Category: Travel

What to Know About International Travel Insurance

A resident of Dallas, Texas, David T. Ball supports his local community by volunteering for the Crawl for Cancer and participating in multiple Urban Dare competitions. Outside of his home base in Dallas, David T. Ball travels often for work and pleasure. His favorite destinations include Dubai, India, and Hong Kong.

Travel destination and duration are the two primary things most people consider when booking a trip, but it’s important to consider travel insurance. This is particularly true for more expensive international trips where problems are more likely to occur than domestic travel.

Experts suggest researching the country you are visiting before making a decision with regard to travel insurance. If this country experiences political unrest or has other issues that give you cause for concern, it’s best to purchase comprehensive travel insurance. This not only covers lost baggage but also medical emergencies, disaster evacuations, and costs associated with accidental deaths. Basic trip cancellation protection is a cheaper option that generally only covers lost baggage and provides reimbursements for missed connections. All-in-one policies, on average, cost around $164, according to the finance research site ValuePenguin.

Travel insurance can be ignored in certain situations. In addition to domestic trips, you can forego travel insurance if your credit card company offers it as a perk; the American Express Platinum Card among others, offer these built-in protections. Moreover, if you usually purchase travel insurance as a form of the cancellation protection, you can save money by making reservations at hotels that offer free cancellation instead.

The Rules of Urban Dare

A resident of the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, David T. Ball maintains an active lifestyle. In 2014 and 2015, he participated in Urban Dare in Dallas. David T. Ball’s team won first place in 2014 and came in second the following year.

A unique team race, Urban Dare combines trivia, dares, and photo hunts with a race through the city of Dallas. In teams of two, people find different checkpoints throughout the city. At these checkpoints, the teams must take a photograph and perform a dare.

Dares can be either physical or mental and must be completed before the team earns passport stamps from that checkpoint. Once the dare is completed, teams must take the required photograph from the checkpoint with a digital camera or cell phone camera to prove they were there.

Each team is allowed to move between checkpoints according to its own plan. The winning team must cross the finish line first after completing all checkpoint dares and photographs. On average, the entire race takes two to four hours to complete.

The Pearl – Hong Kong’s Cinematic Superstructure

 

The Pearl
Image: discoverthepearl.com

Based in Dallas, Texas, David T. Ball is an established entrepreneur and a longtime volunteer. A first-place winner on the reality competition series Urban Dare, David T. Ball enjoys traveling outside of the Dallas area to destinations ranging from Dubai to Hong Kong.

Known for its superlative skyscrapers, Hong Kong has been featured in numerous Hollywood films that make use of its structures for death-defying feats. To action movie viewers in 2018, one of the most iconic buildings in Hong Kong was the Pearl, which extends 3,500 feet in height and encompasses 250 floors. Buoyed by a website and viral marketing campaign, the building features a massive internal wind turbine that allows the building to generate its own energy, as well as a 30-story botanical garden and a spherical rooftop observation deck.

The only issue is that the Pearl does not exist. It was instead convincingly designed and added as computer-generated imagery into the action movie Skyscraper, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Reflecting input from Adrian Smith, the architect who designed Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa, the actual tallest building in the world, the Pearl takes inspiration from iconic structures such as the Smith-designed Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou and Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai.

However, the finished product as envisioned on the big screen far exceeds any existing building on Earth in terms of size and sheer ambition. That said, predictions are that a structure of that size, with similar energy- efficiency mandates, will ultimately be built, potentially in a city such as Hong Kong.

Modesty and Tipping – Cultural Norms in Dubai

David T Ball photo
David T Ball

David T. Ball is a Dallas professional who maintains a focus on community life through participation in Dallas-Fort Worth area fundraising activities such as the Crawl for Cancer. Among David T. Ball’s passions is travel and he enjoys visiting premier Middle Eastern destinations such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

There are a number of cultural differences between the US and Dubai travelers should be aware of, including tipping customs. Although Americans are used to tipping in restaurants and when taking a taxi, the tipping culture in Dubai extends well beyond these instances to nearly any service provided. For example, a small tip is expected at the supermarket checkout by the bagger who takes care of the groceries.

Another major difference is in perceptions of modesty, such as the use of swear words in casual conversation. Reflecting a cultural belief that swearing is a disgrace to personal honor, the use of certain expletives is a punishable crime. When it comes to women’s wear, Dubai is not as strict as many places in the Middle East, with bikinis acceptable at water parks, hotel pools, and some beaches. In other settings, female travelers are advised to wear outfits that extend from the shoulders to the knees.