January 7, 2026 • 18 mins
Show Notes: Worldschooling Q&A – Episode 16
Episode Title: Episode 16: How Do I Rent a Car For Worldschooling?
Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter
Episode Summary:In this episode of Worldschooling Q&A, Astrid and Clint answer a practical and frequently asked question: How do I rent a car while traveling around the world? Drawing from years of international travel with their kids, they walk through everything families need to consider before getting behind the wheel abroad.
They discuss required documents like International Driver’s Permits, how insurance works in different countries, and why understanding local road rules can save you from costly mistakes later. You’ll also hear honest stories about driving mishaps in France, navigating massive UK roundabouts, and learning to drive manual cars overseas.
🎧 Ready to dive in? 👉 For full show notes, resource links, and a complete episode guide, visit: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/episode-16-rent-a-car-worldschooling
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The MAP application and I'm like, yeah,just take the next exit at vi Leone.
Well, if you're not familiarwith how French is spelled,
V is spelled V-I-E-U-X,
which that's what Clint isseeing and he doesn't realize
that. That's what I'm saying. Andso we passed the exit. I'm like, ah.
(00:20):
You just missed the exit. Thisis world schooling q and a.
I'm Astrid, creator of the wanderingdaughter. As a traveling family,
we've spent four years travelingfull-time to over 18 countries and six
continents. Wherever we go,
we try to learn as much as we can aboutthe countries and cultures we visit.
(00:40):
While we didn't coin the term, welike to call this world schooling,
using the world as our classroom.
Each week my husband Clint and I willanswer one question about world schooling
and share our experiences of travelingthe world with our kids ready to get
started. Great. Let's dive in.
(01:07):
This week we're answering the question,
how do I rent a car whiletraveling around the world?
Yeah, this is a greatquestion. We often get asked
how do you get around when you travel?And we use all sorts of things.
We public transportation, sometimeswe're in cities where we can just walk,
but we love road tripping. We dothat a lot here in the United States.
(01:32):
So one of our family values is we liketo road trip. So I think whenever we can,
we do rent a car.
Yeah, that's a fun coretravel memory for us.
We've rented cars in Mexico, in Spain,
in Italy, in the uk.
And technically I guesswe've rented scooters too.
(01:52):
In Indonesia.
So that's also another aspect of rentals.
Vehicle.
Rentals that we can cover too.
So what's the first document we usuallyneed or the first requirement I guess
for renting a car?
The primary one is tohave what's called an IDP,
an international driver's permit,
(02:13):
and this is basically a documentthat translates your current license
into the language of the country.
I mean there's the main languages,English or sorry, French,
Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic.
Things.
Like that.
And usually in English speaking countrieslike say the uk, you don't need that.
(02:36):
So for example,
sorry for countries that speak thesame language as you originate from,
you don't generally need an IDP,but it's inexpensive to get it's,
it's really easy to get,
you just go to your local AAA officeand we just recommend having it.
It's good for up to a year.You can postdate it for up to six months in advance.
(02:58):
So just have it as part ofyour travel documentation.
You'll never know whenyou actually need it.
And it's important to get it before yougo because you're not going to be able
to get an IDP when you're on the road.
It needs to be comingfrom your home country.
And you can literally get denied a carif you don't have it in a country that
needs to see one. Soit's important to have.
(03:20):
I think the second thing is insurance.
And actually before I eventalk about the insurance,
I think the other thing is too,
just like it's a family value of ours todrive to road trip while we're in other
countries and I am verycomfortable driving.
I enjoy driving andalmost any place we go,
but really examine either your.
(03:40):
Comfort level.
Your comfort level, being ableto drive in other countries,
it can be intimidating.
Oh yeah. I mean,
we have family friends whothey don't like driving
in a new city, and so this probablywouldn't be an option for them.
They would prefer to just use publictransportation for long distances,
(04:01):
use trains or buses, things likethat. That's totally fine too.
This is just something that we liketo do. I forgot to mention too,
make sure that your driver's license isup to date because you don't want it to
expire while you are traveling. Infact, I think that happened to us.
Yes, it did.
(04:21):
We were going to go toEngland or was it Spain?
It was Spain I think when yours expired.
Interesting. So yeah,
we were going to go to Spain andwe were at the AAA office and then
the lady was like, well, we can't usethis because your license expired.
I was like, what? And I totallyforgot to renew my license,
so I guess he was the only one thatwas driving while we were traveling.
(04:44):
Okay. So with insurance, Ithink there's a few caveats.
I think one thing to understand isif you have a driver's license and
you have a car in the UnitedStates or wherever you're located,
I'm just basing this off of theUnited States where we're at,
your liability insurance thatyou have for your car will
generally cover you. Andwe're not insurance experts,
(05:08):
so please check with your local insurance,
but they'll generally cover you forliability purposes in a lot of countries.
So for example, the uk, our liabilityinsurance covers us there. However,
there are certain countrieslike Mexico for example,
where your liability insurancewill not cover you at all,
and Mexico requires anadditional liability insurance.
(05:29):
So when you're pricing outvehicles, say in Mexico,
often you'll see the sticker price thatdoesn't include that mandatory liability
cost. And you'll think, oh, great,$15 a day or $20 a day, this is cheap.
But then you go to actually rent the carand the mandatory insurance pushes it
to over $50 a day. Just be aware,
there are certain countries wherethere are mandatory liability insurance
(05:53):
that you can't bypass andyou need to have those.
Part of that. Additionally, insurancecoverage, like comprehensive care,
that's like to cover any sortof damage to your vehicle.
We generally lean oncredit cards for that.
So there are a number ofcredit cards that you can get.
One of our favorite cards coversus for up to I think 60 days of a
(06:14):
rental. So if you renta car up to 60 days,
it covers you for all comprehensive care.
So that's look into yourcredit cards for that as well.
I mean,
the other thing in the topic of insuranceis just having medical insurance
while you're traveling andtravel insurance in general.
If you get into an accident, youmight have insurance for the car,
(06:37):
but then if you get injured,
you're going to need to cover that througha separate insurance, I think. Right?
Yeah.
One company that we liketo use is Safety Wing.
They have insurance that's madespecifically for digital nomads,
and we've used it in our past tripstoo, and it's affordable for families,
(06:57):
which is something that we like.
Yeah, one thing to keep inmind is road rules. Road rules.
So we mentioned thisin a previous episode,
but just understanding thelocal rules around driving,
understanding how speed limits work.
Some areas like Englandand Italy for example,
don't explicitly always tellyou what the speed limits are.
And it's up to you to know thatwhen you're entering a town,
(07:19):
the speed limits go to a certainamount and you need to know that,
especially if they're doing camera speedlimit monitoring like they do in Italy.
So you can end up with somepretty steep bills afterwards.
If you're curious about some ofthe places that we've driven in,
I've written about our experiencedriving in Mexico and then also our
(07:39):
experience driving in France.
And then I also have an article onmy website on renting a scooter in
Bali.
So you can also read aboutwhat that experience is like and what to keep in mind
if you're going to be rentingscooters in Indonesia.
So when we travel,
what is often the limit thatyou have when renting cars?
(08:01):
Yeah, so I don't know how todrive a manual transmission car.
I've only learned how to drive automatics.
And so that sometimes is alimitation for me because
other countries,
well usually the manualcars are cheaper to rent and
also sometimes that's theonly option. And so yeah,
(08:27):
if you don't know how todrive a manual, find somebody,
travel with somebody who does orlearn how to drive it so that you
are able to rent carsin the other countries.
To add insult injury. It's also reallyhard to rent manual cars here in the us.
In fact, almost impossible, if notimpossible to rent a manual car in the us.
(08:49):
So it's not like you can rent a manualcar here in practice. In practice,
our oldest son, who's 27 years old,
he went to Spain for thefirst time a few years ago.
He could only rent a manualcar. He knew this upfront,
so his plan was to just go toa parking lot and practice,
but he also had to get out of therental car space where he had the car,
(09:10):
in which case he had to driveaway manual. So kudos to him.
He learned on the spot and was ableto drive a manual car during that time
period. So it was rough learning,
but just understand that manualcars exist and are pretty common
outside.
So what about navigatingthrough places are
(09:31):
navigating in different places?
What are some suggestions that you havefor that or maybe some stories that we.
Can Yeah, sure.
My recommendation is justtake arid everywhere because that's actually the best
navigation tool I can recommend. No, Ithink this comes into play like, well,
we like watching the amazing race.This is always one person's driving,
(09:52):
one person's navigating.That's how we do it.
Since I drive the majority of thetime, especially when we travel,
Astrid is often navigating. She's reallygood at it. And so that's helpful.
Sometimes though it can be alittle tricky. So for example,
we were in Leo and France,Astrid speaks French. I do not.
And so as we're driving around,
(10:14):
Astrid would say turn, Idon't know what an example.
The city center is called Leon, whichmeans old Leon. And so I'd be like,
oh yeah, I would see this onthe map, the map application.
And I'm like, yeah, just takethe next exit at vi Leone. Well,
if you're not familiarwith how French is spelled,
(10:35):
VI is spelled V-I-E-U-X,
which that's what Clint is seeing,
and he doesn't realize that that's whatI'm saying. And so we passed the exit,
I'm like, ah, you just missed the exit.
And Leone is notoriousfor you miss an exit.
There's all these one ways.
So you miss an exit and it takes you20 minutes just to turn back around to
(10:59):
go the right direction. Thatgets frustrating after a while.
And so definitely learn thelanguage a little bit more,
or at least figure out a wayto communicate the turns.
I think eventually I was like,
take this next exit insteadof take the Via Leone exit.
Yeah. One other one is when we were inthe UK entering these giant roundabouts.
(11:23):
The roundabouts.
Some of these roundabouts are huge, andif you're not familiar with roundabouts,
you basically enter the circular partof the highway and you go around and
there's multiple exits off of thehighway. And so we're off of the road.
And so in the uk, especially sincewe're used to driving the us,
it's the opposite direction asany of the roundabouts in the us.
(11:44):
And so in the US,
we're used to seeing signs here above us,
but the UK and othercountries are like this too.
They'll put the lane that you'resupposed to be in on the road,
they'll write it out on the road andthere won't be any signs up ahead.
So then it makes it challenging to knowwhere you're supposed to go or not.
(12:08):
So one trick that we learned was Astridjust got to the point where she's like,
take the fourth left, andthat was really helpful.
And then she would help me countout the lefts as we were going.
So.
Things like that, I mean that justcomes with experience and stuff,
but giving enough bandwidthto know when to turn.
The other thing I think you do reallywell is you actually look at the map and
(12:31):
figure out, and don't rely onthe turn by turn directions.
Sometimes the turn by turn directionsare slow or laggy and you can get in the
wrong spot.
Yeah,
that's what makes having anavigator and a driver helpful.
So what about driving on theopposite side of the road
that you're used to? Whattips do you have for that?
(12:53):
Yeah, that can be tricky. A funnystory is we went to Scotland.
We were in Scotland fora month and a half, and
I had booked a small car. This issomething I guess to know also,
it doesn't matter what youreserve on the rental car site,
whatever they have in stock iswhat they're going to give you.
So we reserve a tiny car justas small for our family for.
(13:16):
Yeah, no,
if you can research theroad conditions in the
countries that you're going to visit.
If the country tends tohave very narrow roads,
you don't want to rent a big car.
Or in the US if it's likethe roads tend to be bigger,
it's okay to rent an SUVor a minivan. But yeah.
(13:40):
Yeah. So new to say, all they had was,and if you've ever been to Scotland,
you ever into Scotland, their roadstend to be really small in some cases,
and even their highways are actuallynot that big. And so the only
vehicle they had was a bigFord Ranger pickup truck.
And if you're not familiar witha Ford Ranger pickup truck,
it's like any American pickup truck.
(14:02):
They're big wide tall vehicles.
And so that's all we hadto drive in Scotland.
And so driving on the left sideof the road, England or UK,
is completely flippedfrom us, from the us.
So not only is it the oppositeof the side of the road,
it's the opposite side of the car too.
So you are both trying to navigatebeing on the left side of the road
(14:27):
and also having to change your depthperception Where you are in the
vehicle. Additionally, luckilythe truck was automatic,
so that was not big of issue,
but the first time we went tothe UK we rented a manual cart.
And so it's also learning howto or adjusting to shift gears
with your left hand instead to yourright hand while driving. So I think
(14:51):
go somewhere where you can practicea little bit, be forgiving,
your depth perception is going to be off,
so try to hug the center lane as muchas you can because we both made this
mistake where we kept leaningtowards the side of the road and I
actually, I hit the curb severaltimes because I was leaning too far to
(15:13):
the side road. So yeah. Anything else?
I think that's it.
I mentioned the stories Ihad on the website about driving in Mexico and driving
in France and renting scooter and yeah,
it's really just giveyourself some space and
(15:35):
patients have a lot ofpatience as you're driving.
I think one thing I want to mentionabout renting and scooters briefly is
renting scooters inIndonesia or anywhere really
is in order for yourinsurance to cover you,
in case you get in any sort ofaccident or anything like that,
you actually have to havea motorcycle endorsement.
(15:55):
This.
Is a super common mistake thatmany people don't realize,
but basically if you rent ascooter in say, Indonesia,
and you get in an accident and youneed to file an insurance claim on your
personal insurance from the United States,
if you don't have a motorcycleendorsement on your driver's license,
they actually have the right andthe legal right to deny your claim.
(16:18):
So it's really important to have amotorcycle endorsement. If you can't,
it's also just great.
You'll understand driving atwo wheel vehicle a lot better.
And.
It can really help youout when navigating.
The thing is when you're drivingin Indonesia, especially a scooter,
not only if you're not used to ascooter and being on two wheels,
you're dealing with that anxiety pluschances are you have one of your kids on
(16:42):
the back, so you'redealing with that anxiety.
The third thing is it's busy.
Indonesia is a busy place to drive inand you have to understand the ebb and
flow.
So if you're trying to also deal withnot being comfortable with the scooter,
it can be too overwhelming.
Yeah. So before you leave,
taking a weekend to take one of thosemotorcycle endorsement classes would be
(17:05):
really helpful. And again, justgives you a little bit more comfort,
gives you a little bitmore tips of how to drive
a two wheel vehicle,
and actually it makes me a betterdriver of a four wheel vehicle.
Yeah.
Alright.
Anything else you'd like to add today?
No, I think that's it.
(17:26):
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining us on this episodeof World Schooling q and a with Astrid
and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notes forany links we mentioned in the episode
and visit my website,
the wandering daughter.com to divedeeper into world schooling and family
travel.
If you like what you hear,
please consider supporting theWandering daughter on Patreon.
(17:47):
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You'll also get exclusive perks likeepisode transcripts, additional resources,
access to office hours with us and more.
You can find us on Spotify orthe podcast app of your choice.
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(18:07):
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You can follow me on Instagram atWander Daughter or Follow the Wandering
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If you have any world schooling questionsyou'd like us to answer for future
(18:29):
episodes, feel free to throwthem in the comments or send us a
message@thewanderingdaughter.comslash podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
The MAP application and I'm like, yeah,just take the next exit at vi Leone.
Well, if you're not familiarwith how French is spelled,
V is spelled V-I-E-U-X,
which that's what Clint isseeing and he doesn't realize
that. That's what I'm saying. Andso we passed the exit. I'm like, ah.
(00:20):
You just missed the exit. Thisis world schooling q and a.
I'm Astrid, creator of the wanderingdaughter. As a traveling family,
we've spent four years travelingfull-time to over 18 countries and six
continents. Wherever we go,
we try to learn as much as we can aboutthe countries and cultures we visit.
(00:40):
While we didn't coin the term, welike to call this world schooling,
using the world as our classroom.
Each week my husband Clint and I willanswer one question about world schooling
and share our experiences of travelingthe world with our kids ready to get
started. Great. Let's dive in.
(01:07):
This week we're answering the question,
how do I rent a car whiletraveling around the world?
Yeah, this is a greatquestion. We often get asked
how do you get around when you travel?And we use all sorts of things.
We public transportation, sometimeswe're in cities where we can just walk,
but we love road tripping. We dothat a lot here in the United States.
(01:32):
So one of our family values is we liketo road trip. So I think whenever we can,
we do rent a car.
Yeah, that's a fun coretravel memory for us.
We've rented cars in Mexico, in Spain,
in Italy, in the uk.
And technically I guesswe've rented scooters too.
(01:52):
In Indonesia.
So that's also another aspect of rentals.
Vehicle.
Rentals that we can cover too.
So what's the first document we usuallyneed or the first requirement I guess
for renting a car?
The primary one is tohave what's called an IDP,
an international driver's permit,
(02:13):
and this is basically a documentthat translates your current license
into the language of the country.
I mean there's the main languages,English or sorry, French,
Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic.
Things.
Like that.
And usually in English speaking countrieslike say the uk, you don't need that.
(02:36):
So for example,
sorry for countries that speak thesame language as you originate from,
you don't generally need an IDP,but it's inexpensive to get it's,
it's really easy to get,
you just go to your local AAA officeand we just recommend having it.
It's good for up to a year.You can postdate it for up to six months in advance.
(02:58):
So just have it as part ofyour travel documentation.
You'll never know whenyou actually need it.
And it's important to get it before yougo because you're not going to be able
to get an IDP when you're on the road.
It needs to be comingfrom your home country.
And you can literally get denied a carif you don't have it in a country that
needs to see one. Soit's important to have.
(03:20):
I think the second thing is insurance.
And actually before I eventalk about the insurance,
I think the other thing is too,
just like it's a family value of ours todrive to road trip while we're in other
countries and I am verycomfortable driving.
I enjoy driving andalmost any place we go,
but really examine either your.
(03:40):
Comfort level.
Your comfort level, being ableto drive in other countries,
it can be intimidating.
Oh yeah. I mean,
we have family friends whothey don't like driving
in a new city, and so this probablywouldn't be an option for them.
They would prefer to just use publictransportation for long distances,
(04:01):
use trains or buses, things likethat. That's totally fine too.
This is just something that we liketo do. I forgot to mention too,
make sure that your driver's license isup to date because you don't want it to
expire while you are traveling. Infact, I think that happened to us.
Yes, it did.
(04:21):
We were going to go toEngland or was it Spain?
It was Spain I think when yours expired.
Interesting. So yeah,
we were going to go to Spain andwe were at the AAA office and then
the lady was like, well, we can't usethis because your license expired.
I was like, what? And I totallyforgot to renew my license,
so I guess he was the only one thatwas driving while we were traveling.
(04:44):
Okay. So with insurance, Ithink there's a few caveats.
I think one thing to understand isif you have a driver's license and
you have a car in the UnitedStates or wherever you're located,
I'm just basing this off of theUnited States where we're at,
your liability insurance thatyou have for your car will
generally cover you. Andwe're not insurance experts,
(05:08):
so please check with your local insurance,
but they'll generally cover you forliability purposes in a lot of countries.
So for example, the uk, our liabilityinsurance covers us there. However,
there are certain countrieslike Mexico for example,
where your liability insurancewill not cover you at all,
and Mexico requires anadditional liability insurance.
(05:29):
So when you're pricing outvehicles, say in Mexico,
often you'll see the sticker price thatdoesn't include that mandatory liability
cost. And you'll think, oh, great,$15 a day or $20 a day, this is cheap.
But then you go to actually rent the carand the mandatory insurance pushes it
to over $50 a day. Just be aware,
there are certain countries wherethere are mandatory liability insurance
(05:53):
that you can't bypass andyou need to have those.
Part of that. Additionally, insurancecoverage, like comprehensive care,
that's like to cover any sortof damage to your vehicle.
We generally lean oncredit cards for that.
So there are a number ofcredit cards that you can get.
One of our favorite cards coversus for up to I think 60 days of a
(06:14):
rental. So if you renta car up to 60 days,
it covers you for all comprehensive care.
So that's look into yourcredit cards for that as well.
I mean,
the other thing in the topic of insuranceis just having medical insurance
while you're traveling andtravel insurance in general.
If you get into an accident, youmight have insurance for the car,
(06:37):
but then if you get injured,
you're going to need to cover that througha separate insurance, I think. Right?
Yeah.
One company that we liketo use is Safety Wing.
They have insurance that's madespecifically for digital nomads,
and we've used it in our past tripstoo, and it's affordable for families,
(06:57):
which is something that we like.
Yeah, one thing to keep inmind is road rules. Road rules.
So we mentioned thisin a previous episode,
but just understanding thelocal rules around driving,
understanding how speed limits work.
Some areas like Englandand Italy for example,
don't explicitly always tellyou what the speed limits are.
And it's up to you to know thatwhen you're entering a town,
(07:19):
the speed limits go to a certainamount and you need to know that,
especially if they're doing camera speedlimit monitoring like they do in Italy.
So you can end up with somepretty steep bills afterwards.
If you're curious about some ofthe places that we've driven in,
I've written about our experiencedriving in Mexico and then also our
(07:39):
experience driving in France.
And then I also have an article onmy website on renting a scooter in
Bali.
So you can also read aboutwhat that experience is like and what to keep in mind
if you're going to be rentingscooters in Indonesia.
So when we travel,
what is often the limit thatyou have when renting cars?
(08:01):
Yeah, so I don't know how todrive a manual transmission car.
I've only learned how to drive automatics.
And so that sometimes is alimitation for me because
other countries,
well usually the manualcars are cheaper to rent and
also sometimes that's theonly option. And so yeah,
(08:27):
if you don't know how todrive a manual, find somebody,
travel with somebody who does orlearn how to drive it so that you
are able to rent carsin the other countries.
To add insult injury. It's also reallyhard to rent manual cars here in the us.
In fact, almost impossible, if notimpossible to rent a manual car in the us.
(08:49):
So it's not like you can rent a manualcar here in practice. In practice,
our oldest son, who's 27 years old,
he went to Spain for thefirst time a few years ago.
He could only rent a manualcar. He knew this upfront,
so his plan was to just go toa parking lot and practice,
but he also had to get out of therental car space where he had the car,
(09:10):
in which case he had to driveaway manual. So kudos to him.
He learned on the spot and was ableto drive a manual car during that time
period. So it was rough learning,
but just understand that manualcars exist and are pretty common
outside.
So what about navigatingthrough places are
(09:31):
navigating in different places?
What are some suggestions that you havefor that or maybe some stories that we.
Can Yeah, sure.
My recommendation is justtake arid everywhere because that's actually the best
navigation tool I can recommend. No, Ithink this comes into play like, well,
we like watching the amazing race.This is always one person's driving,
(09:52):
one person's navigating.That's how we do it.
Since I drive the majority of thetime, especially when we travel,
Astrid is often navigating. She's reallygood at it. And so that's helpful.
Sometimes though it can be alittle tricky. So for example,
we were in Leo and France,Astrid speaks French. I do not.
And so as we're driving around,
(10:14):
Astrid would say turn, Idon't know what an example.
The city center is called Leon, whichmeans old Leon. And so I'd be like,
oh yeah, I would see this onthe map, the map application.
And I'm like, yeah, just takethe next exit at vi Leone. Well,
if you're not familiarwith how French is spelled,
(10:35):
VI is spelled V-I-E-U-X,
which that's what Clint is seeing,
and he doesn't realize that that's whatI'm saying. And so we passed the exit,
I'm like, ah, you just missed the exit.
And Leone is notoriousfor you miss an exit.
There's all these one ways.
So you miss an exit and it takes you20 minutes just to turn back around to
(10:59):
go the right direction. Thatgets frustrating after a while.
And so definitely learn thelanguage a little bit more,
or at least figure out a wayto communicate the turns.
I think eventually I was like,
take this next exit insteadof take the Via Leone exit.
Yeah. One other one is when we were inthe UK entering these giant roundabouts.
(11:23):
The roundabouts.
Some of these roundabouts are huge, andif you're not familiar with roundabouts,
you basically enter the circular partof the highway and you go around and
there's multiple exits off of thehighway. And so we're off of the road.
And so in the uk, especially sincewe're used to driving the us,
it's the opposite direction asany of the roundabouts in the us.
(11:44):
And so in the US,
we're used to seeing signs here above us,
but the UK and othercountries are like this too.
They'll put the lane that you'resupposed to be in on the road,
they'll write it out on the road andthere won't be any signs up ahead.
So then it makes it challenging to knowwhere you're supposed to go or not.
(12:08):
So one trick that we learned was Astridjust got to the point where she's like,
take the fourth left, andthat was really helpful.
And then she would help me countout the lefts as we were going.
So.
Things like that, I mean that justcomes with experience and stuff,
but giving enough bandwidthto know when to turn.
The other thing I think you do reallywell is you actually look at the map and
(12:31):
figure out, and don't rely onthe turn by turn directions.
Sometimes the turn by turn directionsare slow or laggy and you can get in the
wrong spot.
Yeah,
that's what makes having anavigator and a driver helpful.
So what about driving on theopposite side of the road
that you're used to? Whattips do you have for that?
(12:53):
Yeah, that can be tricky. A funnystory is we went to Scotland.
We were in Scotland fora month and a half, and
I had booked a small car. This issomething I guess to know also,
it doesn't matter what youreserve on the rental car site,
whatever they have in stock iswhat they're going to give you.
So we reserve a tiny car justas small for our family for.
(13:16):
Yeah, no,
if you can research theroad conditions in the
countries that you're going to visit.
If the country tends tohave very narrow roads,
you don't want to rent a big car.
Or in the US if it's likethe roads tend to be bigger,
it's okay to rent an SUVor a minivan. But yeah.
(13:40):
Yeah. So new to say, all they had was,and if you've ever been to Scotland,
you ever into Scotland, their roadstend to be really small in some cases,
and even their highways are actuallynot that big. And so the only
vehicle they had was a bigFord Ranger pickup truck.
And if you're not familiar witha Ford Ranger pickup truck,
it's like any American pickup truck.
(14:02):
They're big wide tall vehicles.
And so that's all we hadto drive in Scotland.
And so driving on the left sideof the road, England or UK,
is completely flippedfrom us, from the us.
So not only is it the oppositeof the side of the road,
it's the opposite side of the car too.
So you are both trying to navigatebeing on the left side of the road
(14:27):
and also having to change your depthperception Where you are in the
vehicle. Additionally, luckilythe truck was automatic,
so that was not big of issue,
but the first time we went tothe UK we rented a manual cart.
And so it's also learning howto or adjusting to shift gears
with your left hand instead to yourright hand while driving. So I think
(14:51):
go somewhere where you can practicea little bit, be forgiving,
your depth perception is going to be off,
so try to hug the center lane as muchas you can because we both made this
mistake where we kept leaningtowards the side of the road and I
actually, I hit the curb severaltimes because I was leaning too far to
(15:13):
the side road. So yeah. Anything else?
I think that's it.
I mentioned the stories Ihad on the website about driving in Mexico and driving
in France and renting scooter and yeah,
it's really just giveyourself some space and
(15:35):
patients have a lot ofpatience as you're driving.
I think one thing I want to mentionabout renting and scooters briefly is
renting scooters inIndonesia or anywhere really
is in order for yourinsurance to cover you,
in case you get in any sort ofaccident or anything like that,
you actually have to havea motorcycle endorsement.
(15:55):
This.
Is a super common mistake thatmany people don't realize,
but basically if you rent ascooter in say, Indonesia,
and you get in an accident and youneed to file an insurance claim on your
personal insurance from the United States,
if you don't have a motorcycleendorsement on your driver's license,
they actually have the right andthe legal right to deny your claim.
(16:18):
So it's really important to have amotorcycle endorsement. If you can't,
it's also just great.
You'll understand driving atwo wheel vehicle a lot better.
And.
It can really help youout when navigating.
The thing is when you're drivingin Indonesia, especially a scooter,
not only if you're not used to ascooter and being on two wheels,
you're dealing with that anxiety pluschances are you have one of your kids on
(16:42):
the back, so you'redealing with that anxiety.
The third thing is it's busy.
Indonesia is a busy place to drive inand you have to understand the ebb and
flow.
So if you're trying to also deal withnot being comfortable with the scooter,
it can be too overwhelming.
Yeah. So before you leave,
taking a weekend to take one of thosemotorcycle endorsement classes would be
(17:05):
really helpful. And again, justgives you a little bit more comfort,
gives you a little bitmore tips of how to drive
a two wheel vehicle,
and actually it makes me a betterdriver of a four wheel vehicle.
Yeah.
Alright.
Anything else you'd like to add today?
No, I think that's it.
(17:26):
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining us on this episodeof World Schooling q and a with Astrid
and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notes forany links we mentioned in the episode
and visit my website,
the wandering daughter.com to divedeeper into world schooling and family
travel.
If you like what you hear,
please consider supporting theWandering daughter on Patreon.
(17:47):
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
You'll also get exclusive perks likeepisode transcripts, additional resources,
access to office hours with us and more.
You can find us on Spotify orthe podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,
you can tap the bell icon to getnotified when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a five star review.
(18:07):
It really helps new people find our show.
If you're watching this on YouTube,
don't forget to like and subscribe andtap the bell icon to get notified of new
episodes.
You can follow me on Instagram atWander Daughter or Follow the Wandering
Daughter on Facebook. Links tothese are also in the show notes.
If you have any world schooling questionsyou'd like us to answer for future
(18:29):
episodes, feel free to throwthem in the comments or send us a
message@thewanderingdaughter.comslash podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
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