Jim’s Travel Tips

I regularly traveled to São Paulo, Brazil. I liked to stay at the airport Marriott, very friendly staff and very accommodating to your schedule, but that’s another story. I arrived at the airport late one night from an interior Brazilian city and needed to catch the Marriott shuttle bus. I had done this previously, mind you (in the day light). I walked up to the curb area where I thought the bus left last time. A van was there and a driver standing outside of it. I approached him and said MARRIOTT? He replied back in his Portuguese accent MARYART – I again said MARRIOTT and he shook his head yes. I boarded the van. The van quickly filled up over the next 15 or so minutes and off we went. As we sailed by the Marriott going about 100 kilometers/ hour I realized that I was on the wrong van. I was in the back of the van and no English speaking people around me, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. About 10 kilometers later we pulled into a small hotel and everyone got off the van but me. I went to the front of the van with a copy of my MARRIOTT reservation in hand. The driver had quite a heated discussion in Portuguese with the bellman at the hotel, and off we went back to the airport at 120 kilometers/hour. When we arrived back at the original starting point the driver walked me up the walk about 50 feet and pointed to the word MARRIOTT on the van waiting there. I thanked and tipped him for his trouble. One of my travel tips is be sure to show the written copy when asking for directions or in this case, shuttle vans. (See that post here: Foreign Travel Tip)

On a recent trip to the Phoenix, Arizona area my wife and I took a Segway “tour” in the desert around our resort. In a word – fantastic! The learn curve to maneuver these devices is extremely easy. We thoroughly enjoyed every second of our 90 minute experience on these 2-wheeled “personal transporters”. TIP: Try it if you have the opportunity. It’s a blast!

The link to Segway Tours : http://www.segway.com/includes/guided-tours.htm

The link to city Segway tours is: http://www.citysegwaytours.com

I was traveling in mainland China, in the city of Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula. I was at the steps of the hotel making arrangements to meet a colleague the next day. I said to him “Let’s meet tomorrow morning at the Starbucks across the street.” He knew what I was referring to and started laughing. Look again at the sign:

A colleague and I were traveling to Taipei for the first time and had arranged a hotel car to take us from the airport to the hotel. As we traveled through the darkness the driver turned off the highway squeezing through two cement barriers and on to some not so great streets. We thought we had been had and would end up being a story in the paper. We did arrive at our hotel safely and we quickly gave the driver some US money. We were relieved to be checking into the hotel. During the check in process my colleague noticed a man smiling at us with a camera around his neck. My friend said “That looks just like my camera” – it was. It was our car driver with my friend’s expensive camera which was left on the back seat of the car in our haste to get out. We learned that tips can pay unknown dividends! As my post on tipping in foreign countries says – when it doubt - tip!