Brian Tracy's daughter Christina used phrasebooks and guidebooks like Lonely Planet and Fodors for her trips to Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Learning basic local phrases and reading two to three guides before you go helps you save money, see better sights, and get treated better by locals.
Many people sum up the courage and put the money together and travel to a foreign country. And then they come back and they say, well, I'll never do it again. They'll never do it again because of all the problems they had. Now, my daughter Christina, who's 30, she and her husband decided to take a trip to South America. They'd never been there. It was just a few weeks ago. And so Christina asked me, dad, you've traveled so much. What's the key to traveling? I said, well, where are you going? She said, she's going to Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Now, the languages there are Spanish and Portuguese. I said, first thing you do is you get a language book, Berlitz or Lonely Planet. And you read the basic Greetings. Hello, how are you? How much is this? Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you. Please learn the basic words. I said, and then you get at least two, if not three, guidebooks on the country that you're going to. This case, let us say Argentina. And you read the guidebook written by Fotors for traveling Cheap Lonely Planet, which is the middle level. And Fodders f O D D Fromer is the cheap one. Fodders f O D R is for expensive travel. You read them as you're traveling through the country and you get a really good sense for the city, where to go, what to see things not to miss, what ways to save money, best restaurants to go to, how to negotiate the better hotel rates, even if you already paid. So she did this, and she did the same thing for Rio, which is in Portugal. I mean, Brazil, which is Portuguese. She came back and she said it was unbelievable. She was just unbelievable. The difference it made to have the basic phrase books and learn the phrases and practice play with her husband with them, and then to read the books. They saw so much more. They had so much better treatment. They came back and they were just ecstatic with their trip. So that's my first advice to you. If you're going to go somewhere, learn a few words of the language, which you can do, and read a few guidebooks which you can get at any store so that you know where you're going, and I promise you, you'll have a wonderful time.
