personal travel tips

1. The most valuable tools for travelling are: a flashlight, a Swiss Army knife, stickers for little kids, and a small bag of dried apricots.
2. When renewing a passport, the US Govt. website says you will have your new document within 6 weeks. This is a lie: it's more like 8+ weeks. You will have to call and upgrade to an expedited passport which costs about another $50. On the average, you will spend 45 minutes on hold anytime you want to speak to a human. For "hold" music you will be forced to listen to interminable loops of Vivaldi's The Seasons, it never varies. (If the money was going to help fund something like malaria eradication I wouldn't resent it quite so much, but we all know where the money is really going.)
3. Trying to use Umberto Eco as vacation reading will make you want never to read fiction again. Agatha Christie wrote the same novel 100 times.
4. Unless you were raised with it, you will not like durian. Try it.