8 problems with official travel advisories
Where diplomats go wrong
Your country’s Department of Foreign Affairs or equivalent probably has a section dedicated to providing travel advice for citizens.
No point looking now. Because of this Covid business, most countries are telling their subjects to hide under the bed until the end of time.
Normally, however, there are colour-coded gradations of risk and warnings about various trouble spots, instability, scams, crime and other risks.
Having travelled quite a bit, I know to take these advisories with a large grain of salt. Here are the eight main problems I’ve noticed:
1. Arse-covering
In general, diplomats are overly cautious in their assessments. If they say, “Chile’s completely safe!” and then a tourist gets his body parts sold by NaziCommies, the diplomat will look bad. If a diplomat sternly warns of these NaziCommies because of a shred of questionable intelligence or an event that occurred in 1973, he’s covered his arse. “We told you not to go there!”
This happens with Australia’s assessments of travel to Indonesia. The risk of terrorism is played up but attacks have been limited to some very specific, target-rich areas.
The overall effect of this arse-covering is that most advisories for most places are overblown, kind of like how WebMD has to say that every symptom from a hangnail to a hangover might be cancer, thus making the site almost useless.
Some of the risks really are high but unfortunately there’s no way to pick these out from the overall scaremongering. Do your own research. Expat forums are helpful.
2. Political considerations
Nations sometimes base their travel advisories on factors other than safety.
In some cases, countries dependent on tourism get snarky if a source country warns its citizens of a terrorist threat there, etc. This might make a country pull its punches in frankly describing risks in order to avoid diplomatic frictions.
Remember, diplomats and ministers are always thinking in terms of their own job.
In other cases, countries go overboard with their warnings in order to annoy rivals. Witness China’s recent warnings to its citizens of Australian racist attacks and frequent outbreaks of baby-eating.
In the last 18 months, Covid has become the sole obsession of all foreign services, just as it has become the sole concern of all domestic policy.
Politics also matters at an individual level. You’ll get more help from diplomats if your case is in the spotlight. For example, if you get caught up in a major disaster like a tsunami that’s on the news back home, politicians will score points if they are seen to be helping. If you get mugged and lose all your cash, cards and ID, the embassy is not going out of its way to assist with your unglamourous and untelevised problem.
This changes dramatically if you happen to know someone at the embassy, it should go without saying.
3. Diplomatic preoccupations
Diplomats, being diplomats, tend to put too much emphasis on relatively minor, diplomatic issues like barriers to providing consular assistance. This despite the fact that most Western foreign service personnel hold the same contempt for their (ordinary) travelling citizens as elites back home do for the Great Unwashed. If you get into trouble they won’t care and won’t put themselves out any more than they have to, excepting those circumstance described above.
In fact, diplomats would prefer that none of their countrymen except for important people like themselves were in the country where they are serving. Pleb visitors just cause trouble and make too much paper pile up on too many desks. Just as librarians dream of a library with no patrons so that it stays perfectly ordered, diplomats dream of a posting in a location none of their subjects ever visit. That way they won’t have to drag their feet to the local jail every time a drunken compatriot gets detained for noisily exclaiming in public that El Presidente can go get a dog up him.
Some embassies also have an ex-military hardarse on staff who manages security and advises on risks. Being an ex-military hardarse, he sees mostly hardarse military threats: terrorism, civil strife and violent crime. Like the diplomats, he tends to miss more prosaic threats like snakebites, rip tides and bottles of Jack Daniels cut with lethal moonshine.
4. Geographical obsessions
Related to 3, diplomats are always thinking about big issues that would require lots of work and hassle for them. That includes many citizens going missing simultaneously in earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons.
If you visit Japan, are you really going to be terrified of being swept away by a random wave? Even if forewarned, what the hell could you do about it? Would you avoid coastal areas for this reason? The average tourist who goes off the beaten path is more likely to suffer a bear attack, and that is more avoidable if you know what to do.
The only thing diplomats can do about natural disasters is say, ‘In the event of an emergency, follow the advice of local authorities’. Well that helps. If an emergency broadcast warns to seek high land pronto, I’ll remember not to grab my surfboard and dash to the beach.
Natural disasters are rare and there’s not much you can do to avoid them anyway. Such acts of God are a bigger problem for diplomatic staff trying to enjoy cushy postings than they are for ordinary travellers and thus don’t require so much attention in official advisories.
Connected to both 3 and 4 is that diplomats want to use their training in International Politics, Geography, Development and that sort of thing, so they’re always overstating risks of volcanoes and separatists but understating boring stuff like motorbike accidents and the need to carry one’s own medication. Not many people with training in medicine, engineering or maths go into the diplomatic service.
5. Minimizing the everyday
African countries are routinely painted as being far more dangerous than Asian countries. However, riding a scooter in a major Asian city may be the most dangerous thing you ever do in your life. Overall, a daily commute in Taipei over one year is probably far riskier than a ten-day Kenyan safari.
It’s not surprising they miss this sort of stuff. How many diplomats do you reckon commute to the embassy on a 125cc scooter? They’re elites, they live in a different world. More about this soon.
If you look at how people actually come a cropper overseas, it’s the same, everyday stuff we die from at home: traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes. Sometimes drownings, snowboarding accidents or food poisoning. The occasional bar brawl.
These risks are usually included several paragraphs down, below the long list of political terrors and geographical horrors, but going by the numbers they should really be at the top.
Speaking of which:
6. Innumeracy
Oz travel advice for the Philippines makes it sound like the Wild West:
Violent and other serious crime is common. Many crimes involve guns. Gunfights between criminals and police are not uncommon. Gangs often drug tourists before robbing or assaulting them.
This is true but it exaggerates the problem, and I dispute the ‘often’ in the last sentence. So long as you avoid trouble, you’ll be fine (probably). Most shootings are targeted, so make sure you don’t get up anyone’s nose. That would be more useful advice. The chances of getting caught in crossfire are extremely low. The Philippines is not Philadelphia – pros know how to aim.
The last Aussie who got shot, was shot by another Aussie. I’ve never seen an advisory warning people that some of their compatriots hanging out in bars are bikies, crims and lunatics, but it’s worth a mention.
If you employ mathematics, you’ll see that murder rates in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean are orders of magnitude worse than anywhere in South East Asia, yet the travel warnings make it sound like they’re about the same.
When calculating risk, we need to use numbers. However, people who work in the foreign service are generally there because it’s the most glamorous job they could get without studying maths. Not being mean – I’m terrible at maths myself – but we dumb-bums must acknowledge its importance and do our best to wrap our head around salient stats, in this field and others.
A better approach for travel advice would be to analyze overall crime rates, attacks on tourists etc., take into account the reliability of the figures, then offer some sort of ranking of danger, perhaps by comparing it to the home country and a couple of other popular tourist destinations. This could also be done for other risks, i.e. natural disasters, scams and terrorism. That last is always the most exaggerated vs its actual odds of happening.
Once again, the innumeracy impacts the relative weighting of advisories. Tourists are warned against kidnapping in the southern Philippines when, outside of the Sulu Islands, they are far more likely to be hit by a truck or catch dengue fever. Both of which are legitimate dangers, by the way.
7. The elite bubble
Again for the Philippines, Australians are advised not to travel by sea in case they get kidnapped by terrorists and not to take public transport in case they get pick-pocketed.
This is absurd. The advice is written by highly-paid bureaucrats who are driven everywhere in private transportation and rarely encounter non-elite locals aside from that driver.
Traveling by sea is fine. Major ferry services are guarded by marines. The main danger is sinking on one of these poorly-regulated and incompetently run rust-buckets, for which more helpful advice would be to take your own life jacket just in case. Even that would be paranoid, but I’m speaking as a pretty good swimmer.
Every long-term foreigner takes some form of public transport. Coach services are excellent and very cheap. Jeepneys are the only way to get around a lot of places. Learn to watch your stuff, don’t carry unnecessary amounts of cash and she’ll be right.
Non-elite foreigners are used rubbing shoulders with all sorts and have a good sense of situational awareness. Taking the Frankston line at night is probably more dangerous than a provincial jeepney, but I wonder if a diplomat has ever done that at home.
8. Lack of specificity
I noticed a travel warning for Japan that some nightspots skim your credit card details and steal your money.
Here is better advice:
There are places called ‘snack’ and ‘hostess’ clubs where you pay enormous amounts of money for a nice lady to talk to you, and that is all. Foreigners are generally not welcome because (a) they don’t get it and (b) don’t speak Japanese anyway so so what’s the point.
Less reputable clubs get customers completely drunk then intimidate them for huge amounts of cash. (a) Don’t get drunk and (b) if you do get stooged, go to the local cop shop in the morning and they will help you renegotiate a fairer price.
99% of the credit card skimming takes place at Nigerian-run clubs in Roppongi. There is no reason for you to ever be in such a place.
Now that is actionable advice.
Conclusion
There are certainly dangerous places in the world that you’re better off avoiding. Afghanistan, Somalia etc.
However, most places are fine to visit so long as you do your research and know what to watch out for.
The most useful advice applies everywhere, including at home: drive sober, wear a motorbike helmet, use insect repellent, avoid dodgy street food and don’t get drunk in shady areas.
But diplomats would not feel they were earning their generous salaries by reminding us to put on our seatbelts; they focus on sexier political unrest and natural disasters instead.
A word to any indignant diplomats reading this: you might increase the number of travellers who actually read your dreary advisories by throwing in entertaining tidbits like how to meet the best women in the Ivory Coast, what mixes well with cachaça or where to get the best happy pizza, but you won’t.