Don't be Borat!

If you've seen or heard about the Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan "moviefilm," you know it is about a journalist who leaves home and makes some terrible cultural blunders while travelling across the United States. Borat has appalling biases, questionable hygiene, and a knack for offending crowds. You probably won't do anything nearly as awful as he does while you travel, but you can use his mistakes as reminders of what not to do when traveling.

I've prepared 10 Travel Lessons To Be Learned from Borat. Use them. Borat teaches more about us as travelers than he teaches about American culture . . . but there is a lot of that in the movie as well!

A couple more notes on Borat. The Borat character was supposedly based upon a Russian citizen. Some shots of "Kazakhstan" are actually Romanian villages. And fans have described Borat's greeting (Jagshemash) as "garbled Polish." But will you meet anyone like Borat in Eastern Europe? While there are biases everywhere, and some of the most widespread in Eastern Europe may be against Jewish people, Roma, and homosexuals, it is unlikely that you will meet anyone quite as over-the-top as Borat. Eastern Europeans are sincere, warm, generous, and concerned. Don't be like Borat and you'll experience the best they have to offer.