The 10 Golden Rules Of Travel
THE SUNDAY AGE
Saturday July 9, 1994
So you were thinking of taking a holiday? Stop. Before you go any further, read on. Janne Apelgren has some timely advice on avoiding the pitfalls of travelling.
1. Never judge a hotel by its lobby. If the picture in the brochure shows velvet armchairs and a marble reception desk, you can bet the rooms have nylon bedspreads, one vinyl chair and one of those impossible-to-program clock radio alarms that go off in the middle of the night.
Hotels in San Francisco and London seem to be the most expert at creating lobbies with delusions of grandeur when the rooms above leave a lot to be desired. If the lobby's great, and so are the prices, be suspicious. If the brochure shows only the lobby, be doubly suspicious. Which leads us to rule 2.
2. Always ask to see your room before you pay money, check in and rip the sanitising strip off the toilet seat. Even if you've paid in advance for your hotel room, it doesn't hurt to ask to see it before you make the trek up, tip the porter and are left standing with your key to a room that (a) was clearly occupied by a large family of chain smokers; (b) has a view of a brick wall when your agent promised at least a ``garden view", or (c) has twin beds when you're on your honeymoon. You may not have much bargaining power when you've paid a travel agent in advance for your room, but you've got a lot more when you're jamming up the queue for check-in by refusing to move from the lobby with your bags than you have when phoning down from your room.
3. Whatever money you travel with will be the wrong sort, so take everything. If you've got traveller's cheques, they'll want cash. If you've got cash, it'll get stolen. If you've got a credit card, the price will be higher than for cash or traveller's cheques. When you want to cash your traveller's cheques, the banks will be closed or will charge a fortune for it. When you get cash, you'll discover the notes your bank at home charged a fortune to get are (a) worth nothing and spent in half an hour; (b) in denominations so high your taxi driver spits and curses, then runs into a shop for half an hour to get change, with the meter left running. The moral of the story is: take traveller's cheques (if you're travelling as a couple, American Express now has cheques that can be signed by either of two signatories, meaning you don't both have to shop together all the time), cash and credit cards. If you're really going off the beaten track, take cigarettes, chewing gum and Levi's 501s. If you've got some of those funny little beads left over from your last visit to Club Med, take those too.
4. First-class is not worth the money (unless someone else is paying for it). This one's for those of us who've sat down the back of the plane, watched the flight attendants draw the curtains between us and the moneyed classes, and sworn, ``When I get rich, I'll travel first- class". They're protecting a secret world. The secret is: rich people don't travel first class, people who work for rich organisations do. Sit up the front of a plane and you'll pretty soon discover that very few of your fellow passengers are paying for the privilege from their own pockets. They may be senior public servants, company executives on business, pilots' spouses. We'll not pretend first-class isn't wonderful; it is. We've eaten the hors d'oeuvres, drunk the French champagne, watched the movies on our own little screens and slept in seats as comfy as our own bed at home. But, when it comes to the crunch, if you fly first-class to London, it'll cost you close to $7000. That's about $300 an hour. When it comes off the cost of your holiday, it seems a lot to pay for a day's comfort, and the ``free" French champagne doesn't seem so free after all. So, the next time you turn right instead of left inside the door of a plane on that trip to Europe, remember you've saved yourself a third of the price of a new car, 10 nights for the family at the Sheraton Mirage in Port Douglas, 20 lunches at Roger Verge's restaurant above the Riviera, or another trip to Europe.
5. You'll always come home with more than you took. Never congratulate yourself on the fact that you crammed everything you needed for a trip into your smallest suitcase. It's one of the great rules of travel that you take what you need, and return home with more than you need.
Always leave room in your suitcase for acquisitions en route, or you'll end up travelling home with expensive, unattractive or inconvenient little bags stuffed with things you had to have but couldn't fit in.
6. You'll never need travel insurance (until the time you don't bother to have it). The second rule of travel insurance is that, when you have it, it won't cover you for the problem you have. The moral of the story is, it can be pretty cheap when it pays to bail you out of an emergency, but make sure you - or a travel agent you trust - has read the fine print of your policy.
7. No mini-bar item will cost less than twice the price it would at a grocery store. Mini-bars are provided for the convenience of the hotel guest. Yeah, of course they are. They're also designed to catch us at our weakest, such as when we've checked in after a 10-hour flight, the heat's tropical and we're starting a four-week holiday. Heck, half a day's wages for a thimbleful of champagne seems quite fair. Or in the middle of the night, when the curry or the local vino has come back to haunt you, and the only thing that'll make you feel better is the Swedish mineral water that was obviously flown in first-class, judging by the price. Avoid mini-bars (and, for that matter, hotel switchboards, which also load the price of calls that might otherwise be quite reasonable). If you want a drink on the balcony of your room as the sun sets, take it with you (duty-free, if you're especially cheap). If you're going to be making plenty of phone calls, investigate phone cards or other alternatives that will allow you to bypass hotel operators. This can be as simple as getting a phone company operator to make your call instead.
8. Remember, in travel, as in real estate, it's position, position, position. Garden-view rooms are cheaper than sea-view, and car-park view is cheapest of all. Sitting on the Via Veneto or the Champs- Elysees will make your coffee much more expensive than it would be if you drank it down the back of the same cafe. And even sitting may cost you more. Eating and drinking in European cafes often costs more if you take a seat at the table rather than standing or sitting at the bar.
9. There's nothing that makes your fillings fall out as fast as exotic food in faraway places. If you've seen the street dentists at work in Hong Kong's Temple Street night markets, you'll know it's wise to have suspect choppers checked out before you go away. Other health cautions: Consider what'll happen if you lose your glasses when your handbag is stolen ... Is it worth taking a spare pair? Will impossible-to-replace medication go missing with a stolen suitcase? Will it be easier to get some pills, just in case, than it would be to see a doctor if you did get sick where you're going? And, if you do get sick, will you be able to afford an emergency flight home or a hospital stay? 10. Postcards will almost always arrive after you do. This is especially true of postage from countries where it's impossible to buy stamps, find out what the postage should be, or get served in a post office without a 45-minute queue. The moral is: send 'em if it's easy, don't worry too much about what they say, but remember, if you have to resort to ``having a great time, wish you were here", you're better off spending the money on that miniature carton of orange cordial in the mini-bar.
© 1994 THE SUNDAY AGE
