Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Thanks to Panthère rose for bringing a report highlighting the French as a bunch of whiners this morning.Why is that though? Well, simply put: because it’s an industrial relations tactic that always works in France.

Normally the French beach resorts basically close in mid-September and don’t fully reopen until the following June but the season has been expanding in recent years.

When we went out to Canet Plage yesterday we were pleasantly surprised to find just about everything had been opened up. In fact, the resort was even more lively than it usually is most of the Summer season courtesy of a two day kite surfing run by the Canet Plage kite surfing club.

It remains a different story during the week though as most things can be expected to be closed, with the possible exception of the coming week which is a major holiday in France.

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

This little link train is perhaps one of the most interesting that I’ve come across to date. Kelly Cho just tagged me this morning and I’ll follow their example in tagging several blogs outside the usual link trains to see the effect.

~Start Copying Here~

Alexa Redirect Train by Carl Ocab

Rules:

• Put anything you like above this list Chit Chat, talkies, introduce what this is.
• Start copying on the ~Start Copying Here~’ and copy all the things listed without removing the links (Of course, the train would be no use without those links)
• Move all the sites labeled Newcomers’ to the list labeled Oldies’.
• Add 5 sites that you want to include in the train and make their Visit My Site’ link like this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.kellycho.com then invite them to join the train.
• Visit all the listed sites using the Visit My Site link. (That’s not much work! Remember, if you plant good seeds they will also grow good) and look at your high Alexa ranking next week!

Newcomers:

An Age of Magic – Visit My Site
Off the Vine – Visit My Site
Europe a la Carte – Visit My Site
An Island Life – Visit My Site
Frenchless in France – Visit My Site
Anitokid – Visit My Site Link train

Oldies:

Foreign Perspectives – Visit My Site
Carl Pei – Visit My Site
Swapw – Visit My Site
Life of a School Bus Driver – Visit My Site
Tamiki – Visit My Site
Bobs’ Reformat This – Visit My Site
Shawn Knight – Visit My Site
Kelly Cho – Visit My Site
John Chow dot com – Visit My Site
DoshDosh.com – Visit My Site
Jane May Blogs – Visit My Site
Ms. Danielle – Visit My Site
Stock Trading 101 – Visit My Site
Ed Lau – Visit My Site
Derrich.com – Visit My Site
Nate Whitehill – Visit My Site
Gary Lee – Visit My Site
Make Money Online with a 13-year Old – Visit My Site

~End Copying Here~

One of the advantages of the various link exchange schemes that I’ve been getting involved in lately is that I come across quite a different range of blogs than I would have done otherwise and have been pinching good ideas all over the place as you’ve seen from the changes in the site.

Anyway, the latest one of these is Infektia.net which runs through quite a range of things in a stream of mostly short posts. She’s also running a mutual blog review project which should bring a few more blogs to my notice over the coming weeks.

Interestingly, for me, is that she’s actively searching out for places running sponsored post schemes which is something of an interest for me at the moment. Don’t panic about there being a glut of sponsored posts here though as I’m very picky about such things.

Anyway, worth a look if you want to see what a more “girly” blog can look like.

After you book your holiday, there are a number of things that you need to do in advance of the vacation itself. This is a fairly comprehensive list so not all items will be required for every country you visit.

Visas. Check with the embassies in your own country if you need a visa to visit the countries you are going to (this information is usually available online). It’s best to do this well ahead of your vacation as visas can take months to issue.

Vaccinations. Ask your doctor which vaccinations that you should have for the countries that you are visiting. For the most part, you don’t need vaccinations to visit mainstream countries but there are some surprising exceptions to this eg Tetanus for Hawaii, Typhoid for New Zealand so it pays to ask. You need to have some injections months ahead of your travel date.

Passport. You obviously need a passport but check that it will have at least six months remaining on it by the time you are coming home. A number of countries require this.

Insurance. Whilst you might think you only need insurance for the trip, you actually require this insurance as soon as you make the booking in case something comes up requiring you to cancel. If you already have health insurance, you may be able to extend this to cover you abroad. House insurance may cover your belongings whilst on holiday too (check this with your insurance company).

Debit/Credit cards. Change to a four digit numeric PIN. Not all countries accept more than four digits. Check the cost of using your cards abroad both in shops and in ATMs. If you don’t have both Visa and Mastercard, get the one you don’t have as not all countries accept both in equal measure. See our holiday money article for more information on this. Make a list of the numbers and cancellation phone numbers for the cards that you plan on taking. It’s best to limit the number of cards you take to about three or four in case of theft. Don’t forget to check the expiry dates!

Driving license. Check if you need an International Driving Permit (IDP) for the countries you will be visiting. Even if you aren’t planning on driving, it’s best to be able to drive. You can get an IDP from the motoring organisation in your own country. Check the expiry date on your driving license.

Guidebooks. Whilst the Internet is wonderful, it’s not practical to carry it around in your pocket so buy a good guidebook for the areas that you will be visiting. Buy the guidebook covering the area closest to that which you’ll be visiting. So, if you are visiting Paris, buy a guidebook for Paris, not one for all of France. Excellent series are Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. Fodors and Michelin aren’t really as useable or as useful.

Tickets. Check exactly when you are travelling. Remember that you need to be at the airport a minimum of two hours before the flight leaves. Be wary of the actual date of flights departing at 00.00.

Is it safe to go? Check the travel advice sections in the American State Department and the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Are you allowed to visit those countries at all? America forbids its citizens to visit both Cuba and Vietnam all the time and sometimes adds other countries to that list.

This article is part of our series on holiday planning which covers things like how to book your holiday, how to take your holiday money, what to pack, etc.