A comment left on this past week’s J’adore #16 regarding the hilarious napkin for cabbies, reminded me of another travel tip to share.
When I was in Suzhou for nine weeks I sometimes found myself either alone or in a small group of non-Chinese-speaking colleagues. The inhabitants of Suzhou at the time did not speak much English outside of hotels so to get to certain places and back and forth to the hotel we had notecards written out saying what we wanted or where we wanted to go. I had them all together in a little travel photo album and it worked brilliantly!
Also, from J’adore #2 is the Point it: Traveller’s Language Kit
which I think would have been indispensable while I was in China and would be a great supplement to the notecards.
How about you? Got any tricks for getting around language barriers?
Katherina
Tuesday 12th of April 2011
When I was in Hong Kong - I used those notecards too !! I always asked in reception for someone to write the name of the hotel in chinese, and also asked them to write Lan Kwai Fong, the two most important places for my short stay in HK.
Andi
Tuesday 12th of April 2011
@Katherina, I had a whole book of options and it certainly came in handy!
Andi of My Beautiful Adventures
Tuesday 12th of April 2011
Ooooh great tip!
Andi
Tuesday 12th of April 2011
@AndiP, thanks!