Daily Dose of English 33
Air Travel
Daily Dose of English 33
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. In this episode, we're going to be talking about air travel. I'm glad you could make it today. air traveled, or flying by airplane, or just flying. A lot of different names for it, but it's all the same concept. I think I typically call it flying, because there's no real other way that we fly. It's mostly in an airplane. Air travel is sort of an interesting topic because there's a specific way that it happens. It follows the same patterns no matter where you're going or where in the world you are. Sure, there's differences and things that are better or worse depending on the country or the airport even, but it's the same general concept. I've been pretty lucky that I travel by plane fairly often. Not as often as some people who fly like every week or every day, but I fly pretty frequently and I flew even more I think in the past. I've done a good amount of traveling and then also having to get back home. I always have to fly to get back home if I want to go see my family for whatever holiday or Christmas or whatever it is. Um, and so I think I can talk a little bit about air travel and maybe make a bit of an interesting episode here because air travel isn't easy. It's actually kind of a skill that you learn over time by practicing, because there's a lot of things that are weird or difficult or hard to understand that don't make sense that are frustrating. And so hopefully maybe just talking about this a bit, you can learn some interesting words and potentially get some travel tips for the next time. that you have to get on an airplane. Because it all starts with booking your flight or finding a flight to go to where you want to go. And there's a lot of different ways to book flights, but I typically use Google Flights or flights.google.com because it searches a lot of different flights all over the world, different airlines and everything, and gives you some good options for how to get there. And then once you find a route that you like, I guess once you've put in your information, the next thing that I look at is what time of day I fly because I'd much rather pay a little bit more than have to fly out at 2 a.m. or something really, really early or super duper late at night because flying overnight is not very much fun. Sure, you miss a day the other way if you fly during the day, like you sort of lose a day to travel, but I find it to be a lot easier to sleep and feel more rested and get ready for wherever I'm going if I travel during the day. So I much prefer to leave during the day and land on the same day. Landing at night is fine, like if you land at 10 or 11 p.m. wherever you're going, that's totally fine because then you can actually go and then just fall asleep right away because you're typically exhausted after traveling. And so that's my preferred thing. I like to leave in the morning and get there in the afternoon or evening because you can pretty quickly go to sleep. Another thing to keep in mind is time zone changes or, yeah, so when there's a different, you're at a different time zone and you have to adapt to when there's a different hour, literally, right? Because like where I'm from is an hour right now, is an hour behind where I am now. which is a little confusing to think about, but that means that when I go back home, I will gain one hour. It'll be one hour earlier than when I left in terms of like relative time. But going the other way, I have to keep in mind that there's the opposite, where I lose an hour coming back. One hour isn't a huge difference, but when it's like five or six hours, it can be a huge problem when you're planning and it can really mess up your sleep schedule. And that's the next one is trying just to manage your sleep and make sure that you're well rested because it really sucks to be in a place and be just completely off time and just be super tired and unable to function. especially if you're going on vacation or something like that. And so just generally be careful with how you're going to rest and sleep, and try not to fall asleep too early or too late, depending on how far you're going, just so that you're more well-rested when it comes time to actually enjoy where you are, or if you're going back home, to get back to your normal life. So once you have your tickets and you've thought about your time, then it comes to packing, right? And that's a big thing for a lot of people. My tip is pack, bring less than you think you need. You often need a lot less just stuff. Just a couple of things will probably be fine. Especially if you can do laundry, right? You don't have to bring clothes for, let's say you're going for 10 days, you only have to bring a couple of different pairs of clothes. So you can probably get away with like three or four and do laundry once or maybe even twice. And that way you bring just so much less stuff with you but you still feel clean and normal. That goes for other things as well, right? You don't need to bring a ton of gadgets or computers or whatever if you don't really need them. I try to travel pretty light. I like to bring a notebook or a journal, my laptop, my Kindle, my phone, and some cables to plug it all in, and that's really it. And then there's toiletries, so that's your toothbrush and your toothpaste and your razor. Those are called toiletries. And then clothes. And that's really all you need, especially if you're going somewhere interesting and you can actually do stuff there, right? You don't need to bring a ton of extra stuff with you. And so bring as little stuff as you possibly can. I try to never check a bag. That's when you put a bag under the plane, right? You give it to the people, they will check it for you. And then at the end, you'll get it back after at what we call the baggage claim or the luggage return. Because that just takes a long time. It's slow. It costs you like 30 or $50 to check a bag. And if you can just go with what you have in your backpack or in the overhead compartment, that's just, it's so much easier to travel in general. The next thing is to make sure that you are efficient with your time. Don't go too early to the airport. You don't wanna waste a bunch of time in the airport, because they're often not very fun. And you don't wanna have to eat and be running to get there, so don't go too late. So finding a good balance. I typically recommend eating first, because airport food can be really expensive. Get there with enough time to spare. Depending on the airport, it can be a lot or a little time. Here, I basically leave 90 minutes before my flight boards-ish, a little bit less. An hour is actually fine here. Unless it's a really, really busy time. So that sort of depends. But other airports, I can leave less than an hour ahead. That's because I know how long it takes to get to the airport and about how long it takes to get through security. And so just keep that in mind when you're going. Some people will go like four hours ahead of their flight. That's just way too early. You're not going to have a good time. 90 minutes or two hours is usually fine if getting to the airport is less than 20 minutes. So plan that out, think about how long things are going to take, and then go through security. Well, when you get there, obviously. And that's a big thing. I always have my boarding pass before I go, so I check in on my phone. So that's the ticket to get on the flight, basically. And I have all my documents and things ready to go so that it's really easy to show people that I have my ticket. I have my passport. I'm just going to go through security and then you can go pretty easily. Just ask the people what you should take off. What should you, should you leave your belt on? Should you take out your laptop? There's a couple of different questions to ask. But then once you've done it correctly, you can usually go through pretty quickly. Security doesn't have to be difficult or too slow, as long as you prepare. And that's also why bringing less stuff is really helpful. And take your time. If there's people behind you that want to get through, just take a little bit more time to put your stuff in. It's totally fine. They're going to be all right. Don't worry too much about blocking people's path. And then for the actual plane, try to do things that are easy and relatively relaxing. I like to have, I don't usually play video games, but there's a phone game that I like to play when I'm on the plane. I also like to read and occasionally watch a movie or TV show. And having a couple of different things like that to do is really great. I also highly recommend having some kind of noise canceling headphones or earbuds if you can, because the noise of the plane is a lot and it can get really, really annoying and really just kind of get inside of your head. And so playing some music or a podcast or maybe this podcast even, who knows? You can download these and listen to them in the airplane for a little bit of extra English practice. And then when you're leaving, just try to be clear with whoever you're being picked up by, where you should meet or where you should be, because it can be a little bit difficult to drive into the airport and it can be stressful. And so as long as you make things clear, it can all go well. But that's the time that I have for today. I think that I've talked enough about airplanes and air travel. Let me know if you have any extra tips or things that you can share in the comments. And did you learn any words? I'm curious to know if there's new words for you in your air travel vocabulary now. But thank you so much for being here and I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye.
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