1) Don’t bring any toiletries or personal artifacts with you. Soap, shampoo, shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, etc… nothing! Purchase all these goods once you arrive to your destination. It really enriches the cultural experience, you can discover some wonderful products that are much better than the ones you currently use, and you can bring it all back home with you. Plus it makes your friends jealous when they use your bathroom and see you are using some kind of exotic toothpaste with a label written in a foreign language.
 
 
2.) Similar to idea number one, under-pack the amount of clothes you bring with the notion of purchasing some new clothing items while overseas.
 

3.) Mobile phones are key, you need a mobile. Plan ahead to rent one or borrow from a friend or have your sim card replaced with pre-paid calling time. There’s no better way to integrate with the locals than to have a mobile phone where you can call them and invite them out to dinner, or vice versa.
 

4.) Of course, Vacation Rentals like the ones being offered on Free-Rentals.com are more personalized and help enrich the experience of travel more than hotels, but if you do stay at a hotel, here is something worthwhile to do. Obtain the hotel business card with it’s address, and usually a map printed on the back, directions for taxi’s on how to get there. If the card doesn’t have such a map, have the concierge draw one up for you. Then, go down to the corner liquor store and get a bottle of obnoxiously cheap and potent local whiskey in a brown paper bag and then spend the next few hours walking around the city getting lost and accosting the locals with your drunken babble. At the conclusion of your bend, just hop in a cab and give him the card with instructions on how to take you back to the hotel. This really shows you keen insights concerning the cultural climate. (Bonus points if you wake up on a park bench with pigeons and a black eye).
 
 
5.) Knowing just a handful of key phrases will get you remarkably far and greatly add to the quality of your experience. I’ve found personally one of the key phrases to use anywhere at anytime is …. “no problem”. or the equivalent in the local language. It can mean ”thank you”, ”pardon me”, “excuse me”, “you are welcome”, ”don’t worry about it”, “never mind”, “it’s my pleasure”, “let me take care of it”, ”I’m having a good time”, etc… You’d be surprised just how flexible this phrase is. The locals may think you are stoned, but at least you’ll be communicating. Here is a good respource for learning foreign language phrases.
 
 
6.) Rent a Bicycle. There’s no better way to get to know a city than spending the day on a bicycle riding around. You’ll cover 10 times the amount of area as walking, and have more time for hanging out at coffee shops and cafes. Motorbikes and mopeds work also but then you have to be really careful about accidents, because it’ll mostly be your fault. But if you are on a bike and get mowed down by a car, hey… it’s not your fault!
 
 
7.) Go see a Hollywood blockbuster movie. This may sound counter intuitive, but it’s actually really effective. Getting lost in a good Hollywood motion picture (a contradiction in terms I know) and then walking outside back into the foreign streets is a great rush. Much better than the rush of getting of the plane and going through customs and then cabbing it to the hotel… that process is so routine you don’t really know you are in a foreign city until your first time out of the hotel. But now, go see a movie, and if it’s a good one and you get captivated by it, then when you step out of the theatre, you’ll really be reminded that you are in a foreign country. Better yet, see a movie native to the country, India and China are great places for local movies.
 
 
8.) Wait until you reach your destination before getting that next haircut. Hanging out at the barbershop, meeting the locals and not being able to describe how YOU want your hair done is awesome… You just say.. Hey, cut it however you want. (and they won’t even understand that), but you’ll get a true native style haircut, maybe a neck and shoulder massage depending on the country. Everything from how they wash your hair, the number of times they wash it, what extra stuff they do, like brining you tea and coffee etc.. All these basics you take for granted in your home country become highlighted. Plus for months after your holiday you can get small reminders of it each time you look in the mirror.
 
 
9.) Have at least one purpose other than sightseeing in mind. Look up groups, organizations, people etc.. who share your interest, hobbies or work. Contact these people online before you go, exchange emails etc.. have at least one day or evening planned to meet up with this group or person to discuss your mutual interest. Maybe there’s something you want to purchase or sell, maybe something you want to learn or teach, if you are a math teacher for example, arrange in advance by contacting your counterpart math teacher in the visiting country to spend an hour or so taking over his job and teaching his students. It’s tremendously rewarding to experience the feeling of doing your normal job or hobby overseas.
 
 
10.) Don’t destroy your holiday. If you have paper airline tickets, don’t lose them. Don’t lose your passport, keep these essentials in a safe place at all times in your hotel, don’t carry it around with you everywhere you go like some travel books suggest you should. Don’t waste your time with travelers checks, this isn’t the 1950’s anymore, just use an ATM machine which gives you the intra-bank transfer rates, the best currency conversion rates possible. Have multiple ATM cards, Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards in case one brand isn’t accepted. Be aware that when you use a credit card to purchase something, the credit card provider often thinks the card was stolen and is being used fraudulently overseas, so they might put a hold on your account until you call in to verify it was in fact you that made the purchase. So have their numbers handy so if your card starts getting rejected, you can clear up the matter quickly and easily. Don’t bring expensive jewelry that can only serve to get lost or stolen, if you really need to impress the local people, learn some of their language. One simple problem that you may take for granted as a typical inconvenience in your home country can seriously wreck your holiday… days will be wasted fixing such problems.. so really be keen to have all these “basics” in order.