The #1 Thing you will Learn while Living Abroad
Why are we such snobs?
This post has been begging to be written for a long time and when I was Googling around looking to organize my thoughts on it I ran into an excellent article in the Huffington Post titled Crime and Safety: Another Reason Why Americans Need to Travel Abroad.
While that article addresses Americans, I’d like to extend this discussion to all Westerners from “developed” countries.
The author details why she has felt relatively safe in various notoriously unsafe cities around the world such as Bogota, Caracas, Mexico City and Phnom Penh. Why? Because she grew up and got her street skills in a not so nice part of Oakland, California.
Her counterpart in the article grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, another of America’s crime capitals and she also feels relatively safe in some well known crime locales having acquired street skills in her youth.
A major point of the story was how sad it is that the crime problems in some of the world’s famous crime havens are really about the same as the bad parts of London, Paris, Washington D.C., Detriot and on and on. We’ve come to accept the crime problem. And yet, we like to see ourselves and our countries as superior to these other places.
Our national and local news trumpets stories of vicious and horrific crimes abroad. We’ve all been very clearly told just how dangerous it is outside the safe borders of our own country. Yet, our own countries have some pretty nasty places you wouldn’t want to visit after dark and some not even in broad daylight!
An issue she didn’t cover was that there are also many many places in the developing world where crime just isn’t a problem or at least not nearly so much as in our Western cities. Seoul, Pusan, Bangkok. Chiang Mai, Jakarta and many other places in the world are just plain safer. Oh yeah, you will read drama on the internet of silly tourists being scammed and usually they were doing things they would never have done “back home”.
Japan and Korea (Korea is maybe no longer a “developing”, but rather a “developed” country) are probably two of the safest places I have ever been.
I’ve lived in Bangkok twice and walked (mostly jogged – as exercise) its dark streets alone late at night many many times with never a problem. Never got kidnapped or “Banged up Abroad” as the BS TV show likes to dramatize.
I helped place a young teacher in a foreign country recently only to have his mother call me - hysterical – wanting to know at least if he was “still alive”! I assured her that her child was probably safer now than when back home. I don’t think she believed me though . . .
How did so many people become so fearful of the world outside their borders, yet so accepting of the horrendous crimes in their own countries? And just how snobbish is that? Is our murder really better and less troublesome than their murder? Come on! Get off it.
The article mentioned above noted that these days a record number of Americans have a passport – yet only 30%!
That #1 Thing . . .
Back to the title of this article – that #1 thing you will learn when you live abroad is that the big world out here isn’t what you have been told it is. It is no where near as dangerous and at least ten times more interesting than you have ever been told.
I’m not suggesting you behave carelessly, flashing money and expensive jewelry about, but I am saying head out here with an open mind. And when you find out what it is REALLY like out in the real world, please educate your family and friends back home. There probably would be a lot less war in this world if more people saw more of the world and came to understand it better.
TED’s Tips™ #1: Give the world a chance and you will be hugely and very pleasantly surprised. And please educate those folks back home if you can, but it will be a very tough sell to outdo Banged up Abroad.
TED’s Tips™ #2: This is really just a personal comment for comparison. In the about 20 years I spent as an adult in Arizona in the USA – my various homes were burlarized five times. In my 20 years of living abroad – it hasn’t happened yet. Who’d a thunk it?! Knock on wood of course . . .
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Tags: crime abroad, expartriate life and crime, life abroad, travel safety
Uncategorized | Ted | 
February 6, 2012 9:07 AM
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