Whenever I am going on vacation to a place I try to read a few books about its history first. It gets me psychologically situated for what I’m going to experience and I also find that people appreciate it and are even touched to find that you know a bit about their history.

Reading deepens your enjoyment of life. I don’t know if I’d enjoy travel so much if I wasn’t aware of all the layers of history beneath a place that I was visiting. I’m planning to travel through a few countries in southern Europe later this year and am reading books in anticipation.

Big fan of this approach. 

After leaving Coinbase in 2019, I spent 8 months traveling. Logged off from Twitter for a good chunk of it. Ended up reading a bunch of books.

First time in Middle East — Jordan, Egypt, Israel — and I really enjoyed these two books while there:

https://www.amazon.com/Arabs-History-Eugene-Rogan-ebook/dp/B007TV0PJE

https://www.amazon.com/Crusades-Through-Arab-Eyes-Essentials-ebook/dp/B008SBXGCW

https://danromero.org/2019-booklist.html

I did that when I traveled for 3 months around India in 2012. I felt like I was a mechanic who looked at the machine and could understand how it works.

Planned to do a trip around China in a similar way. I read Tai Pan and a few non fiction books, even spent a year learning the language, but then the Covid happened :(

Building @kiwi 
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One thing I can recommend is learning at least conversational Spanish and going to Cuba.

The traveling experience is 10X better when you can chat with locals and learn how this country works in practice.