In foreign countries, you’ll learn so much more by connecting with those who live and work there. Who knows, you may make new friends.
Do you know where to find a three-eyed lizard? Or what the “tubmen” were responsible for in a whisky smuggling operation? Or how the Taiwanese chefs who prepare xiao long bao manage to put their delicious soup inside the dumplings? I learnt all these things by doing something my mother warned me against: talking to strangers.
A young tourist takes the time to hug an elderly worker in the fishing village of Bai Xep in Vietnam.As a former director of marketing for an educational travel company, I have read lots of “trip reports”– the post-trip evaluation forms that travellers fill out telling the operator what worked and what needed improvement, which experiences they enjoyed most and which ones they’d be just as happy to have skipped.
A Parisian gave me a tip that led to an unforgettable massage in a hammam; we’re still pals. A nun in County Cork, Ireland, explained the history of the ancient pagan fertility goddess Sheela na gig, and I wrote a story about her. In southern Italy, I struck up a conversation with a boy who later invited my travel companion and me to his mother’s house for an expansive lunch; by the end of the afternoon, we felt like part of the family.
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