Randy's Travel Tips: Daily Life on the Road, p. 3

Mail

When you travel for any length of time, mail is your lifeline to the Real World. You don't have to be homesick to treasure every letter and postcard you receive on the Road. In a world where you are always a stranger, just receiving mail reaffirms your identity. This will be driven home to you when, after a month or two in the hinterlands, you arrive at your next mail stop to find nothing waiting for you at all. Your friends at home, many of whom are not used to communicating by post, cannot appreciate how important their letters are to you. If you want to receive mail, you must send mail. You should have plenty of time to cultivate the art of correspondence, so write early and often; let your friends know your schedule, and don't give up on them after a few empty mail stops. Don't let it absorb your travel life, but keeping up a regular correspondence with numerous friends around the world can be a serious and rewarding task.

As you make more friends on your travels, you will have more people to write to -- travelers who will appreciate the details of your experiences, and the importance of getting mail to you on the Road. If you are a bad correspondent, you will lose the opportunity to keep up with interesting people from all over the world. As valuable as letters are to you, the post cards and letters you send from your exotic travels will be almost as important to your friends and family at home. Whatever efforts you make to become a good correspondent will be richly rewarded with continued friendships and more mail at your next stop. Don't neglect to send those "eat your heart out" post cards from tropical paradises, either.

I recommend selecting a few major mail stops and sending out schedules to your friends. As your schedule changes along the way, update your friends with xerox copies of your new timetables. If you can arrange to have your mail forwarded from one stop to the next, you can assure them that their mail will eventually reach you, even when they procrastinate too long. You will inevitably miss some of the mail that people do send, for one reason or another, so keep trying. For the people you regularly correspond with, number your letters and have them do the same, so you will know when you miss something. I mark "x"'s in my address book for every letter sent, and "o"'s for each one received. Specifically let them know when you have or have not received a letter, and mention the last letter you sent, in case it got lost.

Always send your letters by airmail. Keep a small supply of airmail paper and envelopes for your letter writing chores. Airmail paper is much lighter to mail and to carry. The typical weight for minimal airmail postage is only 10 to 12 grams (.35 to .44 oz). Weigh your first letters so you know just how much an envelope and two or three sheets weigh. If it the postage is insufficient, it could easily go sea mail! In some countries you can buy aerograms, but in many you cannot. The best advantage of aerograms is that the 'stamp' is printed on, so you don't have to worry about someone stealing the stamps. Sometimes they sell aerograms with no stamp, and you must still buy stamps separately; I usually don't bother in this case.

You may have to search in cities to find airmail paper and envelopes, but they are usually available. They are often cheaper, and the envelopes lighter than at home. Quite often the glue on envelopes, and on the stamps you buy, is worthless. Give the glue a chance to dry to make sure it is really sticking! If not, almost every post office has a very grotty pot of glue that you should use to make sure they stay stuck. You may need a shower afterwards, though.

Ball pens (biros) are better than felt-tip pens, especially for addressing envelopes, because the ink won't run as easily when it gets wet. Don't put anything hard (like a coin or key) into an envelope. Every postal worker in the world knows how to flip the envelope and send solid objects zipping out against the wall. If you must, tape it against a thick piece of card stock; even then, it may arouse enough curiosity to get the whole letter pinched.

Always mail your letters at a real post office. Post boxes are often unheard of, or just abandoned artifacts of good intentions. A good alternative may be a post box in a high class tourist hotel, but I don't count on it. In many countries, local employees will steal the stamps off of your 'expensive' airmail letters and toss the letter in the waste bin! Once the stamps have been canceled (with the postal stamp), they are no longer resellable, so it is a good policy to see your stamps canceled in front of you. In some countries this is imperative, especially with packages. Don't take "later" for an answer. You may have to go to a different window to get them canceled. In Rawalpindi, it is customary for foreigners to walk back behind the counters and hand their letters to the 'stamper'. In Peru, and a few other countries where it is definitely recommended, there are separate lines to have your letters 'franked' ("franqueo"), by an imprinting machine, instead of using postage stamps. There are no pretty souvenirs, but the mail does get through.

This section is about writing and sending letters. For specific information on sending and receiving packages, see my travel tips section on Bureaucracy and Formalities, under "Post Office".

Picking Up Mail

No matter how much trouble you have to go to, receiving mail is one of the most rewarding jobs you have to do. After months without mail, you can be deluged with daily news from all over the world. It's great!

The two best places to receive mail are at an American Express office or care of Poste Restante ("general delivery" in English) at the central post office. In large cities, you must first determine which post office or Amex office is the one with the mail. In a few places I have been able to call friendly American Express offices to ask if they have any mail for me, but this is not generally an option. You must go stand in line and show your passport, or (at American Express) your Amex card or travelers checks. The lines tend to be longer at the post office. In Mexico, poste restante is called "Lista de Correos" and the "lista" (list) is usually posted daily in the post office where you can see it without queuing up. Whether or not you can recognize their interpretation of your name is another matter.

The classic problem is being able to find mail that is actually there waiting for you. Have your name written out clearly on a small piece of paper, with the last name underlined. Your mail can often be filed under the wrong name, usually your first name, but sometimes under "Mr." or your middle name. Your friends should place only two words at the top -- your first name and your last name. They should underline the last name and make the first letter of the last name as bold as possible. Some people say to put the last name first, but even I find that confusing.

In Latin America, people have three names, first, last, and mother's maiden name. Mail is filed under the second (last) name, so if someone puts in your middle name, or "Miss", your last name will be third, and may be ignored. To make things completely absurd, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the post office has two sets of files, one for males and the other for female names; God only knows where yours will wind up! In a few smaller places, they just hand you a stack of letters and let you choose for yourself. Poste Restante in Kathmandu is a real zoo, with dozens of travelers crowding around a huge table full of filing drawers and rummaging through thousands of letters; it's a good place to meet people.

At the American Express agent in Aqaba, Jordan, I said I wanted to check my mail. The man went away and came back saying, "Sorry, no mail." "But," I said, "I haven't told you my name yet!" "No mail for anybody!" he said. Later, at the office in Amman, I saw several letters that were addressed to Aqaba, but none of mine, at least four of which never made it anywhere.

If you bypass a mail drop altogether, your only hope is to write a postcard to the post office or Amex office, asking them to forward it. I have seen cards like this filed in the mail drawer under "R", for Restante, so don't hold out too much hope, but it's worth a try. For American Express, it would be best to go to the local office and try to talk them into sending your forwarding notice on to the office you will be missing.

One of the reasons I use American Express is that they are usually (but not always) quite efficient about forwarding mail. Usually, (but not always), you have to pay $3 for this service. I feel it is worthwhile to know that my mail will eventually catch up with me. Post offices will sometimes forward mail as well, but I just don't have as much faith in them. The Amex offices in Jordan have not yet heard about the existence of mail forwarding services, but that is the only exception I have encountered. You only need to own a couple of American Express travelers checks to qualify to use their mail service.

Post offices and American Express will "normally" hold your mail for thirty days, and then return it to the sender. This is a minimum, since it requires someone to regularly sort through the mail by arrival date. In many places this happens at least twice a year, if possible. If you will be late for a mail drop, you can send a post card asking them to hold your mail until you arrive. Don't expect this to work too often at post offices, especially where no one speaks English; it may work at American Express. You can also have the sender write "hold for arrival", or "hold until June 30", which could have some effect. I have had mail returned to me from abroad after a year, and people have received mail that was sent to them a year before, on a previous trip!

Personal Journalism

Most travelers jot down some record of their travels. For some people it is the daily duty, often skipped, of recording everything that happened to them. Others eschew such discipline, and just write down whatever comes to mind when they are in the mood.

Dairy-- You could try to maintain a daily record of everything that happened to you. If you can actually keep it up, this will become a great resource for recalling, years later, what your day-to-day travel life was like, and how you felt about it. If you find yourself getting two or three weeks behind on your diary, maybe you should give it up, and just write when you feel like it.

Journal -- A journal can just be a diary without the daily responsibility (although "journal" literally means "diurnal", daily). It also implies recording deeper, or perhaps longer thoughts. Pour out your frustrations, your fantasies, and your wonder into a journal, whenever the mood strikes you.

Travel Notes -- I like to pretend that I'm a travel writer and make notes of all the hotel, bus, and other local travel information I learn. It can be quite useful for other travelers, or for myself when returning to the same country.

Lists of People -- Among the lists you can make, I keep a list of the people I meet. I find that a name and a brief description helps me to recall personalities that would otherwise quickly fade in my memory. In fact, the same applies to the towns and hotels I've stayed in.

Other notes -- Among the various things that you can or should keep track of in your notebooks are your travelers check purchases and expenditures, budget information, purchases, medicines, and local vocabulary.

Learn Some Language

As long as you have some spare time for reading and writing, why not put in a few hours trying to learn a few phrases in the local language? I guarantee that the more you learn, the more interesting contacts you will have with the local people, even if you don't understand most of what they say! Just knowing the proper greetings and how to ask for the simple things you need every day, makes you a functioning part of the society instead of some alien curiosity. Think about it.

In Nairobi, I used to go around to a local bar and bring back a couple of beers. I know the guy spoke English, but he let me struggle through my Swahili until I got it right; eventually he wouldn't serve me until I got the grammar correct! Shopping in the local marketplace will soon teach you the numbers and the basic phrases of buying and selling. You will be surprised at the friendly reactions you get when you try. Don't be afraid of making a fool of yourself; of course people will laugh at your mistakes, but it is friendly laughter, not the contemptuous kind. It is less humiliating to make grammar mistakes than to be treated like a vegetable who cannot even communicate.

Your first language source will be your (or someone else's) guidebook, which usually contains some basic phrases. You probably won't find traveler's phrasebooks for sale in many countries, so plan ahead if you want to take some from home. Even a guidebook or phrasebook will have a fairly limited vocabulary, and if you really get serious you will want to look in a city bookshop for a bi-lingual dictionary.

Then just listen to the local people. How do they greet each other in various situations? Look it up in the guidebook and mimic their pronunciation and usage. Be aware that there are often different greetings depending on the gender, age, and number of the people involved. A living dictionary is your best way to learn some of the local language. If you form a good friendship with a local person, you can spend hours together learning some language while you go about your chores or sightseeing.

The longer you spend in one country, the more your language studies will benefit you. Spanish is the common language of all Central and South American countries except Belize (English) and Brazil (Portuguese), where Spanish is still understood. French is understood in most of West Africa, Indochina, and several Pacific islands, and Swahili in much of East Africa. You may not be aware of it, but Arabic (while much more difficult to learn) is the major language of many countries, and is understood a bit in all Islamic areas. While the dialects vary considerably, you can be understood speaking simple Arabic in the following countries where it is the national language: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Dubai, Djibouti, Mauritania, and Comoros. There is also an Arabic influence to the languages of other countries with strong Islamic backgrounds such as Turkish, Malay-Indonesian, Swahili, several "turkmeni" languages in western China and Islamic former-Soviet republics, and southern Philippine dialects -- not to mention Spanish!

[Continued on next page...]

Randy's Travel Page ..... Daily Life Table of Contents ........... Next Page