One of the major things you'll want to do before you travel anywhere is do some research on your proposed destination. This might seem simple - surely all you need to do is check out a few guidebooks and surf the web?
Well, yes and no. There's a bit of an art to researching anything, and travel is no exception. The secret, if you want the best information and you don't want to spend hours wading through the trash to find it, is to source one or two quality sites that you know offer reliable information and stick with them.
So where to start? Well, a pretty good place to start is right here at Faremax.com, where you can find information on a very wide range of places scattered around the articles, forum and blog sections of the site - as well as in the recently-launched e-books section. Everything here has been thoroughly checked and researched by experienced travel writers and editors, so you know you're dealing with reliable material!
Howoever, comprehensive though the Faremax resources are, we don't quite cover everywhere... yet. If you're after bare facts, the online version of the CIA World Factbook is very good and hyper-reliable; whereas if you're interested in finding out about travel safety and health news and updates, the Department of State (US) or Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK) websites are probably the best around - kept up to date by a very reliable information network and well-informed diplomatic sources.
The best all round source for information on places is probably Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Despite its openness, Wikipedia only has about the same level of errors as regular encyclopedias, and because it is written by enthusiasts it is often much, much more comprehensive, including travel tips, best sights to see and surprisingly good photography of travel locations. As with any source of information, if you glean critical facts from Wikipedia it's best to doublecheck them with another, independent source - but in general, along with Faremax, it is a very reliable source of data.