What Your Travel Agent Won't Tell You! a Checklist for Your Safety Abroad

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Summary: Useless scare tactics from so-called "experts"
Review: Tired of seeing terrorism "experts" on TV? It seems like every guy that ever put on a military uniform is now somehow a terrorism expert. If you are an EOD specialist in the Deltas, how does that qualify you as a terrorism expert? This is another example of guys making a meal out of their military careers, and just spewing out a laundry list of security items.

I wasted money on this book, which makes it seems like the odds of getting kidnapped or killed by terrorists while on travel 1 in 3. I've seen this Ishimoto character on TV and all he does is speak in generalities like he knows some super-secret info about Bin Laden when in actuality, he has be driving a desk for the last 10 years.

Save your money.

Rating:
Summary: What Your Travel Agent Won't Tell You
Review: Travel sseems to be getting more difficult and dangerous as time progresses. The writers of this book seem to have made it safer for me and other travelers. I like their checklist format since that makes it easier to remember "the little things" that add up to safety. As a woman who sometimes likes to travel alone, I found this book to be invaluable.

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Summary: What Your Travel Agent Won't Tell You
Review: What Your Travel Agent Won't Tell You

Perhaps never before have Americans placed a higher priority on increasing their safety while traveling outside the U.S.

Bold terrorist attacks on eastern cities in 2001 heightened concerns. This timely book shows Americans how to protect themselves against a variety of dangers, including terrorists, kidnappers, thieves, pirates, and even industrial spies.

The authors, who include two former Navy Seals, intersperse thought-provoking text with detailed security checklists. Their goal? Provide a blueprint for making decisions that create a security "structure" for the American traveler. To build that structure, the writers describe tactics, techniques, and procedures to follow. Among the treasures in their security toolbox: common sense advice, and uncommon insight.

Some examples:
- Make sure you get the right kind of Visa before going abroad. Some countries arrest tourists who engage in unexpected business while using a tourist Visa to vacation.
- Assure that you have a sufficient credit line on the credit card you plan to use while traveling. In some countries, exceeding the card's credit limit can be construed as fraud.
-Book non-stop, or one-stop flights. Doing so reduces the threat of the takeover of an airplane.
- Keep a small, powerful flashlight with you at all times while traveling. Among other things, it's handy when you find yourself in a dark place.
- To be more secure in a foreign hotel room, carry one or two door wedges. They provide a cheap, albeit low-tech means of keeping intruders out.
- Find out whether your health plan covers treatment overseas.
- Ask whether your health plan covers for medical evacuation from a remote region of a country.
- When placing valuables in a hotel safe, double wrap items, jot down your signature on seams of the envelopes. Tape all seams and edges.
- As a precaution, make a tape of your voice and leave it behind. If a kidnapping occurs, the tape can be compared to any recording a kidnapper might provide.

Such intriguing suggestions come from a series of special checklists broken out by topic. Via these checklists, the authors show the would-be traveler how to employ their new security toolkit. In chapter after chapter, the writers challenge readers to reconsider how they travel. Their exhaustive body of data suggests that detailed planning and careful thinking can increase the traveler's index of safety.

Sixty pages into the book's text, the reader longs to hire a security expert to pump up the safety index on foreign travel. But that isn't the overall goal of the writers, one of whom (Monday) spent 30 years gathering and analyzing data on terrorism, and another (Ishimoto) who taught members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, CIA employees, and at both Army and Air Force special operations schools. Stubblefield served as commander of US Navy Seal Team Three. Steward, also a former Seal officer, formerly supported U.S. Department of Energy non-proliferation programs in Russia.

These security experts want to make Americans safer travelers by teaching them some of the tricks of the security craft. One section of their book tells what to do if a captured traveler finds him or herself in the middle of a hostage rescue operation. Avoiding one possible response seems critical: it carries with it a 95 percent chance of being shot. (Perhaps it is worth the price of the book to discover the dread response.)

Other chapters explain what to do when driving, riding a taxi, or staying in a hotel in a foreign country. Others give advice on traveling via ship, flight safety, and what to do if you're arrested overseas.

The book provides such rich detail, the relatives of an endangered traveler can find out how to begin to assist. Authors show how to start gathering information about the plight of their loved one. Among other things, the names of possibly helpful government agencies are given for such relatives.

Still more information is provided, including website addresses. Using those, readers can access travel advisories from the U.S. State Department, and data on foreign health issues compiled by the renowned Centers for Disease Control, and other data.

"What Your Travel Agent Won't Tell You" will haunt you. It tempts the reader to slide a small, high intensity flashlight into the carrying case for a cell phone, even for a trip across town. It reminds one that being observant about one's surroundings is valuable even when tooling about the local neighborhood on innocuous errands. Security, it suggests, is, among other things, a function of an alert state of mind.