by Jacqueline Alexander

IMAGINE the scene. You’ve packed your bags, you’ve remembered your passport, you’ve survived several hours in the air without falling foul of deep vein thrombosis. You arrive at your destination and smile as you feel the waft of hot air breeze across your face as you leave the air-conditioned confines of the aircraft. Life is good. Your holiday starts here.

At that moment you notice a sign staring at you. It looks important. You can’t read it because it’s in the local language and this country does not subscribe to the idea that everyone should speak English.

You look around and notice that everyone is dressed in black. The security staff, the airport staff, the people queuing at the check-in. Was the sign stating that you are, by local law, required to wear black?

People are glaring. Security guards begin a dialogue while looking accusingly in your direction. Beads of sweat appear on your top lip. As you near passport control, you try to convince yourself that you would have known if there was some law decreeing black was not only cool but compulsory. Someone would have warned you when you booked your holiday, wouldn’t they? But you booked online. It was a bargain — or was it?

Arranging holidays has never been easier online. There are thousands of sites offering special offers and cheap deals that make it easy to get excited about the options available. It is equally easy to forget that some of the more exotic-sounding destinations can be fraught with problems.

While it’s unlikely that you have booked a holiday to anywhere associated with landmines, military coups or the word extremist, it is just as unlikely that you are familiar with all the local customs, dress codes and basic requirements of everyday living in your temporary home.

Take Prague. Did you know that when you accept an invitation to someone’s home in the Czech Republic, you are expected to take your shoes off on arrival? You are also expected to wear clean socks or, at the very least, have clean toes.

In Bulgaria at the dinner table, you would probably know to keep your elbows off the table but you also need to make sure that your hands are visible at all times. Why this is necessary is more difficult to ascertain but I don’t want to offend my Bulgarian host so my piano-tappers will be clearly in view.

If you are left-handed, you will need to concentrate while you are dining in Morocco. The left-hand is perceived as the paw of personal hygiene, only the right-hand should be used to eat and drink when sharing a communal dinner. Don’t wipe your hands on the napkin either — a bowl of water will be along presently.

If you chose to travel further afield, Worldtraveltips.net becomes even more useful, especially if you plan to wander completely off the beaten track. This site is packed with useful advice on travelling to virtually any country in the world. It does not give the latest travel restrictions to troubled areas — for this you still need to visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office site. Instead, it gives practical information that speaks volumes on the level of danger you can expect.

Eritrea, a somewhat questionable destination at the best of times, is accompanied by a paragraph using words such as UN, dispute, operating and that essential holiday ingredient, the landmine. If your visit to the western tip of Africa is still deemed essential, the site offers you a few basic language tips; yes translates to na’am, no to la’a and please is min fadlak. Unfortunately, there are no suggestions for the word “help”.

Just across the border in Djibouti, the warnings take a slightly different tone as you are advised to take copies of your travel documents and keep an eye on your wallet. The language sounds a little more familiar though; yes is oui, no becomes non and you can probably guess the rest if you are at all au fait with Francais.

Worldtraveltips.net offers information on dress, primary towns, local travel, history and tips on money, food, weather and safety. The latest news relevant to that country also features on each page, which is not only useful but quite enlightening. In a few short minutes, I discovered that Slovakia will swap its koruna for the euro next year, Norfolk Island has a population of 2,128 and North Korea apparently has a zero crime rate.

From Albania to Zimbabwe, this site has got it covered so, before you launch into the unknown, perhaps you should check if you need to keep it that way too. Bon voyage.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

Wimbledon has arrived and so did Laura Robson and Andy Murray, both hoping to sate Britain’s appetite for a Grand Slam win after years in the wilderness. All three featured in this week’s top 20 sporting searches but while Laura experienced disappointment in the first round of the tournament, her online performance has been nothing less than staggering with an increase of more than 30,000 per cent. She may be down at 482 in the tennis rankings for the time being but she’s at number four in the top overall searches this week.