Learn to be a Good Guest

There're many ways to be a good guest. After all, by definition, you are somebody's guest when visiting another city, village, or country. These include:

1. Be generally interested in your host, his culture and his country.
   
   
2. Listen to their stories.
   
   
3. Absorb their history.
   
   
4. Laugh at their jokes.
   
   
5. The simple act of being attentive makes you a sought-after guest worldwide.
   
   

   

6. Another trick is to learn the few phrases in their language.
   
   Find out about their specific dialect or their style of talking. This gets you noticed, big time!
   
   Americans call this learning to talk "Southern" in the South parts of the United States.

   Y'all come back here, ya hear?
   

7. Another essential skill for being a good guest is not to overstay your welcome. In other words you need to know when to leave.

   Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
      - Benjamin Franklin

   

8. Return the favor; invite your host to visit you back in your own country. Believe me; you will impress your family and friends if you introduce them to your visitor from Brazil that you met in China. I did.
   
   
9. Tell stories about yourself, about where you come from or what you do. After all they are as interested in you as you are in them.
   
   
10. Entertain your host like the old minstrels did in the Middle Ages.
    
    
11. If you play guitar, play. If you fix computers, fix them for your hosts. I've done it all around the world. I can get very popular in that way...

You get the idea.

Return the favor and be a good host. Invite your foreign friends in to visit you in your home.

To learn more, try travel friendship sites that offer travel around the world and stay almost exclusively with the locals. I belong to Friendship Force - A Good Guest becomes a friend forever.

You'll never regret it.

Here is a quick list of Travel Secrets I found out about on my trips. I hope it helps you in your search for better travel:

Go to the Page on My Way to Travel

Slowing Down

Nervous about travel?

Travel is Scary

Learn to Like Yourself as You Are

Time Slows Down when Traveling

Retirement Plans

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid

Being Stupid

The Power of the Open Question

Ask the Unbusy Police Officer

Ask the Locals - They know

Listening - An Important Skill in Travel

Contrast the Old and the New

Some Unusual Travel Insights

Be a Good Guest

Take a Walk - Relax - Enjoy Good Travel

Get Lost on a Bus - I Dare You

Change Course - Follow Someone Else's Idea of a Good Trip

Good Exercise is a Travel Bonus

Friendship

Interacting with Children in a Foreign Land

Treatment of Americans Abroad

Terrorism

After All - It's Your Vacation