International Travel Bets for May?

john71 on 24/01/2022 - 19:57
Last edited 24/01/2022 - 19:59

Hello everyone.

I have a month's leave coming up in May and I think it's high time I dumped the kids and wife for a few weeks and headed abroad. Covid, however, may well have other ideas.

For what it's worth, these are my main travel priorities by geographical grouping. Which do people here think will be the most feasible come May? I certainly don't want to end up doing yet another putter around New Zealand.

1 - Persian Gulf (Kuwait/KSA/UAE/Oman)
2 - Caucasus (Armenia/Georgia/Azerbaijan)
3 - Central Africa (Nigeria/Cameroon/Benin)
4 - West Africa (Ivory Coast/Senegal/Guinea)
5 - Indian Ocean (Madagascar/Mauritius/Reunion)
6 - Western Pacific (PNG/Samoa/Japan)
7 - Camino Santiago de Compostela + region

I'll probably have to start organising flights and visas in April. If my fellow travellers here were betting folk, which would you put your hard-earned Qantas points on as being the most doable during this wretched pandemic?

Travel

Comments

  • pharkurnell on 24/01/2022 - 20:09
    +5

    Wheres the none of the above option?

    • john71 on 24/01/2022 - 20:34

      Yep - I guess I need an eighth option there!

  • bobbified on 24/01/2022 - 20:12
    +4

    If I was to go somewhere, I'd pick a destination that has direct flights and completely avoid those that require different airlines for different legs.

    • john71 on 24/01/2022 - 20:37
      +2

      Solid advice. And that pretty much rules out the above options, unless a direct Australia-Spain flight suddenly materialises again.

  • Seraphin7 on 24/01/2022 - 20:39
    +5

    There is a fair share of destinations on that list where coronavirus is the very least of your concerns.

    • dasher86 on 25/01/2022 - 08:37
      +1

      Perfect way to stop thinking about it.

    • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 16:18

      Not really. They're all safe places if you don't walk about with your head in the clouds.

      My main concern is getting stranded overseas and missing a crapload of work because of silly, volatile testing and isolation requirements.

  • capslock on 24/01/2022 - 20:42
    +2

    I like your travel style. Very adventurous.

  • Lunarboogie on 24/01/2022 - 20:50

    Love it! I went Azerbaijan a few years and really rated it. Central Africa though is a dicey prospect at the best of times. Even more so in a pandemic. Take out insurance!

    • john71 on 24/01/2022 - 21:34
      -1

      Heavens, I wouldn't even consider jumping on a plane without a fluffy tail of insurance policies dangling from my pants.

      I'm quite used to challenging places - Venezuela, Turkmenistan, El Salvador, North Korea, Zaire back in the day - so the countries I've listed are par for the course. Since I'm not getting any younger, the sooner the better.

      I'm glad you enjoyed Azerbaijan. I hope you had a chance to pop into Georgia and Armenia while you were there.

      • morse on 25/01/2022 - 03:14

        Are the wife and kids okay with you not coming back? Whilst you’re not getting any younger you also might not be getting any older with some of those destinations. Nothing wrong with risky travel as long as you’re comfortable with that risk.

        Personally for my travel at the moment I’m looking at destinations with decent medical services and infrastructure, but my kid is only 2 and probably doesn’t want to lose his parents at this stage. This isn’t just because of COVID, major trauma or other things that could be managed in Australia can’t always be dealt with in many places, whether you have insurance or not.

        Out of that list I’d probably go 1, 5 or 6. At a rough guess though I’d say 6 has a high risk of lock downs and travel restrictions impacting your travel, but medically safest if your insurance covers medical retrieval.

        • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 07:40
          -2

          I get the impression that some here aren't so good at calculating personal risk. As long as you keep your wits about you, none of the places I listed are especially dangerous. I'd be more scared cruising the Hume Highway on a Saturday night than strolling round downtown Lagos during the day.

          (It's a well-trodden argument with the wife.)

          My biggest fear by far is getting stranded by covid restrictions. Which is why the suggestions of lots of travel insurance and minimising flight connections make a lot of sense. I agree that the Pacific is probably the diciest in terms of sudden, drastic restrictions.

          • morse on 25/01/2022 - 08:40
            +2

            @john71: Lagos is one thing, but other parts of Nigeria are pretty dicey, and your list only includes the countries.

            The difference between you going to some of these places vs the people that live there, is that you don’t have the connections, culture etc. As a foreign tourist you stand out and are a perfect for kidnapping, mugging etc. There’s terrorist attacks and kidnappings in some of the places you mention, it’s much harder for you to keep your wits about you because you not a local with context specific ‘wits’. Presumably when you cross the Hume Hwy at night you use the lights or time when you go to avoid being hit. You don’t necessarily have the same mitigations available to you in some of these places. You’ve got the risk of normal injury and illness with inferior medical services plus everything else.

            If it’s a well trodden argument with your wife, obviously she also sees the risk of you dying or being seriously injured too (the later probably being worse tbh). So it’s not only your risk to take. If your kid is under 18 it’s also their risk, as losing a father isn’t ideal at that age.

            Anyway each to their own. I hope you’ve budgeted and planned time for your wife and kid to have an equivalent break of their choosing.

            • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 09:54

              @morse: I'm an experienced off-the-beaten-path traveller, so my concern tends to be absolute, rather than relative, risk. There are kidnappings and terrorist attacks in Norway and Nigeria alike. But absolute risk in the latter remains small as long as I don't venture further north than Abuja.

              I'm insured for permanent disability, income protection and all that. If I end up smeared beneath the wheel of a jungle train in Gabon - well, who's to say it wouldn't have happened in Carlton anyway?

              Wife is way too hapless and naive to deal with anything more demanding than a weekend on the Gold Coast. That suits me (and my wallet) just fine.

              • morse on 25/01/2022 - 10:02
                +2

                @john71: If my husband called me hapless and naïve he wouldn't be my husband for much longer. Your wallet should probably consider that, I hear divorce is an expensive business.

                • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 10:12

                  @morse: I wish your husband the best of luck with all those eggshells.

                  • morse on 25/01/2022 - 10:37
                    +2

                    @john71: If you think not insulting and demeaning your spouse is walking on eggshells, you might want to examine exactly where that fragility is coming from. And if financial abuse was on the cards, landmines might be more of a concern than egg shells. Luckily my husband and I make shared decisions, plan things together, support each other and definitely don't say unkind things about each other on public forums.

                    If you are interested in the difference if you end up smeared beneath the wheel of a jungle train in Gabon compared to Carlton look into studies that examine outcomes in reference to trauma retrieval times and care at various levels of trauma centres. Normally I'd say then look at outcomes based on commencement and intensity of rehabilitation, but that might not be relevant if you're smooshed too far from care. By all means take risks live your life, but saying Gabon is as safe for a foreign tourist as being a local in Melbourne is pretty far fetched.

                    • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 16:01

                      @morse: Different strokes (and marital dynamics) for different folks.

                      I think worst-case scenarios are an easy cognitive trap: we think about the most gruesome possible outcome (I went to India and a tiger ripped my arm off!), work backwards to the relative risk (tiger attacks are a thousand times more common in India than in Australia!), and land on a fallacious conclusion (I will never visit India lest I become tiger snack material!).

                      The only risk calculus that matters here is absolute risk. Yes, it is true that grisly traffic accidents are more common in Indonesia than in Australia - as are mass shootings in America and sleigh mishaps in Finland. But the absolute risk of such events for the individual remains microscopic. The dread of relative risk and the vividness of potential calamities, no matter how improbable, deprive otherwise rational people of exciting pleasures like skydiving and exotic travel.

                      I've always reserved the nook under my bed for monsters and communists - not my trembling self. We would all do well to seize life before it finally seizes us.

              • blitz on 25/01/2022 - 22:40

                @john71:

                There are kidnappings and terrorist attacks in Norway and Nigeria alike

                And Serena Williams and I both play tennis.

  • Sweet3st on 24/01/2022 - 20:59
    +3

    I'm just hoping to be able to go to Perth (from Sydney)! What are my chances?!

  • Mistymoo on 24/01/2022 - 21:23
    +2

    I’m hoping to be able to go to Japan in May but I don’t like my chances 😔

    • Nalar on 24/01/2022 - 21:34

      Yeah they aren't gonna let gaijin in very quickly.

    • john71 on 24/01/2022 - 21:36

      I'm not hopeful about Japan in 2022. I was supposed to catch the Olympics there in 2020, but of course life got in the way.

  • ddhar on 24/01/2022 - 21:53
    +1

    I had a great time in Dubai & Abu Dhabi and wish I had more time to see Oman.

    For that reason alone, I vote option 1.

    • raptormesh on 24/01/2022 - 22:08
      +1

      FYI the Houthi rebels are lobbing Scuds into UAE at the moment.

    • Sweet3st on 24/01/2022 - 23:59
      +1

      Agree! The traditional wooden boat cruises in the straits of Hormuz are incredible… (Oman).

      • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 07:45

        Thanks for the suggestion. I'd mainly been thinking about touring the mountains - possibly a self-drive from Kuwait though Saudi Arabia and UAE to Oman - but hadn't considered the dhows.

  • holdenmg on 25/01/2022 - 02:37

    North Korea is missing from your list.

    • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 07:42
      +1

      Oh, I've been there a couple of times over the years - once for work, another time as a tourist. It's a weird place. I'd recommend it.

  • Stewardo on 25/01/2022 - 04:49

    7

    • john71 on 25/01/2022 - 07:43
      +1

      Thanks. My father always wanted to do it, so I was thinking about (discreetly) scattering his ashes along the way.

  • holdenmg on 25/01/2022 - 08:17
    +2

    Kiev, Ukraine?

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