Hawaii Vacation Gifts by Double Brush-Hawaiian Gifts & Blog

How to Avoid Possible Hotel Key Card Rip Offs

My Uncle forwarded the following information to me in an email today. I thought it was important information for all of my blog readers who travel and stay in hotels to know about. Please forward this blog post to all of your traveling family and friends.

HOTEL KEY CARDS

Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

Answer:
a. Customer's name
b. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest's information is electronically "overwritten" on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them into the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader.

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department

PLEASE FORWARD to friends and family.

Tape this Fruit to Your Navel to Prevent Motion Sickness

My husband and I were watching Jimmy Kimmel Live and Marilu Henner was on. She was the actress from the old tv series "Taxi" and is also an author of several health related books. (We rarely if ever watch this show but my husband was waiting to see the man with the longest leg hair--which was 6 inches by the way!)

Marilu was talking to Jimmy about the best thing for motion sickness. She said to tape a umeboshi plum directly to your navel. I couldn't find a video or transcript of the show but did find this interview with Harris Online where Marilu Henner talked about it.

Henner: ...But do you know what the best remedy is for seasickness? I know you're going to laugh, but this really, really works. Do you know what an umeboshi plum is?

Harris: No, I have no idea.

Henner: An umeboshi plum is a little Japanese salt plum. You get it at a health food store. The best thing for motion sickness is to take one of these plums -- which is great for anything, for balancing, for hangovers, for any time you're feeling out of sorts, you take one of these plums and eat it -- but for seasickness, you actually tape it to your belly button.

Harris: [laughs]

Henner: I'm not kidding you! This really, really works.

Harris: And the idea being, if they see you with the plum taped to your belly button, they don't let you on the boat, and that way you can't get seasick?

Henner: No, it really works. If you're going to have motion sickness on an airplane or anything, just tape that old plum to your belly button.

A word of advice I would like to add is to buy the natural colored (kinda brownish green) pickled ume or umeboshi plum and not the traditional dyed red colored umeboshi plum--you usually see them on musubi or onigiri (Japanese rice balls) like our original handmade beeswax musubi candle pictured above. I love Japanese rice "balls" which are never round (unless it is for a funeral service), and usually hand shaped into a triangle shape that fits into the cook's palm of her hand.

Anyway, the red dye used on the ume plum stains rice red, so you would look strange if you developed a radiating red ring of color around your navel.

If you are intrigued enough to try this natural remedy for motion sickness, please come back and share your results!

I posted earlier about another fruit that you can eat to prevent jet lag, and it is not recommended that you put it in your belly button. Click here to find out what fruit it is.

Should You Be Afraid of Flying During a Lightning Storm?

I was watching 20/20--the ABC television show last night and they did a story called, "Lightning Can Crash an Airplane: Myth or Truth?"

Do you know if it is safe to fly in an airplane during a thunderstorm with lightning?

It turns out that lightning has crashed many planes, but that happened during the 1940's to 1960's. Thanks to scientist at NASA who worked on a project to study lightning strikes on airplanes, NO commercial airline has crashed in the United States because of a lightning strike since 1963!

The NASA Storm Hazards project had scientists purposefully fly into nearly 1,500 thunderstorms and experience more than 700 lightning strikes so they could study the effects. Due to the project's discoveries, engineers that design airplanes were able to make improvements and develop new methods to diffuse the destructive force of lightning strikes.

Read more details at ABC News: Can Lightning Take Down an Airplane?

Read our other related lightning post, "Did You Know You Could Lose Your Computer from Lightning?"

Avoid Holiday Traffic While on Vacation

With the holidays fast approaching, many people will be driving to their holiday destinations or driving around once they arrive to their holiday destination vacation. To make your travel trip more pleasant and avoid car traffic jams, accidents, and road construction--I will tell you where you can get the best up to date information on the web.

Go to maps.yahoo.com It is the only site with live traffic updates, and live construction updates. It is fairly easy to use and figure out. Fill in the address, city, state, or zip code than click on the "go" button. A large area map appears with a window of detailed map which you can move around. You can also zoom way in or way out.

Look for the color coded alert icons for minor, moderate, and severe incidents.

I think the yahoo maps work for most major cities in the world.

Hope this bit of information will save you time and make your holidays that much more enjoyable!

View and Share Travel Videos from around the World

Are you interested in viewing travel videos from other travelers across the globe?

At Travelistic videos for travelers you can explore more than 5000 travel videos from around the world. You also can share the travel videos with your friends or upload your own.

It is a very user friendly site with a clickable map of the world on the home page, and how many videos are from each country. The most travel videos are from the United States with 1565 videos, followed by Europe 929 videos, Asia 740 videos, Canada 272 videos, and other places have a less amount of videos. There is also a search feature.

Currently there are only 44 videos about Hawaii which is surprising considering that over 7 million tourist visit Hawaii annually!

You can view these places in Hawaii:

Haleiwa (1 video)
Hana (2 videos)
Hilo (1 video)
Honokaa (1 video)
Honolulu (23 videos)
Kailua (6 videos)
Kailua in Hawaii County (2 videos)
Kapaa (1 video)
Lahaina (5 videos)
Naalehu (1 video)
Poipu (1 video)

Find the Best Last Minute Travel Deals

If you want to or need to travel soon, check out the last minute travel deals at Smarter Travel. You can find a wealth of information on last minute travel deals for airfares, hotels, car rentals, vacation packages, and cruises. The Smarter Travel staff posts up to the date deals such as the new Aloha Airlines Hawaii fares from $159.00 one way, with a review on the pros and cons of the offer.

It is a dense site with numerous ways to search out travel information and travel deals. You can see deals at a glance, compare prices, read travel guides, news and advice, check out specialty travel for seniors, students, frequent flyers, weekend getaways, and much, much, mucho much more.

Bed and Breakfast Locator for Hawaii and the World

If you find hotels and resorts can be a bit impersonal or too large, maybe a bed and breakfast or b & b place would be more to your liking. However, many of these establishments are small and run by the owner, so finding one could prove to be more difficult.

Bed and Breakfast has come to the rescue! This site is a wonderful resource for finding and researching bed and breakfast places in countries across the globe! Each place is presented with extensive information covering the type of establishment, property details, and room rates. There are also maps, photos, contact info and website links.

BedandBreakfast.com is a comprehensive worldwide listing of bed and breakfasts, B&B homestays, country inns, urban bed and breakfasts, guest houses, lodges, cabins, historic hotels, small resorts, guest ranches, farmhouse accommodations, and working farm and ranch vacations. B&B database searches allow you to find the ideal bed and breakfast inn, whether you are looking by location, amenities, online bookings, recipes, special packages, last-minute availability, or BedandBreakfast.com gift certificate acceptance.

I checked the Hawaii bed and breakfast listings and there were quite a few for Oahu, Hawaii island, Maui and Kauai. However when I checked their Lanai and Molokai bed and breakfast listings, they were all for b and b's on the island of Maui!

Spend Your Hawaii Vacation in a Green Hotel

Consider staying at a "Green" hotel on your next vacation to Hawaii or anywhere else in the world.

Whether it's a weekend getaway or a week-long stay, make sure your hotel has the same green habits as you do at home. Since hotels are such large consumers of resources--the hospitality industry spends $3.7 billion a year on energy and typical hotels use 218 gallons of water per day per occupied room--it is especially important to support environmentally conscious businesses whenever possible.

The Green Guide to Finding a Green Hotel list several sites which offer searchable eco international directories based on different certification programs for the travel and tourism industry.

If the Hawaii hotel or any hotel you want to stay at is not listed in any of these directories, you can ask them directly about how they handle different environmental issues such as how do they handle their trash and recyclables.

If more hotel guests let their hotels know that being green was important to them, I am sure that more hotels would make a greater effort to be environmentally friendly in their practices.

Take Your Whole Family on Vacation -- Pets Included

If you are planning to go on a family vacation, you no longer have to leave your beloved pets at home or in a boarding kennel. Times have changed and many hotels and bed and breakfast places now welcome you and your pets.

At the Pets Welcome site, you can find more than 25,000 hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, campgrounds, cabins & cottages and other places that can accommodate pets.

You can make reservations directly through their site for discounted pet friendly accommodations, but they recommend that you call the hotel to double-check on their pets policy as things sometimes change before information gets updated to the site.

At Pets Welcome there is even a list of pet friendly hotel chains such as Comfort Inn, Holiday Inn, La Quinta, Marriott Hotels and Resorts, Motel 6, Quality Inn and more.

Pets Welcome also has a travel tips section -- the category on traveling by air with your pet has the rules and guidelines from several different popular airlines posted.

If you are planning to bring your pet to Hawaii with you on vacation, you have to read our post on the STRICT Hawaii Animal Quarantine Laws.

Have you ever travelled with your pet, and where did you stay? Can you offer any tips on travelling with a pet?

Keep up with the Latest Passport Requirements

If you are confused or frustrated with the changing passport requirements, help is a click away.

The Travel Industry Association and the Travel Business Roundtable are the sponsors of an informative site called Get A Passport Now.

In an effort to enhance security and efficiency at U.S. borders, the U.S. government is now enforcing new passport requirements for all travelers entering or re-entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. Travel between the U.S. and U.S. territories (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) will not be affected.

There are links for U.S., Canadian, and Mexican citizens on how and where to obtain a passport. For U.S. citizens only, there are links for "How to get a passport quickly" and "For additional assistance expediting a passport."

If you are an American reading this blog post, just come to Hawaii! You do not need a passport to visit the 50th state of the United States!!