Four Top Travel Tips For The First Time Traveller

If you have never left home for any length, or extended periods, then visiting another country with a family member or friend can be very daunting. Especially if it's a personal vacation that involves travelling alone.

When growing up, parents take on all of the responsibility and make travelling through borders, and flying internationally, seem like such a simple task. But now its your turn to understand the responsibilities of booking flights. Choosing a hotel and then putting it all together. Understanding the time to check-in and get to the hotel via public transport is all vital to ensuring the trip goes smoothly without any hiccups.

Combine this with gauging the correct amount of currency to travel with and how comfortable you are with the local language is another aspect that can often be overlooked.

Here are four top tips that will help not only improve your travels, but also help give you a head start to setting your expectations and enabling you make the most out of the visit:

Tip One: Breaking The Language Barrier

When visiting another country, it is very likely that their mother tongue will be different to yours. Fortunately for everyone who's first language is English, the majority of European countries have a high percentage of fluent English speakers. But when travelling to Asia and Africa for example, there may be a larger language barrier.

One of the best ways to counter-act this and to ultimately improve your options is to cover as many basics as possible. Pick up a phrasebook and learn common questions and phrases that will help you source local transport, find toilets etc...

Many locals will most likely be more inclined to help, when they know that you are trying to accommodate their culture and language.

Tip Two: Bring Appropriate Clothing

Double and triple check the weather that is common during the months you will be visiting. Other countries will have different rain fall levels and the humidity can make it uncomfortable if you have not packed the correct clothing. If the weather conditions are very different than those you experience back home consider purchasing the appropriate footwear, hats etc...

Tip Three: Getting To Know The Destination and Activities

Depending on the length of your stay, it is highly recommended to research all of the local activities and tourist locations. Planning each day can help ensure everything can be viewed in a timely fashion. But, remember to keep an empty slot in the diary each day to allow yourself to wander and allow unrestricted time to experience anything that catches your attention, that was not planned.

It is worthwhile looking into the local tourist board, many popular tourist attractions provide discount cards that provide access to many attractions for a discounted rate and often can be bought in advance.

Tip Four: Communication

Being able to communicate with your loved ones back home is important to not only curb any homesickness that is felt, but also keep everyone back home up-to-date with your travels.

It's worth noting that international roaming can be very expensive therefore it's worth taking preliminary precautions. Which involves agreeing to specific ways of calling and messaging. Thus, taking advantage of any nearby Wi-Fi can help benefit from the large availability of apps. Such as Viber and Skype. This will allow a consistent form of communication whilst, not costing a penny.

Another way to keep in touch is to agree on a specific time each day and have anyone back home call you, using online access number or international calling cards. This can save anyone who wishes to call you a lot of money.

And providing cheap calls to Australia, France, Africa and anywhere else, no matter how far around the world you plan on travelling.

Harvey McEwan provides information and advice on a variety of areas that help travellers. Especially helping families and friends keep in touch with cheap calls to Australia, France, Germany and hundreds of other countries. View Harvey's other articles to find out more.