Safety Guidelines to fly abroad - www.medodeal.com

PERSONAL SAFETY GUIDELINES - www.medodeal.com

Although you can’t escape the remote possibility that you simply may find yourself “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” you can take steps to enhance your personal safety while traveling: plan your trip carefully, be reasonably cautious, obey common-sense rules of behavior, and don’t panic! Remember that the vast majority of travelers arrive home unscathed.

The following guidelines will be helpful in ensuring your travel safety:

• Carefully select swimming areas. Don’t swim alone, while intoxicated, or at night.
• Avoid small, non scheduled airlines in less developed countries.
• Don’t travel by road at night outside urban areas. If you are out at night, stay in a group.
• Don’t go out alone on beaches at night.
• Don’t hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers.
• Don’t sleep in your car or RV at the roadside at night.
• Camp only in legal campsites.
• If you are drinking alcohol, don’t relax by sitting on the railing of your hotel balcony. Falls and serious injuries often occur this way.
• Review hotel fire safety rules. Locate nearest exits.
• If possible, book a room between the second and seventh floors—high enough to prevent easy entrance by an intruder and low enough for fire equipment to reach.
• Lock your hotel room at all times.
• Keep valuables and travel documents in your room (in-room safe) or hotel safe.
• Avoid countries or regions where there is drug-related violence and drug trafficking. Avoid excursions into remote areas of certain countries such as Mexico, Colombia, or Peru, where you might be mistaken for a drug agent or a rival drug dealer.
• Never purchase, transport, or use illegal drugs.
• Don’t accept drinks or rides from a stranger you have just met.
• Familiarize yourself with the local laws and customs of the countries to which you are traveling and abide by them. Know the laws about exchanging money and deal only with authorized agents when you exchange money or purchase art or antiques.
• Put identifying markings on your luggage. Don’t, however, put your home address or telephone number on your luggage tags. Instead, put a business card in the tag, or a use a P.O. box address and a business, mobile telephone, or third- party telephone number for contact.
• Do not put all your valuables in luggage you check; e.g., jewelry, cameras, watches. Besides your luggage possibly being lost, there is, unfortunately, increasing theft occurring during security searches of checked luggage. The best course is not to travel with any item of significant value.