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:
- Be generally interested in your host, his culture and his country.
- Listen to their stories.
- Absorb their history.
- Laugh at their jokes.
- The simple act of being attentive makes you a sought-after guest worldwide.
- 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?
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- Entertain your host like the old minstrels did in the Middle Ages.
- 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