In this month’s Reader Tips, Anita from Washington suggests exchanging emergency information with your travel partners. She suggests that everyone in the group enter the full name, date of birth and emergency contacts of every member into their cell phones. A good tip.

There’s also a helpful little article highlighting three hotel comparison sites.

The Dec/Jan  issue of Budget Travel magazine has an interesting article about the next generation of smartphone travel apps that use augmented reality technology (whatever that is) to turn the phone’s camera viewfinder into an interactive travel guide.  Check it out at the magazine’s website.

I grinned when I read the following quote in the Saturday edition of The Oklahoman newspaper.

“If you can pour it, pump it, squeeze it, spread it, smear it, spray it or spill it, then it’s a liquid, gel or aerosol,” TSA customer service representative Kim Wagner told The Oklahoman in a Nov. 21 article.

Good advice to keep in mind before you travel to the airport.

Or so I thought.

My lovely wife and I like cheap travel, so we usually go it alone. When we arrived in Beijing, our first time to travel to Asia, we promptly became super lost looking for the Forbidden City. I, of course, deal with the process of getting lost in a new travel city by getting mad. Thankfully, cooler heads (hers) prevailed and we kinda figured out where we were going and stumbled on down the road.

Soon after, a polite young Asian man on a bicycle asked if we were looking for the Forbidden City. When we replied affirmatively, he generously offered to show us the way. (You can see this coming now, can’t you?) A chatty Cathy, the young man took us down a side street talking all the while about how he was an artist, and wouldn’t you know it, we just happened to be passing right by his studio. Then he invited us in for a look.

Like a sheep to the slaughter, I headed for the door.

My wife, wise to the scheme the entire time, let me get to the middle of the street before she called out that I was being duped. That polite young man was an artist alright – a scam artist. Shaking his head at the one that got away, our young guide headed back to the main road in search of his next mark while I hung my head in shame.

The moral of the story, aw crap, there’s no moral only embarrassment.

This month’s Travel and Leisure has some simple photo tips that should prove helpful on my next travel trip.

First was a tiny article about a menu decoder that the magazine has posted on its website. I usually don’t have any trouble finding something to eat when I’m traveling but I have on several occasions resorted to pointing at dishes on other tables or simply guessing at what’s on the menu.  This decoder should come in handy on my next travel trip.

The second article “Trips Gone Bad” was a helpful tutorial about dealing with damaged or lost luggage, health insurance concerns, canceled flight strategies and the pros and cons of travel insurance.