“Danger Can Sneak Up On You”: 30 Americans Share Places To Avoid At All Costs

Bored Panda got in touch with Will Tang, travel writer, and globetrotter, from Going Awesome Places to get some insights on what travelers should do in general when preparing for a trip. “If there's one big tip I'd provide to anyone that's new to travel, it'd be to pack light as best as you can. It's one of those things that doesn't feel intuitive and is the best thing when you learn that it's quite easy to wash your clothes along the way and you really don't use half the things you initially want to bring.”

We also were curious to hear his take on “travel tips” in general. “Travel is totally one of those things where you end up becoming more comfortable and "seasoned" by just getting out there. There's no better teacher than going through the highs and lows of travel yourself because ultimately everyone has a different style of travel and there's no one-size-fits-all.”

“THAT SAID, as someone that has gone through the gamut of travel, there are travel tips that I put under the "I wish someone told me about that before I went". As an example, it's good to know if pickpocketing is an issue in certain cities. You don't exactly want to learn from the actual experience of having your phone stolen.”

Similar to some of the other tips here, we wanted to hear his horror stories, as those tend to be a great way to know what to avoid. “You hear about all the cab scams in certain countries and sometimes you feel like it'll never happen to you - until it does. For most of our time in Istanbul, we used Uber but in one particular case, we figured, "What's the worst that could happen" when we needed to get from our hotel to a hammam we had booked.”

“Tracking the route on my phone, the route he took didn't seem too crazy so it didn't ring any alarm bells but things got sketchy when we had to pay. They hand him a 50 TRY bill and he comes back and says we owe him more money even though we were expecting change. What he did was pull off a sleight-of-hand move and switched the 50 to a 5 TRY bill. There was a moment of hesitation but we were pretty sure it was a 50. Yelling ensued and we refused to give more. Despite overpaying, we decided to just walk away. The cab driver still got the last laugh though because when we looked around, we weren't close to where we wanted to go. We made sure we used Uber for the rest of our trip.”

“A contrasting story would be from our time in South Africa where we decided we would drive ourselves from Johannesburg to the Sabi Sands Private Reserve next to Kruger National Park for our safari. Luckily, we were able to speak to a friend knowledgeable about the area beforehand where she warned us about the police catching people speeding and then expecting a bribe. This put us on high alert throughout our drive and made sure we followed the speed limits to a T. We never encountered any speed traps along the way and arrived at our lodge without a hitch. Feeling pretty good about it, we then heard from other travelers that we met there that had the opposite experience and actually had to deal with the bribing sadly.”

The bottom line is that it never hurts to be prepared, even if the location is as “well known” as the United States. After all, it’s a pretty huge, diverse country with a lot to offer, so ask around, Google your destination and make some notes. And if you want to see more of what Will Tang does, you can find his blog here, his Instagram here, his YouTube here, and his TikTok here.