When you arrive at any airport, you’ll almost certainly be greeted with a line or series of lines that you need to clear to proceed to your terminal. Security procedures vary around the world but you’ll face some form of scrutiny of your bags and at least some search of your person.

In the States, it’s mostly done with machinery and a roster of TSA agents who have no time for nonsense or anything resembling a sense of humor. They are paid to take their jobs seriously, and this will become obvious if you don’t keep the line moving as they specifically ask you to.

This overreach is one that we are all just forced to endure and has been a prominent feature of all air travel since September 11, 2001. But I find the key to an uneventful passage through security is being prepared for the hoops you know you will have to jump through.

If TSA asks you to do something, it should be seen as more of a command than a request, the same way law enforcement may issue commands and you must obey them. The same rules apply here. The best way to get through this without enduring the additional violation of a “secondary” screening is to take it seriously, sort your belongings as advised, and be polite.

You’re going to notice a recurring theme in these posts and that is just a general point about how you should present yourself. Be polite and try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. You’re going to see people having anything from their best to worst day ever at the airport. A little empathy goes a long way.

If you’re an American like I am, you might wonder how other societies treat one another, given our recent penchant for division based on silly and often meaningless things.

Traveling internationally allows you to see this internal relationship firsthand and hold up other countries in comparison to where you call home. You can then take these observations and allow them to inform how you treat your fellow citizens when you return.

If you visit a country that is over-the-top in the way they respect one another, what could it possibly hurt to mirror this behavior where you live?

Granted, this could go the wrong way if you visit places that are actively engaged in conflict, but you should use your judgment to decide if you want to visit those places at all. I want to see all of these places too, but I would delay plans if I deemed them to be too risky based on the information I can collect from reputable sources.

When you visit another country, you are a guest. How would you treat guests from other nations in your own home or community? You may need to spend some time reflecting on the question and deciding how you feel about your answers. What you find out may let you know a great deal about yourself and where your travels should take you.

“Don’t drink the water!” – A refrain from anyone who has visited a developing nation that lacks the infrastructure for clean-ish drinking water.

I can speak about this one on a personal level because I forgot about this crucial piece of advice when I visited Vietnam. I made the mistake of ingesting some of the local water and paid for it with a couple of day’s worth of diarrhea as my body sorted out why it was being assaulted. In the same period, I had managed to sustain a rather large gash on my hand that needed to be bandaged and treated for infection proactively. I found my way to a drugstore and I was able to buy prescription-strength antibiotics and ointment over the counter because the restrictions on such things are a lot looser in Vietnam, thankfully.

Let this serve as a precautionary tale. Your body may have a similar reaction to the food and drink of your destination and there is nothing inherently wrong with this. Your body is adjusted to the environment in which it spends the most time, and if you find yourself in a place with different standards of cleanliness, you must remain diligent. Do your research and pack accordingly. Leave room in your kit for any supplies you feel would help you stay happy and healthy.

If the water is even a possible gray area, bring along some treatment in the form of tablets or filters, or consider purchasing bottled water in your destination. When purchasing bottled water, be sure to check the seal for any tampering because it isn’t uncommon to find bottles refilled locally and sold as fresh from the factory.

It’s just one example, but be proactive and you’ll reduce the chances that you spend the trip retching in the bathroom the whole time.

There are times when traveling throws you so far out of your comfort zone that it can become uncomfortable. I have experienced this most keenly as it relates to language barriers.

If you visit a country that first speaks the native language and English second or not at all, you will run directly into this issue and it can feel like a brick wall. My best piece of advice is to utilize the incredible technology at your disposal and allow your phone to help you communicate. Translation apps can now help you converse in real time and being understood will instantly make your life easier.

I would love to be able to wear a headpiece of some sort that translates on the fly for me and allows me to speak and be understood, but so far, I haven’t seen it. The attempts I have seen at this kind of technology are incredible but they remain on the fringe and are thus incredibly expensive.

Just know that you aren’t alone in these moments. It is an awkward stumbling block we all have to run across to see how we navigate it. It’s a teachable moment that will remind you to stay curious and willing to learn new things in the interest of understanding people from other places.

No matter where you may roam, it can be a powerful chance to reframe the aspects of your life that you’d like to improve upon or those that you’d like to leave behind. The beauty of being a stranger in a strange land is that your problems are completely unknown to these people and they aren’t tied to your dramas the way you are. You should feel free to use the time traveling to discard what doesn’t seem to be working in your life and look for novelty and growth in a favorable direction.

When we travel we are already experiencing the world as it should be, with wide-open amazement. Utilize the rose-colored glasses to view your life in an overwhelmingly positive light.

I have gone so far as to write a list of the things I wanted to discard from my life and did so literally by disposing of the list responsibly at my destination. It’s a symbolic gesture that has true staying power.

By their very nature, you can’t plan for unexpected delays. If you control things like the weather, you don’t need to worry about anything because you have power beyond measure and should feel beyond the financial concerns this may raise. For the rest of us mere mortals, delays are a bridge you’ll eventually have to cross.

If you want to minimize the chance that these delays implode your entire itinerary, be strategic about your travel times and make sure your layovers leave enough room for error. If a connecting flight will be leaving in under an hour in an airport you aren’t familiar with, maybe shop around for a different configuration that will give you more time to navigate. Jet lag doesn’t care about your plans and it can strike you at the exact worst moment in terms of your trip. Miss one flight and it can cause you to enter and stay in panic mode long enough to ruin your entire experience.

Most of these tips are about utilizing a little common sense and prudence during the planning stages of your travels, helping you avoid as much of the unexpected as can be, well, expected.

I see the irony of posting this as a precaution on a travel blog and as someone who intends to make a living talking about traveling and reaching as many people as possible. I am willing to be an out-loud hypocrite on this because I believe there are degrees of this type of behavior.

The kind I am specifically referencing and turning my nose up at is the kind where the person will push through a crowd with a phone attached to a selfie stick, ignoring everyone they brush out of the way while recording their most recent masterpiece. It is a complete disregard for everyone else who is there in person and interested in viewing the sight for themselves.

I believe that being a courteous person is more important than the bump you might get in metrics for the content you create by barging in and asserting yourself as the most important person on the scene. But I do get it as a person vying for attention from a faceless mass of people. You have to take some chances and be willing to have people look at you like you’re the asshole.

In general, do your best not to be an asshole, and if you are planning on making content, scout your locations ahead of time and make an educated guess when to shoot. Leave a window of time before and after your proposed filming times for the inevitable crowds because it allows you to show some grace and create in a way that doesn’t inconvenience others.

We have all seen horror stories by now showing unruly, typically drunk passengers on airplanes who are refusing to comply with the flight crew’s requests. The pilot gets involved and begins issuing commands, the person becomes increasingly agitated, and if the plane is in the air, it may even make an unscheduled detour to disembark the problem passenger before proceeding.

This gets amplified by social media 1,000 fold and that person will make or break themselves in how they respond.

What I feel isn’t up for debate is the behavior itself taking place at all. I understand that traveling is stressful, and to have rules and regulations imposed upon you is an additional strain, but those rules and regulations are in place to protect the rest of us from your bad day turning into our last one. We all know these rules by now and they are just a fact of life. If you want to travel anywhere interesting that requires a flight, just suck it up and you’ll be there in no time, no incident required.

If you’re one of the unintentional witnesses to this kind of behavior, try and have just a little bit of compassion. For the sake of basic decency, don’t record it and put the person on blast, because you don’t have the first clue about what that person may be going through. The relevant authorities will handle the situation and you can get back to your travels, hopefully without distractions. Feel free to tell the story as a lighthearted anecdote but that’s all the more reach it needs.

No matter how many people you think there will be at the famous thing you traveled across the globe for, double the number twice. Your one-of-a-kind plan to be there at the perceived “down” time will end the same as someone who visits a popular thing on a whim.

Dealing with crowds is just part of the experience and you have to find a way to accept them as a fact. When a country has a feature worth visiting, people will travel absurd distances to see it. A great case in point is right here in the United States. We have 63 national parks that rack up millions of visitors every year collectively and these visitors come from all over the world.

You can just bet that no matter when you arrive, there will be a crowd, and it is best to reframe how you think about this situation. You get to share this experience with other human beings, potentially from a place radically different than where you come from. It is an opportunity to learn how citizens from around the world engage with the sights offered by countries that are not their homeland. It can give you a greater appreciation for how to best attend the places of interest in your own country.

I have found it is best to visit the popular places prepared to wait your turn to witness them firsthand. Be polite and allow others their moment to the best of your ability. It’s a fantastic way to build your patience. The world doesn’t owe you anything, and this includes preferred treatment at sights of significance.

We will have a series of posts dedicated to what travel entails in the best circumstances, but we will also cover the less-than-ideal circumstances with a category called “Travel is also…“.

Just as an example:

Travel is a lot of planning to ensure that you arrive at your departures on time, but it’s also all of the obstacles that will seem to be thrown in your way when you are cutting it close. Time will compress to seem non-existent in these moments and you will feel excess pressure. You can do yourself a huge favor by considering all of these potentially devastating detours ahead of time so that when you arrive early without incident you’ll feel relaxed and ready to engage fully with the experience.

These will be examples of real-life stumbling blocks we’ve encountered or those from the community. They’ll be short and sweet posts to remind you of the importance of remaining flexible and ready to pivot in case something unexpected happens.

Spoiler alert: Something unexpected always happens. You can’t be ready for everything, that isn’t realistic. But you can condition yourself to become desensitized to the infinite number of things that could go wrong.