and the majority was with my job. In my international travel I have found travel tips, in whatever form, to be very valuable and in most cases a requirement. There is little worse than planning travel and getting delayed, lost or even ripped off and then realizing you can only blame yourself. Even though nothing can guarantee a 100% bug-free trip, there are tips that will help you plan a successful one. There are dozens and dozens of travel tips that could be used to fill a book, but there are some basics that will help you avert the most frustrating disasters in your travels.

First and foremost in my experience is research of your destination. This is a no-brainer of course, but it is the degree to which to take this research that is the key. There are the obvious things that come to mind first, like you should know that you don't spit in public while in Singapore or curse in Riyadh or generally speak with any hint of a bad attitude, but let's look into more detail on a more typical vacation. If you are an New Yorker bent on making it to an island in the South Pacific to soak up the January sun, you would be wise to know that a place like American Samoa has some very nice beaches with dramatic scenery as the plush forests rises steeply from the shore, but you can't just walk onto any beach on the islands, no matter how seemingly public. The beaches are part of family land, just as much as is their back yard or the hillside behind the Guest Fala. A public beach there is hard to find and might be located way too close to the sea port, tuna cannery or a raw sewage conduit draining just dozens of feet from the edge of the beach. Not to mention getting there can take forever since the only decent hotel on the island might be 8 miles away from the beach, which may take you 40 minutes with no traffic on the one ultra windy main road with a speed limit of 25 to 30 mph. And then, en route you may feel as if you're risking your life at each bend as a old Mazda B2000 compact truck-turned-public-transport- shuttle with a makeshift passenger compartment made of plywood and benches carrying 20 passengers comes around the hairpin bend opposite you at 40 mph. After talking to someone locally, or asking a traveler who has experienced the island nation you would find that it isn't a place big on tourism but that it is a scenic island

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