Originally Posted by mev

A few categories to think about:
- Health; look at the CDC travel web site, but one might need a Yellow Fever certificate to enter some borders. Malaria, typhoid medicines, etc as well as making sure routine immunizations are up to date.
- Travel; look up the State Department pages to make sure you know where you need a visa, particularly in advance
- Travel documents; sometimes useful to scan to electronic form and then have available via internet or USB key. Also useful to work out some contact lists in advance
- Language; what level of language proficiency are you looking for