What you won’t learn from a travel advisory

If you travel or watch the news regularly, no doubt you’ve seen or heard at least one travel advisory. My general opinion is they aren’t worth much, especially the ones from the US which tend to be histrionic and a bit unreasonable. However, in our travels we’ve decided there are some things they just leave out of advisories. Things people really should know.

food travel advisory

Food travel advisory

“It will be next to impossible to find bacon in this country.” Now don’t you think that should be known? When we first traveled to Morocco, it didn’t even occur to me this would be a problem. Sure, I knew they were mostly a Muslim country, and I knew Muslims don’t eat pork. But their visitors do! So I figured this would be less challenging, but noooooo.

“Bagels are an unheard of commodity practically everywhere on this continent.” Don’t you think this deserves a heads-up?

“Eating produce here will cause you to audibly moan in public which may cause extreme embarrassment. You might also wet your pants.” I suffered this one in Romania. Well, the moaning part at least.

Surprisingly, I didn’t get any odd looks.

“Food in this country may be habit forming, and when you have it outside of the country it will most likely not taste the same.” Thailand was my main culprit on this one. It’s quite probably my favorite cuisine, and no matter where I go it only tastes that good in Thailand, although some places at least get close. I did take a cooking class so I could reproduce some of my favorite dishes, but the ingredients have been somewhat of a challenge to find. You just can’t replace a nice fiery chile with a sweet one.

And why didn’t my package of dark chocolate with black salt not come with a warning? I’ve only found it one city, and that was in Romania. So first you have no bagels and now you have no dark chocolate with black salt. I swear there’s a conspiracy out there!

travel advisory

Animals

People tend to get anxious about whether or not they should get a rabies vaccination. The reality for us has been a different problem.

There is no travel advisory that properly warns people of the hundreds of cute cats you’ll encounter in Morocco. In Marrakech, they were mostly older, loving cats, but in Essaouira we were constantly attacked by the cutest tiny kittens imaginable. We almost moved there and opened a cat shelter.

Morocco travel advisory

Not fair State Department!

Romania has a problem with stray dogs. We encountered these adorable pups in Sinaia, and it took everything I had to not just scoop them up and bring them on the train back home. I would’ve appreciated advance warning!

Animal travel advisory

Weather

No one bothered to warn me that I would not be needing extra thick winter jackets during our visit to Austria. In fact, I was expecting a white Christmas and had prepared Tigger that we might be freezing our tushies off there. It was a white Christmas only if you consider the cups that held my gluhwein and his hot chocolate. When I explained this to my friend who lives in Salzburg, she laughed and said “Oh we haven’t had a white Christmas in at least 5 years!”

The Czech Republic and Poland are supposed to be only a few degrees warmer than deep Siberia. So why am I running around without even a hoodie in almost mid-February? I may have some Russian genetics, but let’s not get crazy here.

What thing is the average travel advisory missing in your opinion?

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16 Comments

    • Yeah, Tigger would never go there if he knew that in advance. He’s already not thrilled with the idea of going to Turkey because of it.

      Conversely, it could be great marketing. “Come here. We have tons of bacon.”

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  1. I miss bacon tooo much!! The meat in Argentina is delicious, but nothing beats a BLT does it

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  2. Enjoyed this one…sooo funny!

    I would add, waiters and shop assistants in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and probably many other countries will pick up your baby/toddler and whisk them away to the kitchen/around the hotel to show them off and give you a chance to eat your meal/do your shopping with two hands…..and guess what? they aren’t paedophiles!

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    • SO true! LOL I usually try to warn newer travelers who have small ones about that since it can be quite scary if you aren’t used to it. Some will ask, but I think most don’t. They just pick up the little on and off they go. LOL

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  3. Oh yes! Your Thai food warning reminded me of the travel rule we made for ourselves and broke repeatedly out of desperation: do not eat Mexican food anywhere outside of the Americas. Maybe even outside of North America. And especially not in Europe. We kept making this mistake and kicking ourselves every time we did it.

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    • I was so happy to discover an authentic Mexican place and an almost authentic Thai place here in Prague! Have definitely been disappointed elsewhere for sure.

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  4. I love this! Every word is so true. We are currently in Bali with the cute cat and dog problem!

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    • Are you finding many cats being receptive to being pet there? Tigger was disappointed that most cats would run away from him in Bali while in Morocco he was like the cat whisperer. lol

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  5. No one warned us that the Parisians are actually quite friendly and helpful!

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  6. Wait, Dark Chocolate with black salt? I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen black salt, but the combination together has me extremely intrigued. Hmmm, wonder if it would survive shipping? LOL Love my dark chocolate.

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    • OMG it’s so good! Heidi Chocolates makes it, but I haven’t seen their stuff around yet. It’s almost like crack. lol

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  7. I hope the produce made you moan in pleasure because it was so good? I wasn’t sure. 😉 This is a great post – I think advisory’s other than the safety issue would be a good thing!

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