If you’ve just booked an exciting trip overseas, you have every right to be downright thrilled — there is a lot of things to see, experience, and explore when you step out of your home country and visit someone else’s. However, most travel guides talk at length about using public transportation and even walking from place to place. When you’re trying to visit remote areas or design your own routes, public transportation just won’t do — you have very little control over where you go, or through what route you actually go. This means that if you really want to design an overseas vacation on your terms, you will need to make sure that you can rent a car overseas.
Yet to get moving forward, you’ll have to do more than just run out and ask the first rental car company that you find. You will need to do the right research ahead of time to make sure that you will have no trouble renting a car overseas. Generally speaking, you will need to make sure that you get your international driver’s permit first. Even though this sounds like a pain, it’s actually pretty easy to get. If you have any questions you can always contact your local embassy for more information, since they specialize in assisting travelers getting to overseas destinations. If you belong to a motor club like the American Automobile Association, you can get information on how to get an international driver’s permit there as well.
On the whole, it’s best to make sure that you will be able to have a firm idea of the driving laws of the host country that you’ll be staying in. If you know that you will be driving in a place where the drivers drive differently (e.g., on the “wrong” side of the road), you will need to ensure that you aren’t going to be far out of your league. Some countries are famous for having aggressive drivers, which means that you will need to ask yourself whether or not you even want to drive on the same roads as they do. In some cases, it can be better to get a driver that knows the way and can handle traffic without making you feel overwhelmed.
Overall, these are just some tips to keep in mind when trying to rent a car overseas — pay attention to the local laws and customs, and you should be just fine!
