Book excerpt: Does this book really have over 127 tips and tools for planning an international trip? Well, let's just say we stopped counting at that number. You see, this little handbook is packed with over 127 insights, websites, and resources that are essential for any traveler planning to go abroad. Are the tips and tools really secret? Actually yes, they are secret-at least no one told us about them before we journeyed abroad and we had done a lot of research and preparation. We had to discover many of them the hard way as we traveled around the world to more than 70 countries. These are the secrets we wished we had found, in a concise and consolidated book like this one, before we went abroad. Why did we write this book? We love to travel, and the more we traveled the world, the more we learned how to travel smarter, safer, and cheaper. When friends realized how much traveling we had done, the more questions they would ask us about how to travel. We soon realized we could answer just about every question that came our way. That is when we decided to share our travel knowledge as a way to help, enable, and inspire others to travel abroad. From that desire sprang over twenty classes that we teach in person and online, as well as this handbook, the first book in our Travel Smart Strategies series. Now you can travel smarter, safer, and cheaper too. Happy Travels!