If you’re like me, you probably grew up feeling relatively safe and a bit careless. Where I grew up, no one thinks twice about wearing a fancy watch, expensive chains, jewelry, or clipping the newest blackberry to the side of your belt.

But some places are different, Latin America included. In Colombia, there’s a saying that goes something like this: “No de Papaya” which translates into “Don’t give Papaya.” That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t share your papaya with anyone. It’s a saying in Colombia that basically means “Don’t be careless and attract unnecessary attention to yourself or get taken advantage of.” Basically it means to have your wits about you, and have some street smarts. Don’t get taken advantage of by women, thieves, sales people, taxi drivers etc.

I’ll give you a couple of examples of giving papaya.

Example 1: You’re in a club and you have your phone on you. You leave your phone on the table and go to the bathroom. If you were at the table alone, you’re really giving papaya, but even if you’re with a group, leaving it there would be a bit careless, it’s still giving a bit of papaya, especially if it’s an expensive phone.

Example 2: You’re paying for a taxi and you take out a wad of cash in front of the taxi driver or when you step outside to pay for the taxi. Your giving papaya because anyone passing by will see you reach into your pocket and pull out a nice big chunk of cash, and you’re attracting unneeded and unwanted attention. Chances are nothing will happen, but you’re still giving papaya.

Example 3: It’s your first night in Cali, Colombia and you don’t know the city well. You get all dressed up and wear a nice shiny, expensive gold chain. You’re going out alone you call a taxi service (not giving papaya), but you fail to take a cautionary step and leave the fancy stuff at home, because first you need to get a feel for the city and the places you’re going to frequent. Not leaving the chain at home is giving papaya. You’re compromising your chain, money, and maybe even your safety.

So what happens when you give Papaya:
Eventually if do it enough times, you’ll run into someone who’ll want to take advantage of you. Leave your cell phone on the table and someone will snatch it when no one is looking. The taxi driver that sees your wad of cash might say he doesn’t have change to give you because now he’s seen you have a lot of money. Your gold chain attracted the attention of the wrong person and as you walk from Club A to Club B a young kid runs by and snatches it, or worse threatens to attack you if you don’t give it up.

Moral of the story: Don’t give Papaya

Couple of years back when I worked in cubicle, I found out one of my co-workers had been to Brazil. At this time I had already been to Brazil, so I was eager to talk with him to see how much he liked it. I had no clue that he not only didn’t like it. He hated it. But before I approached him about it, I thought it would be impossible for a guy to hate Brazil. But he did, and I wanted to find out why. After a long conversation I was able pinpoint exactly why he was so miserable in Brazil:

#1 He stayed locked up in his apartment.
He didn’t go out at all or very little. He told me he spent most of his time in the apartment because he didn’t know anyone or where to go. If this was 1970 I would accept that excuse, but today with the Internet, the wealth of information and all of the free social networking sites, there’s not reason you should not have friends to just about anywhere you want to travel. And there’s no reason you shouldn’t have some idea of where to go and what to see, at even the most remote of destinations. All you have to do is a quick google search and bam!

#2 He didn’t learn the language:
One of the reasons he didn’t want to go out was because he didn’t know the language and he didn’t even know how to ask for directions or the most basic of phrases. Apart from that he was miserable in the apartment because since he didn’t know the language, he couldn’t understand anything on the television.

#3 He didn’t meet new people there
He didn’t have any online friends before he got there and he didn’t go out to meet any new people. In this situation, who wouldn’t be miserable. He probably felt like he was in a jail cell.

The moral of this story is that there are some basic things you must do in order to have an enjoyable trip. If you’re traveling alone and not with a buddy or a group these things are even more important. Go meet foreign women online. If you didn’t know already, foreign women make the best tour guides and provide you with a lot of safety. Do your research and find out as much information on a city as possible, including restaurants, shopping centers, tourist attractions, bars, night light, clubs etc. Finally and most importantly, get some conversational fluency in the language. If you’re in a group some of these things might not be as important, or you may have someone in your group that is taking care of these things, but if your a lone traveler, you need to your homework.

On a side note, don’t let one bad experience ruin the entire trip. I was told by a friend about a guy that traveled to Brazil and he got robbed the first day he got there right outside of his hotel. He ended staying in his hotel for the entire trip. Don’t let this happen to you. If you take my 13 steps to a safe trip you should be ok, but even if you do get robbed, or stood up by a girl or something, don’t let this ruin your trip.

I’ve been in Colombia for almost two months now. When I arrived, immigration gave me a 60 day stamp on my passport. This means that I can stay legally for 60 days within the country. Since my 60 days are almost up, I have to renew my Visa.

What happens If I don’t renew my visa? What happens is that I end up staying in the country Illegally, and I’ll have to do a whole bunch of paperwork, get stuff notarized, and pay fines in order to get my proper paperwork to be able to leave the country. It’s too much of a hassle, not to mention more expensive, so I recommend just renewing your visa the proper way which I outline below.

Most likely you’ll also get a 60 day stamp, which means that if you get close to your 60 days in Colombia, you’ll have to go to the D.A.S. which stands for “Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad” which translates to “The Administrative Department of Security.” Most large cities in Colombia have a D.A.S. agency within the city, but if you’re in a smaller city you might have to go to one of the larger ones to get your paperwork done.

If you have a local agency in your city all you need to do is hop in a taxi and tell them to take you to the D.A.S, pronounced “das”. Once you’re at the agency you’ll have to go past security and let them know you want to extend your tourist visa or “extender mi visa de turista”.

The agents in the office will ask you to photocopy a your passport as well as the original entry stamp. You’ll also have to fill out a form which should only take about 5 minutes. You’re going to have to sign the form and also take a few photocopies of it. Finally, you’ll have to go to a bank and pay a fee, based on the details they give you in the D.A.S. agency. Usually this involves going directly to a bank and paying with a certain code that you’ll be assigned.

Once you pay the fee at the bank, you bring the receipt back to the D.A.S. agency and they will process the final paperwork. All in all it took me about an hour and half to complete everything including taxi rides. Unfortunately, after your first initial stamp is up, you’ll have to repeat this process every month.

When you’re thinking about traveling it’s always a good idea to build a budget. First you have to figure out how much you can spend and how much time you want to be away. This is a very simply guide to building a basic budget, and this is what I use most of the time when I plan on traveling to a new location.

You can build a budget in two ways. The first is go build a cost estimate based on where you want to go, then you know how much you need to save up for a certain trip. The second is to build a spending estimate based on how much money you plan to spend, if you already have the money.

Lets start with what I call a spending estimate:

First figure out how much you want to spend or can afford to spend. This will be your “Available Funds”. Divide this by the total time you plan on traveling (in days):

Available Funds / Total Time = Daily Budget

For example, if you currently had $2,000 for a 15 day trip, this would look something like:

$2,000 / 15 days = $133 per day

Once you have your daily budget you can get a better idea of how much you can afford to pay for a hotel every day, as well as how much you’ll have in your pocket for other expenses. The most common things you’ll have to pay for on a daily basis are food, transportation, and lodging. Anything extra like beers, cover charges for bars and clubs will be extra expenses that will vary throughout each week and each day. I like to break down expenses into three different areas:

#1: Lodging.
#2: Food and transportation
#3: Extras (Beers, cover charges, tourism excursions, souvenirs etc.)

Generally speaking I allocated one third of my daily budget to each of these categories. So if we go by the above $133 daily budget, I’d probably be looking for a hotel or hostel that costs $44 or less. If I cut back on the lodging costs then I have more to spend on food, transportation and extras. At the same time, I allocate about $44 per day for food and transportation and another $44 per day for extras.

Once you have a basic budget you have a better idea of how much you can afford to spend each day. Once you get to where your going make sure you at least keep a mental note of sticking to your budget. A budget isn’t any good if you don’t stick to it, and the whole point of making one is to make sure you don’t overspend.

I’ll be making a more detailed budget creation tutorial in the near future but this should give you a better idea of how to budget and estimate costs before you travel.

You might be wondering why I’m writing a blog post on how to protect your assets against inflation? A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about Why American Men Should Be Worried About Inflation And The Dollar. This is the follow up post and I think it’s a very important one for certain guys who want to keep traveling in the future.

This particular blog post is directed towards American and English men. Both currencies and economies are in trouble and both the Pound Sterling and the Dollar will experience massive inflation in the short, medium, and long term.

For all of you who live in these two countries, inflation means a loss of your purchasing power which means many things get more expensive, including travel costs. As your purchasing power decreases against other currencies you’re once might dollar or pound will no longer go such a long way in foreign countries.

So the bad news is that your currencies are going down the toilet, but you don’t have to let your assets and savings be eroded away through inflation. One of the best investment options available to you right now is to invest abroad in countries which have better fundamental economies. You want to base your current investment strategy on owning real assets such as commodities, utilities, real estate (in certain places), precious metals, etc. You also want to own these stocks, bonds, and assets in countries that own a lot of commodities, as well as countries that have sounder economic policies then the United States and UK. Some of these countries include Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China to name a few.

If you listen to economists that predicted this current recession: Guys like Peter Schiff, and Jim Rogers, you know that the world is heading for inflationary times. Some countries like the United States are headed there in much worse shape and will get hit much harder. However, by investing in commodities and real assets abroad you guard yourself against inflation and you position yourself to prosper from inflation.

If you have your money safely stashed away in foreign currencies, stocks and bonds. You will at least preserve the current purchasing power of your savings and assets, and you may very well increase it. This means that you’ll be in a very good position to keep the same standard of living, and keep traveling, while many of your other country men will unfortunately be wiped out through inflation.

Throughout my book The Global Dating Revolution, I give a lot of tips and advice for those of you that will take the leap into International Dating and actually travel abroad to see what the women are like in other countries.

On Page 250 of The Global Dating Revolution I give the following tips on dressing while your traveling through Latin America. I feel most of these will be applicable to Eastern Europe and South East Asia as well:

Don’t dress like a tourist, with shorts, loud Hawaiian shirt and camera around your neck. Dress casual or business casual with a nice pair of khakis, jeans and either a nice button down shirt or nice t-shirt. Dress for your body type. If you’re very thin, you might want to wear more then one layer, and don’t wear clothes that are too loose fitting. By the same token if you’re a husky guy, no horizontal stripped shirts and nothing that’s too tight:

In my book The Global Dating Revolution, I give advice on where to go to meet foreign women, and how to go about doing so. I outline all the obstacles and challenges, and give you step by step instructions so you can meet amazing foreign women through international dating. You can find out more about my book, plus all the bonuses by clicking here

Accessing your online accounts including banking and email accounts from hotel lobbies and internet cafes can be a good way to get your information stolen. You can never trust other peoples computers, you never really know how good the security at any given location might be. I’ve only gotten my information stolen one time and that was in the Dominican Republic when I used the computer in the hotel lobby.

If you’re planning on traveling and you’ll need to access your online accounts I recommend you take these few precautions just to make sure your information doesn’t get stolen by some keylogger, or some packet sniffing program installed on some foreign network.

Always use an https:// before the intended address. If you need to access your gmail account, use https://www.gmail.com instead of just http://www.gmail.com. The HTTPS means that the connection between the web browser that you’re using and the website you’re accessing will be encrypted, and if anyone happens to capture the network traffic, your information will be safe. But this step doesn’t safeguard you from keyloggers.

There is really no way to defeat a keylogger effectively. The only thing I recommend to be 100% sure your accounts are not compromised is to access your bank accounts only via phone. Most banks have international numbers you can call, but it’s not hard to reach the 1800 customer service numbers from foreign countries. Wherever you are, just ask how to call the United States, or whatever country your from, and they’ll give the codes to dial before you enter the number. In this way you avoid access your banking accounts from an infected computer.

Email is a different story. You won’t be able to access your email via phone, but what I recommend is to set a temporary password before your trip. Use this password while traveling and accessing your email from computers abroad, and then change the password as soon as you get back. If you’re traveling for an extended period of time, I would suggest changing the password every two or three weeks, or every month at the most. Although changing the passwords might seem like hassle, it only takes two minutes and it can give you piece of mind and save you headaches in case you do use a computer that was compromised with keyloggers or trojans.

I would also the the same for chat clients. If you’re going to be accessing chat clients abroad you can use a temporary password while chatting and never share personal information such as account numbers or other important identifiers over chat programs while traveling abroad. As with email you can change your password once you get back home.

Finally, remember to always close all sessions including email and chat. And if you know how to remove cookies or clear private data, do this as well before you leave any computer you might be using.

What if you have your own computer?
If you bring your own laptop, and you run good security on your laptop including a firewall and antivirus, then things will be much safer, all I would suggest then is to access HTTPS urls only.

When you’re traveling abroad if your not careful you could end up with stomach problems, travelers diarrhea, a stomach virus or worse. In order to avoid these common problem it’s important to know where to eat, what to eat, and what to drink. Here are the best tips you’ll find so you can keep your stomach safe and enjoy your trip without running into stomach problems:

#1. Eat at places that have a lot of clientele. Always eat at the busiest restaurant or place you can find. A busy restaurant is a good sign of good food and satisfied clients. The fact that other people are eating there in great numbers says something great about the food, and service. But there’s more to this approach then just this. A busy restaurant also means that the food is fresh. Busy places are making money, and they don’t need to save yesterday’s unsold food for tomorrows clients, as some of the emptier places may do. Always eat at the busiest locale, and if the place is empty definitely avoid it.

#2. Make sure your food is cooked properly. Get everything well done. You might like your steak rare, but why take the chance? Make sure you get all your meats cooked well. Try avoiding uncooked foods. Extra caution should be taken with shellfish and some sea foods.

#3. Wash your hands. Make sure you wash your hands every time before you eat. It might be a good idea for you to carry around a small pocket size hand sanitizer and keep it in your pocket.

#4. Don’t eat already peeled fruits and vegetables. This one is self explanatory.

#5. Drink bottled water, and don’t drink tap water. In some countries you can drink the tap water, but make sure you boil it before you drink it.

#6. Watch out for the ice. Ice is usually made from the tap water so if you want a cold drink put your drink on ice, but don’t put ice in your drink.

#7. Don’t eat at street vendors and food carts. I generally advise not to eat at vendors who stand out in the middle of the streets. Sometimes you might be starving after a night out and you might want to try some shish kabobs from a local vendor, I’ve done this myself, but I make sure I don’t do it often, and that I get my food very well done. Also remember tip #1. If you’re going to eat at one of these street vendors, eat the busiest one.

#8. If it tastes funny, don’t eat it. When your traveling food will taste different, but sometimes there’s something your taste buds tell you about the food. When in doubt listen to your gut. If it tastes too funny, trust your gut and don’t eat it. If you want to be nice about it, just tell the staff to wrap it up to go, and dump the food when you leave.

#9. Boost your immune system. Make sure your helping your immune system by taking a multi-vitamin, vitamin E, vitamin C, and Zinc. Regular exercise and adequate sleep also helps boost your immune system.

#10. Avoid eating when drunk. If you’ve had a lot to drink try to avoid eating. When you’re drunk sometimes you might not care where you eat, or what you eat, you’ll probably also forget tips 1-9 and you might not even be able to tell if the food is good or not. This is a sure fire way to stumble your way into some food that can get you sick.

If you’re traveling abroad you might be wondering if it’s better to get a local wing man/guide or go with your American buddy (or Austrailian/Canadian/etc.)? There are benefits to both and also downsides.

Money
The American wing man will gladly help you pay for expenses, drinks, or anything else where the cost was shared. The foreign wing man may be more strapped for cash and may be less inclined inclined to help with the bills. Some might even expect you to pay for everything. You should probably iron out the details of who’s paying for what with your foreign wing man, but just know that he might not have as much cash as you do.

Time
The American wing man will generally be on time, and show up when asked. Foreign guys are less use to rigid schedules, and being on time in general.

Women
Foreign guys might not be as aggressive or use to approaching women out of the blue like some American guys that are use to the American type of bar and club scene. Foreign guys rely more on their social circle and friends to meet the women they date.

Also there may be a chance that your foreign wing man has an ego problem. Some foreign guys do have ego problems because they’ve had it easy with the opposite sex their whole lives, and they let it go to their heads and think it’s do to their great looks or skills with women, and that is has nothing to do with where they live.

Also foreign wing men will be much more picky about who you hang it with and where you hang out and also who you approach and date. Foreigners are much more sensitive to social classes and usually hang out in places that cater to their social class. With an American wing man on the other hand you won’t have the worry about this problem, you can date women from any class or approach women from any class without having to worry about how your wing man feels about this.

Picking Locations
The foreign wing man has the upper hand here as he will know where the best places are to meet the local women. He also has the advantage of already having a large social circle of his friends and relatives. Although now and days picking locations is getting much and much easier with the information available on the Internet. Still there’s nothing better then a local to give you the inside scoop on a destination.

Language
One of the greatest advantages of a foreign wing man is that he will know the language. This will help with negotiations, haggling, and any where else where conversation is needed. Your foreign wing man can also educate you or pickup the local slang, which is a part of the dialect in every region, and even changes from city to city even within the same country.

One possible drawback of a foreign wing man in this area is that he might not speak your language well (most likely English). And if you don’t speak his, there could be potential communication problems.

Safety
The foreign wing man will know where to go and where no to go. Having home field advantage he’ll be able to avoid situations where safety might be an issue. This is another one of the great advantages of having a foreign wing man when you travel abroad.

That’s pretty much it, the most ideal situation is probably to have a well traveled American wing man who’s fluent in the language and a veteran traveler. One of the best benefits I’ve found of traveling in packs with other American’s is sharing the costs of things. But adding a local guy to the mix and getting a small group going wouldn’t be bad idea either.

A lot of people gawk at the thought of traveling oversees to meet foreign women, or simply just to take in new experiences, cultures, food, music and life. For some people traveling seems something far and distant, too much of a hassle, and sometimes too expensive. So how can you make traveling easy and natural, maybe even part of your life? I’ve made a list of some of the top ways you can travel, and even live and work abroad.

Work remotely from home
With technology these days it’s very possible for many people to start working remotely either for their current employer or by providing their own professional services from home. Once you take things remote, you can easily then travel to any place that has an Internet connection and bring along your laptop to work from the road. This is by far one of the best ways to travel extensively, and make money at the same time. Take a quick peek at websites like guru.com or freelancer.com just to see what type of services are being offered by remote workers from all over the world, as well as from all over the U.S.

Get a job on a cruise ship
Cruise ships are great ways to travel and make some money at the same time. Cruise ships usually hire people for 3-6 month stints, so you get a nice amount of vacation time after you do your time on the ship. Food and lodging will be free and you’ll get a salary. You also get to explore different places when the ship docs at various locations.

Get an oversees job
Multinational companies often offer jobs oversees for qualified individuals. There are various websites like latpro.com and monster.com where you can search for opportunities to work abroad.

Get a job that involves a lot of traveling
A job that includes a lot of travel could offer your opportunities to stay abroad for decent periods of time. Jobs within marketing or product divisions of companies looking to expand into Latin America or the other pro-male regions are good places to look. Jobs within the hotel industry or tourism industry are also great places to find jobs that let you travel.

Get transferred
If you already work for a multi-national, look for opportunities to get transferred abroad within the company. Look within your company website to see what opportunities might be available abroad.

Do a semester abroad
If your still in college I would suggest doing a semester or preferably two semesters abroad. You can even study in countries like Brazil. I wish I had known this when I was in school!

Volunteer
There are various websites on the Internet that offer you the opportunity to travel while volunteering. Cross Cultural Solutions is just one of these websites, but there are many others. Just do a good search for “volunteer abroad” + “the country or region you are most interested in”. These are great ways to give back and contribute to society as well as get some travel experience. Another benefit of many of these programs is that they pay for everything.

Take a vacation
Save up vacation time, sick days, and personal days and pile them up together to take a long vacation abroad. I always recommend at least two weeks as the minimum stay. But three to four weeks would be best if you can swing it.

Get a job in the military
The military might be another way to consider traveling abroad, BUT I’m not sure of how one would go about being stationed in Colombia as opposed to Iraq or Afghanistan! I do always meet veterans and guys who have been in the military who start to travel while they do their service and then end up moving abroad, or traveling extensively after they leave the military.

Take a sabbatical
If you’ve worked somewhere long enough, chances are you may have the option to take a sabbatical. Look within your companies policies and see if they have any policies for sabbaticals. A sabbatical usually involves you taking time off from work (sometimes even with pay, or at least a percentage of your pay) for up to six months to a year. If your company doesn’t define any policies for sabbaticals then you may have to inquire with your managers or human resources.