This was an April Fools' Day joke article. We amused ourselves tremendously in making it. Please refrain from dragging out the silliness and plunge forward on some real articles!

Attention! Captain Obvious will now explain all the things you really need to know about travel in exotic destinations.

Webster's dictionary defines the verb travel as "to go on or as if on a trip or a tour", which is essentially a clunky way of saying "to travel". A dictionary is a type of book that lists words, such as "loquacious" and their meanings, such as "a unit of length or height equivalent to 1000 metres". A book was a type of early website made from dead trees. Webster - no relation to websites - was a man who thought he knew how to spell better than he really did. But enough about words and their collectors: this article is about travel, which we already defined above, so you need to pay better attention if you're going to get the most out of this Wikivoyage April Fools Day article, which is about travel.

When you want to travel, you should probably have a particular destination or a set of places in mind that you want to spend a particular amount of time in. There is only a finite amount of time and effort available to travel, after all.

The globe is divided into continents, which contain countries. These countries may then contain states, provinces, counties, and municipalities. Some places have large cities; others are large expanses of rural or agricultural land. Still others are vast uncultivated areas that may be particularly tricky to get in, around, and out of.

Wherever you go, there you are. People in other destinations may look, sound, feel, and taste different from what you're used to, but remember, they're still people. Unless they're Klingons, but that's a different article.

Climate

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Some destinations experience a phenomenon called weather. This is basically the planet’s mood: it can be hot, cold, or the planet can throw a tantrum and give us storms and cyclones. Different parts of the world experience different cycles of the planet's mood swings, though some more extreme than others, with the tropics generally being a sweaty bitch and the poles just being icy poles. Such cycles are called seasons. Depending on the place, there could be a winter when it's colder and darker and a summer when it's warmer and brighter. Other places have wet and dry seasons: they see lots of rain and humidity during the wet season, and then turn bone dry in the dry season, and become either cold or hot.

Helpful tips for dealing with the weather:

• If it's sunny, wear sunscreen.
• If it's rainy, use an umbrella.
• If it's cold, wear clothes.
• If it's hot, drink water.
• If it's humid and muggy, tough luck staying cool outdoors, but it'll probably be pouring rain soon.
• If it's hailing, it has confused you with a cab. Try taking the "TAXI" sign off your head. If it is still hailing and everything is black and white, you've once again stepped into a time machine and ended up in Germany, about one hundred years back in time. You should figure how to get away from there ASAP.

Somewhat similar to the weather are the phenomena day and night. During the day there's light, and during the night, dark. Generally it's warmer during the day and cooler during the night. In some places of the world there may also be light during the night and dark during the day. In those places it's often cool or cold.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET?! DO YOU??!!

As the most efficient method of human communication, talking is important to travellers. Whether you need to loudly call home while in a packed train carriage, or ask the hovercraft rental man why his hovercraft is full of eels, talking has you covered. In order to talk, you need to move your mouth (i.e. your lips, teeth and tongue) while exhaling language nuggets called words. It helps to organise your thoughts when speaking, otherwise sense might make not it.

When visiting exotic locales, you may notice the people there seem to talk complete gibberish. DO NOT BE ALARMED! You've just discovered a foreign language. There are many types of language in the world, and it's a little known fact that most of them are foreign.

It goes without saying that foreign people don't usually understand English better when you speak slow-ly-and-LOUD-LY. But it must be added that the previous sentence did perhaps warrant mentioning after all, because many travellers who are ignorant of other languages fall into the trap of assuming foreigners are simply idiots. But this is not true, that is to say false.

Before you go, it is useful to have an idea of where you are going. For example you will often need tickets for travel, and to buy tickets you will need to tell the person or company selling them where you would like to go.

It is important to pack before travelling to an exotic destination. Here's a good starting point:

• Clothes are important. Remember to ask your mother which way you should put on your underwear; alternatively, consider traveling "lite" and going commando. One more thing, it's a bit of a disappointment if you are about to depart but keep looking for where the heck your hat (or another piece of clothing) is for so long that you miss the bus, train or the like. A hint: you have already put it on.
• Money is convenient too. If you don't have any money, you might want to do a paid job for a while first.
• Identification may be required for travel. It's also useful if you find yourself forgetting who you are.
• Some sort of container to pack things in is useful – unless you're okay with carrying everything by hand and pissing off every single person around you.
• Don't forget your nose or other breathing apparatus as you're addicted to oxygen way more than you actually think.

Travelling means going somewhere. So you have to move yourself from where you are now to somewhere else.

Tourist attractions often have attractions that are attractive for tourists. Attractions may also be attractive to attractive tourists, but this is not guaranteed. Some attractions are too heavy to be carried to museums – and some of the best like the Pyramids of Giza can also fall into that category.

To see the attraction, first make sure your eyes are open. You often have to purchase a ticket. Tickets can be bought with local currency or credit cards, except when they can't be. You may need to queue up to get in, buy a ticket in advance, both of these, or neither.

Once you get to the attraction, you may see signs telling you what to do or not do. Here are some common signs and what they mean:

Some signs are just pictures. Here are some common ones:

• 
  First three books in the Tintin series banned here
• 
  Caution: hot cinnamon rolls
• 
  Corpse disposal
• 
  Surf's up, get your friends
• 
  Hot air fanned at pirates and people walking to the right
• 
  Free theme park ride at the mercy of cattle

Always be careful to heed signage. If you don't, you may get fined, caned or fall into a pit of hot lava, or not. At the end of the day it's a sign, not a cop, unless it's a sign for cops.

There are lots of things to do, regardless of where you are! In fact you are doing one or several things all the time. Right now you are reading this - or listening to it being read to you - while sitting, standing, lying down, standing on your hands or whatever. Maybe you are also having a snack or a drink while glancing out the window, listening to some music or maybe to your neighbor's dog barking. See? No, this is 'Do'.

Not everything you can do at home is OK elsewhere, though, and some things you can do are not really accepted anywhere - even at home. Just ask someone who has woken up in a drunk tank.

If you want to learn something, you could try learning something on your own, whether through reading, seeing, hearing, or doing. In other cases, you might want to take a particular class on it. These are generally found at various schools that offer post-secondary education.

If you don't have any money to travel, you probably should doing a paid job for a while first beforehand, if you made it this far down the article.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services. The act of exchanging money for goods and services is called buying – or in simpler terms, you give people money, and they will give you or let you do things in return. If you lack money, you may want to provide some of those goods or provide some services first, such as a paid job. You can also obtain money from the black market (i.e. through means that are not legal), but that too requires providing some goods or service first, and may potentially get your hands cuffed by people in fancy uniforms.

Different countries or regions of the world use different types of money. This is called currency. Some currencies are valued higher than others; some can be piss weak that they are worth almost nothing. Local shops generally prefer local currency, so if you brought the wrong kind, you will need to swap it at a bank or exchange booth.

Once you have the correct currency, you can finally walk into a shop and request services or purchase goods. Most prices are non-negotiable, but they sometimes can be if it's a bazaar. When exchanging money for services, you can hand over enough money to make the vendor happy and it's all sunshine and roses from there. When purchasing goods, hand over enough money to the shopkeeper and you may leave with whatever item you wanted. If you walk away with whatever item and don't pay for it, that is called stealing, which is frowned upon by almost everyone and may also potentially get your hands cuffed by people in fancy uniforms.

Some places allow payment using fancy plastic rectangles with chips inside them. (No, those chips are not edible; sorry to disappoint you.) These rectangular objects are called cards. Cards can either be credit or debit. A debit card allows you to pay directly from your bank account; a credit card, on the other hand, allows you to pay with somebody else's money (or future money from your bank account) and may charge you interest – make sure you pay back, or expect a bunch of grumpy old folks to yell at you over the phone for not paying back. Some people also store these cards on a phone or a watch – yes, that's a thing now.

Once you've paid, congratulations! You can now walk out having completed what is called shopping.

Most destinations will sell something called food; "food" is to be eaten. You can either eat "food" with your bare hands or using utensils. The most common utensils include fork, knife, spoon, fork and knife, fork and spoon, fork, knife and spoon, and spork, depending on what you're eating and where in the world you are.

Some parts of the world also consume "food" with chopsticks, which consist of two sticks of equal shape and size – don't use these to poke somebody, as this can be dangerous because it might hurt them or provoke them into fighting you. If this seems strange, as well it might, just imagine how you might feel if you were a local yokel somewhere, and a tall, handsome travelling stranger poked you with a chopstick. Picture the scene: you're at a local restaurant, eating local food, possibly using chopsticks for their intended purpose, then some upstart foreigner jabs you in the ribs (in your body, not on your plate) with their chopstick. Hard to believe, I know, but you wouldn't like it. Not even a little. It would be like a short, semi-sharp jab, as if from a thin wooden implement traditionally used for eating. In terms of pain, it would rank 3/10 before rapidly subsiding to 0.5/10 and then 0. While not the worst thing to happen in your life, it could easily spoil an otherwise pleasant morning. What we're doing right now is called empathy - the ability to place yourself in the shoes of another that's innate to most humans other than psychopaths (not to be confused with cycle paths). Anyway, empathy proves beyond a reasonable doubt that being chopsticked is fairly unpleasant. So don't even think about poking people with chopsticks. It's not big, it's not clever, it's not even that evil. It's just pointless pokiness, for the sake of being poky. One more time: chopsticks are for eating, not for poking.

With that being said, food often gets cold and bad when it gets old. The timeline depends on the type of food, the temperature (see the weather section above) and many other things. If you eat bad food you may get sick. Which is bad.

If you meet certain animals like sharks it's possible that you will be the food, and they will take care of the eating - or at least they'd enjoy a tasty bite of you. This is good, because sharks are endangered and by feeding them you're both helping a shark in need fill its belly and also killing one of the biggest threats to sharks.

Everyone needs to drink, but some people have a drinking problem. If you try to drink hot coffee in an airplane that is experiencing turbulence, you might experience a drinking problem, too. We also advise not drinking water, since every person who has drunk it in the past has died; moreover, it's a highly corrosive substance that's caused calamitous devastation in every flood, hurricane and tsunami in history, and there can be all kinds of caustic chemicals dissolved in it.

A wise woman once said that life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get. Sometimes it will be really sweet, other times it will be really bitter.

Don't stumble down dark alleyways at night when drunk. You might trip, fall, and get a boo-boo on your knee, and that could hurt.

Don't stumble down well-lit streets in the broad daylight when sober, either. You might trip, fall, and get a boo-boo on your knee, and that could hurt.

By visiting an exotic destination, your animal magnetism and innate sense of style are powerfully multiplied to the extent that strangers speaking fluent English will approach you in the street, tell you that you are a handsome man/beautiful lady, and offer you a special price on carpets, gems or artworks, topped off with drinks at a private club. It's useful to have money on hand for this occasion (see Buy), and if you don't, you have two kidneys for a reason.

If you're having sex with strangers, use protection. Also, always brush your teeth, as this increases the odds of you having sex with strangers. This works even better if you brush your teeth before the sex part.

Make sure to drink water — this is critically important for your health and you could die after six days without it, and may even suffer health effects before then. That's in spite of the remarks in "Drink" about people who've drunk water all dying...

Breathing is important. It is more difficult for your body to function without oxygen in your lungs. If you're going outside for an extended period of time, wear sunscreen — the sun is 93 million miles away but it can still harm you!

If you suddenly find yourself unable to breathe, without a pulse, or lacking in major appendages (legs, arms, head), keep calm and dial local emergency services at 000, 110, 112, 911, 999 or 0118 999 881 999 119 7253.

It should be noted that locals usually don't like it when you insult their mothers or stab them with pointy objects. Consider complimenting their mothers or giving them a friendly pat on the head instead, although in some uptight places, they don't like this either.

Some, but not all, locals abstain from alcohol because their religion says they should. Some locals, but again not the majority, pretend not to drink, but are more than happy to do so in private. Some locals, which means less than one-hundred percent of locals, just DGAF* and will happily chug down a pint of antifreeze in public. To find out what flavor of local you're dealing with, offer them a cool, refreshing locally-brewed brewski and see what happens!

*(don't give a fuck, i.e. they're not bothered)

Respect the calendar. This tip may especially be useful for American tourists as many countries follow different date formats. Hence, some countries might write November 11th as 11/11, while Americans switch the date format around so it becomes 11/11. Some countries also use ISO date formatting, so it becomes 11/11. The date format, however, doesn't even matter because at the end of the day, it is night.

You may need to connect to the phone or internet from time to time. When connecting by phone, pay attention to what area code or phone network you may need to connect to. To connect with the internet, you'll want to get access to Wi-Fi.

If you are having trouble coping with something, most destinations have religious services that you can use, as well as local newspaper and radio stations, but they are not always available in particular languages. Some larger cities also have consular assistance available, but not always. For example, if you lose your passport at 3 AM and need it now, you are stuck...

• If you're sick of travelling in exotic destinations, you can go home. You know, to that house you left behind when you went on your trip. You forgot which one it was already? It's the one on the right just past the gas station on the east side of town. Just make sure you use your keys to get in, as you don't want to be arrested breaking the windows of your own home.

• Or if you feel you have learned this article by now, you can have a sneak peek at the next course if you are brave.