If you're planning to travel abroad this summer, you should have a new passport in the works now. If not, don't despair -- you can expedite a passport application; costs some dollars, but you may get a passport the same day you apply and you don't need to use an extra-bucks passport expediting service. Find out what other travel documents you may need and get 'em rolling so you can get packing:

• All About All the Travel Documents

Similar stuff: How to get your first passport | How to rush a passport application | About travel immunization records | Passport rules and news

Lots of you are turning thoughts to how you can help rebuild cyclone-struck Myanmar and the areas of China hit by a recent earthquake, and we've got a few ideas for immediate ways you can assist victims in need of aid in Myanmar and China:

• How to help in Myanmar and China in 2008

^{Related reading: Student Travel Volunteering}

I haven't been to Paris since the city's smoking ban outlawed puffing in all public places, including restaurants and bars, as of January 2 (offices and public buildings have been smoke-free since February of 2007), but About.com's resident Parisian, Courtney Traub, says citizens are largely making a remarkably smooth transition to a smokeless City of Light. One sector's apparently not so glad to see the ban, however: hookah bars, according to the International Herald Tribune, which reports that the establishments established for smoking aren't faring so well with the smoking ban, since the shisha bars (which are indeed, as the article notes, hot with hip students), are for -- well -- smoking, and only 20 percent of any cafe's useable space can now be used for smoking.

Okay: would you go to a smoking bar and ask for the nonsmoking area? Yeah, not so much. Read more:

• IHT: Hookah bars in Paris fight smoking ban

More about smoking bans overseas -- CBS: Global Smoking Bans Map | RIA Novosti: Russia Joins Global Anti-smoking Convention | Slovenia News 7: 80% of EU Citizens Support Smoking Bans | About.com:Smoking Ban is a Success in Paris (Mon dieu!)

What else can you do and *not* do around the world?

• Countries banning cell phone use in cars
• Drinking ages around the world
• Countries blocking VoIP

Road trips are a time honored way to get summer's motor running, and it's time to start thinking about heading out on the highway -- where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Get some ideas, get out the maps, and get ready -- how about a test ride this weekend? You don't need to go far to get away, and you can even stay for free.

• Road Trip Planning 101

Similar stuff:

• Top Money Saving Road Trip Tips
• US Road Atlases
• Real Road Food
• Road Trip Photos: States Less Traveled
• How to Calculate Gas Mileage
• AAA

^{Photo: Brooks Crislip}

Life can be unsafe on the road. You could get robbed, shanghaied, or accidentally let a cockroach run up your nose. Read more...

I've been watching with interest as Andy, the Hobo Traveler extraordinaire, has been compiling a Read more...

Any time's a good time to call your mother, but Mother's Day (May 11) is an especially good occasion, even if the call is of the dialing for dollars nature. It's also a good opportunity to learn how to get hooked up with a Skype account, or some VoIP solution, for cheap international phone calls. You can also pick up calling cards for ten bucks in most countries, buy an international calling card before you leave home, or rent a GSM international phone for use abroad. Just don't use your US cell phone outside the US -- way too spendy.

• US Cell Phones Abroad (Or Why I Love Skype) - learn about Skype vs cell phones
• How to make international phone calls -- finding country codes | Learn about buying and renting international cell phones

^{Photo - Carlos 'n Charlie's, Acapulco, Explorica Mexico Tour 2005 - © Kathleen Crislip}

US travel giant AAA reported Friday that 25.1 million Americans are expected to be traveling internationally this summer, an increase over last summer's 24.5 million despite a Read more...

Great post recently from Greg Watts at Following the Equator: in "Let's Go 1881," he likens some European Grand Tour travel advice unearthed from the New York Times' archives to today's student-penned "Let's Go" guidebooks, which are billed as giving travelers the "freshest coverage, insider tips, and an authentic perspective."

The 1881 article, partially subtitled (in the period's caps), "THE AMERICAN IN EUROPE - PEOPLE WHO SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT TRAVEL," includes in the author's estimation of the latter those who "...are unsuited to the variety, the singular usages, and (to them) Bohemianism of certain phases of foreign life." Not to beat this tourist-traveler horse too hard, but it's true that tourists sometimes find life abroad disagreeable in the many ways in which it is not like home; travelers, on the other hand, delight in the difference. Fun read; check it out:

• "Let's Go" 1881

Related reading: Best Backpacker Guidebooks | WYSETC: Tourist, Traveler or Backpacker?

_{Screenshot courtesy New York Times}

You should check out a piece posted from the UK Times Online ("Whatever Happened to Youth Hostels?") on YHA's newest London digs, the YHA London Central, in order to see the video, which is a great view of life in a modern hostel. The reporter seems surprised at the luxurious life possible in backpacker central West End, but this is the way new hostels in Western city centers are rolling: more en suite rooms (with bathrooms), wifi, nice kitchens and common rooms. Worth checking out to see how a spendy (18 GB pounds per night for a dorm) London hostel shapes up in the 21st century.

And in reference to other centuries, the vid's voice over does some back in the day stuff when discussing how hostel guests once cleaned the whole joint, and the final line delivers an interesting judgment: "I can't see this lot reaching for the duster" (shot of typical hostel guests looking normal, but perhaps pampered slackers in the editorial thinking here).

Related reading:

• Hostels 101
• Hostel Photos
• Hostel FAQ
• What's a flashpacker?
• London Student Travel Guide

Photo (Bunk Brisbane hostel pool) © Kathleen Crislip | Sydney YHA photos | Katoomba YHA Photos