This post reminded me of my (one and only) trip to Taiwan with a coworker. After we arrived at the hotel I was absolutely tired because I hadn't slept well on the plane, but my coworker wanted to walk around the area, so we did.

In my tired eyes everything looked the same - all the signs were shades of green and in Chinese (which I can't read). After a while I had absolutely no idea where I was. When we decided to head back to the hotel my coworker said "I think the hotel is that way". I found myself in a state of tired mild panic, and had to simply trust my coworker. We wandered a bit, but eventually he found the hotel.

A number of years later I started working for a German company and made lots of trips to Germany. Because of my China experience I NEVER walked around solo without a global compass and a GPS 60csx with a Germany city micro SD card (shared with my NUVI GPS for driving around) and a pre-captured HOTEL waypoint in my pocket. I only had to pull out the GPS a few times, but was glad I had it when I did.

One of those times was in downtown Regensburg, and my Garmin 60csx GPS had a terrible time locking and keeping a lock on to the satellites. I assume it was because of the narrow streets and and several story buildings. I had to move to more open spaces.

BTW, if you have a chance to go I HIGHLY recommend visiting the old Regensburg city. For several reasons it is one of the few large cities that did not get "modernized" after the war.

I'd also traveled to Mexico a fair number of times - and once to Brazil, but due to my own personal concerns about safety/security, I never traveled far from the hotel without a local who knew what they were doing. I've been told that in some places I visited I was being overly cautious, but in others it was very much appropriate.

Ken K.