Roamin’ Halliday Tips from a Pro

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But whatever your budget, be sure it matches your travel partner’s.

“You’re constantly hemorrhaging money, and if you haven’t agreed in advance on where it should go, you’ll be fighting in the street about whether to take the $5 or the $4 hotel room,” she says.

On the other hand, if you’ve got the funds to blow on beer and air-conditioned bus tickets, go for it.

“It’s your fun money. Don’t come home with it.”

Nickname: MacGyver

Be sure to size up your potential partner’s resourcefulness.

“Ideally, you want someone who can relocate bones, suck the venom out of a snakebite and figure out a Cambodian bus schedule,” says Halliday.

“And at least one of you has to be willing to mix it up with the locals. One of my old boyfriends was really socially reticent, and if we’d both been like that, we would have been stuck with no way to open a can of tuna in Greece when that was all the food we had.”

No Crybabies

“He or she should be a strong walker and an adventurous eater,” Halliday advises.

“You don’t want to be in a Vietnamese night market full of noodle stands with a whiny Atkins Dieter.” Unless you’re one yourself, of course.

“Find someone who’s finicky about the same things you are, and you can share the fun of being lactose-intolerant in Switzerland.”

Seeing Her in the Morning—Hanging Over the Toilet

Anyone who says travel is romantic hasn’t been drinking the local water.

“All of a sudden your sexy traveling partner is erupting at both ends, and you have to be there to hold her hair back,” Halliday warns.

Getting sick on the road makes for a colorful story later, but at the time it’s nothing but misery that only a strong-stomached companion can soothe.

“[You’re] lying there moaning, ‘If only I had Gran-Gran’s cool white sheets and some saltines,’ when in reality you’re in a filthy hotel room with drunk Australians screaming next door.”

For this eventuality, Halliday prescribes steamed rice, bananas and weak tea.

Just Say “Well, OK”

You’re in India to practice yoga and photograph wild elephants, while your friend is there to drink as many grass milkshakes as her rupees will buy. What to do?

Halliday advises letting the little pothead go her own way, with precautions: “Pin a label with her name and guesthouse name to her shirt before she goes out, and persuade her not to overdo it the night before your flight home.”

More Than a Friend: An Alibi

Halliday has fond memories of one of her own illicit episodes, which started when she and her husband, Greg— that’s Greg Kotis, co-creator of hit musical "Urinetown"—had their honeymoon flight to Paris interrupted by a two-day layover in Amsterdam thanks to Halliday’s insistence on flying budget Pakistan International Airlines.

“We had fun anyway, and I brought some pot into Paris, so we were walking stoned around the Latin Quarter and just having a great time.”

There was half a thimbleful of grass left when they were due to return home, and Halliday became possessed with the desire to smuggle it into the US.

“Greg was begging me not to do it, but I had heard a good trick from this British guy—you stuff the pot into a straw, seal off the ends and stick it into your toothpaste tube.

So I did it, and during the flight home I looked over at Greg, who was writing in his journal what turned out to be [our] cover story: ‘We met this wonderful Canadian person, he was so nice, he gave us his toothpaste when he heard we were out of toothpaste...’

“Of course because we were on Pakistan Airlines, when we got to JFK it was like “Midnight Express” going through customs. An agent actually started looking through my bags, and I blurted out, ‘We’re just coming home from our honeymoon!’ He gave me this long look, said ‘Congratulations’ and waved us through.”

Respect the Newbie

Drug smuggling may be outside most travelers’ comfort zone, but even if none of your vices will get you arrested, Halliday advises cutting your less-adventurous, less-traveled friend some slack.

“When you’re with someone who’s been there before, you don’t want them saying things like, ‘Oh, that beach was perfect when I was here five years ago, but now it’s totally spoiled.’ No one wants to hear that shit, so when I’m tempted to do it I just put a flip-flop in my mouth and bite down hard.”

Going Solo

Sometimes a traveler’s best friend is an empty aisle seat.

“If you go by yourself, you’ll meet so many more people, especially compared with being a male/female couple,” Halliday explains.

“Of course, if you’re shy, 6'4" and blond, you’ll probably have a rough time going it alone in Tamil Nadu, and you won’t have anyone to talk about your adventures with later on.”

Besides, Halliday believes flashes of enlightenment can be found even with the least-compatible compatriots.

“At the end of my first European trip, my boyfriend at the time and I were malnourished, smelly, and getting on each other’s nerves,” she recalls.

“We spent the night at this clean, wholesome hostel in Belgium, and at one in the morning, we broke into the kitchen, had sex on the countertop and ate three pounds of cheese we stole from a big wheel in the pantry. It saved everything. It was like, ‘Wow, I do like you!’”

Maribeth Bruno was a proofreader for Playboy magazine and then an editor for Playboy.com for a total of more than eight years before dropping everything to spend a couple years in Japan. Her photos are collected at www.pbase.com/bsensei and a travel piece she wrote for The Rotarian is available at www.rotary.org/newsroom/rotarian/0401/kyoto.html.

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