Practical travel advice, packing tips, dress codes, and etiquette guides for destinations around the world.
The dress code for a California temple tour depends entirely on one thing: whether you’re attending a public open house or just visiting the grounds. Short answer — if you’re going inside, think modest business-casual church attire. If you’re visiting the grounds or visitor center outside of an open house window, there’s no dress code … Read more
I stood outside Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on a drizzly London afternoon, watching a stream of theater-goers arrive for an evening performance. Some wore blazers and dress trousers. Others showed up in jeans and sneakers. One woman was dressed like she was heading to a black-tie gala. A couple of tourists in the groundling queue looked … Read more
I’ll never forget the moment a security guard politely turned away my friend Marcus at Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai because his cargo shorts came two inches above the knee. He’d researched “temple dress codes in Thailand” but somehow missed that the Chiang Mai temple dress code for men and women is actually stricter than … Read more
I’ll never forget the moment my flight touched down in Bangkok for the first time. I was 26, had only traveled within Europe and North America, and I was absolutely terrified. My mom had sent me a list of diseases I might catch. My friends had warned me about elaborate scams. I’d read forum posts … Read more
The razor blade was so sharp and the metro so crowded that I didn’t feel it happen. What I pack: The back pocket that kept my passport safe through 74 countries — Travelon Anti-Theft The Voyages Compact Sling on Amazon → It was 6:47 p.m. on Line B toward Termini, Rome. The kind of packed-in-like-sardines … Read more
I landed in Bangkok for the first time in 2009 with a 35-liter backpack, a Lonely Planet that was two editions out of date, and the absolute certainty that I had prepared enough. Within 48 hours I had been tuk-tuk…
I used to be a chronic overpacker. Not mildly — embarrassingly so. I once checked a 32-kilogram bag for a 10-day trip to Southeast Asia and spent three days of that trip doing laundry anyway because I had packed the…
The first time I got truly scared traveling alone, I was 24 years old on a night train from Budapest to Bucharest. A man had been watching me for two hours. I had no alarm, no plan, and no idea…
It was 2013, and I was standing at a gate in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport watching my flight to Tbilisi push back from the jetway. My bag was on that plane. I was not. I had made it through security, found…
I was sitting in a hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at 2 a.m., watching a nurse attach an IV drip to my arm, when I realized I had absolutely no idea what my travel insurance actually covered. I had bought…
