Best travel advice ever

Read through these, learn what you can then forget it all…

Okay, maybe this isn’t the BEST travel advice I ever received, but it ranks up there with don’t drink the water, pack light and never accept marriage proposals from strange men in Nigeria.

I could throw in, “Don’t dine near cats in Greece” but only my friend Ed would fully appreciate the value of that insight.

The so-called “best” advice came to me from another friend, Ty, when I was in grad school preparing for my first trip to Asia. He had spent some time in Hong Kong and similar places, so in my eyes, that made him an expert on the region. But his advice applies no matter where you go. And that advice is this:

When you’re planning a trip, talk to as many people as you can who have been to that place, read as much as you can, learn as much as you can.

And then forget everything.

What makes this the best travel advice?

His point was that it is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of information you can take in before a trip, especially today when just about every place you will visit has been documented by travel advice Web sites and bloggers. So visit these Web sites, read the books, look at the photos, watch the videos and talk to everyone you know who has been there.

When you do, you’ll start to discern patterns and uncover topics and places of interest to you. But before you reach that point of over-saturation, stop. Just stop. Put the whole trip, as much as is possible, out of your mind. And then you’ll discover an interesting aspect about our brains.

Your subconscious brain processes far more than you realize. So when I say, “Forget everything,” in reality, you can’t. The important points will stick and when it comes time for your trip, the things that stood out as you were absorbing all the advice earlier will come back to you.

Don’t throw out the guidebooks just yet

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer, where appropriate, in taking guidebooks, printouts/notes or downloads with you on your trip. You’ll want to refer to those for the details once you’re onsite. But for now, read, learn and absorb and then as they say – at least in the movies about New York gangsters – “fuggedaboudit.”

I followed this advice a while back for a trip to Peru. I went to the library, got all the books I could, skimmed through them to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and then put them aside. I did review them again shortly before the trip and took some of the best ones with us, mostly on my Kindle. Just knowing they were there was enough to let me not obsess about having to remember it all. It made for a far more enjoyable experience.

Try it. It may not be the best travel advice ever, but you’ll find it not only helps you in the anticipation phase, but also adds value on the trip when the sights trigger nuggets of insight you read or heard about earlier.

And it sure beats the heck out of dining with cats in Greece…