Do all the people you know travel? Are they already asking you to join them and that you are already itching yourself to? However, a trip requires careful planning. Before you pack your bags and hitch hike with your friends, Westhill Consulting Travel and Tours has listed some important steps you can take to prepare for a safe trip anywhere: Be Aware of Any Travel Alerts and Warnings for Your Destination The State Department may issue Travel Warnings to recommend postponing travel to a country because of widespread civil unrest, dangerous conditions, terrorist activity or, in some cases, because the your country has no diplomatic relations with the country and may have great difficulty in assisting foreign citizens in distress. Travel Alerts disseminate information quickly about terrorist threats or other relatively short-term or transnational conditions that could pose significant risks to you and affect your travel plans. Do You Have All Required Travel Documents? Most foreign countries require a valid passport to enter and leave. Some countries may allow you to enter with only a birth certificate, or with a birth certificate and a driver's license, but all persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling by air, must present a valid passport to reenter the United States. Some countries have the strictest policies in knowing fraud passports entering their country. What about your children? Some countries have instituted requirements to help prevent child abductions and may require travelers to present proof of relationship to the children and evidence of consent from any non-accompanying parent(s). Visit our child abduction country information pages for information about your destination. When does your passport expire? Some countries require that a traveler's passport be valid for at least six months beyond the dates of the trip. Contact the embassy of your foreign destination for more information. For

Now that we are nearing the second half of the year and spent the first half working hard, it may be good to spend some part of your time once every month in visiting wondrous places in Asia. Westhill Consulting Travel and Tours have listed a special place to spend your weekend at. July - Sumatra, Indonesia Sumatra is the second island popular for surfing with the most number of surf spots, with 18 altogether and an island away from the capital, Jakarta, Indonesia. The common time for surfing is around May to September with the trade winds blowing from east to south-east. From October to April, winds tend to come from the west to north-west, so the east coast breaks get the offshore winds. August - Chinatown, Singapore/ Chinese Enclaves, Malaysia If you are up for a little visit to the dead, you should join the celebration of Hungry Ghost Festival in basically almost all of countries with Chinatown of their own. In Asia, the celebration of the event is widely awesome in Singapore and Malaysia. The Hungry Ghost Festival celebrates the Taoist belief in the afterlife. Chinese communities in Malaysia and Singapore believe that the gates of Hell open on the 7th lunar month, freeing the spirits of the dead to roam in the world of the living. The living, in turn, must make offerings of food and burnt prayer money to the souls of the dead to appease them. They shouldn't show complaints or heavy feelings, though, as ghost are said to hunt those that do. September - Borneo Malaysian Borneo is one of those rare places where you can sense the adventure in the air, along with the green smells from thousands of miles of rainforest just waiting to be explored. Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, and a virtual paradise on earth for anyone who shares a love for plants, wildlife, and adventure. October - Beijing, China Asia in October can very enjoyable; th