Travelers getting out of Thailand, but the situation is worsening

by Josh Lew on

Following the lead of Etihad Airways, more than a dozen international carriers have sought out secondary airports to get passengers out of Thailand. Tiny U-Tapao Airport in coastal Rayong (a few hours south of Bangkok) has seen 50 flights per day. Passengers have been squeezing into the one terminal, but tents and portable toilets have been sent up outside to help with overflow.

Don Muang, the old international airport in Bangkok, has also been receiving some international flights, though the chaos in Bangkok makes U-Tapao a better choice in the eyes of most carriers.

Meanwhile, anti-government forces are still controlling Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok’s international airport. Protesters are in the terminals and armed guards loyal to the protesters have set up checkpoints at various points around the airport. Small bomb blasts are occasionally heard throughout the airport grounds and a news truck was recently riddled with bullets after it was stopped at a PAD checkpoint. No one in the truck was injured.

Police have surrounded the airport and are organizing themselves. An end to the stand-off is most likely immenant. The question is, will it be a peaceful or violent end.

[full coverage: The Nation and BKK Post]

When is Travel Too Dangerous?

by Josh Lew on

Sometimes, common sense is all you need to decide if a trip is too risky. For example, a expedition to build sandcastles on Galveston Island wouldn’t have worked out well during Hurricane Ike.

But at other times the decision to stay or go is a lot less clear. Do you avoid places like Thailand, where current political strife has induced demonstrations and violence? What about Indonesia, where there is always a threat of terrorism bubbling under the surface? Lebanon? Israel…?

I guess in large part, the decision depends on the kind of traveler that you are. Some people just don the pith helmet and wade into the fray, while others avoid it completely, opting for ping pong and cable TV in the safety of their basement. For those of us who are neither overly courageous (or is it reckless?) nor overly fearful, the answer to the question “to go or not to go” is a little more complicated.

So how can you weigh the odds and decide if the positive aspects of a trip are worth putting up with the risk?At some point, you have to honestly ask yourself if you will be a target. I’m not talking about walking through Iran with a crew cut and one of those t-shirts showing an eagle holding the American flag in its beak. If you think that is OK, it’s probably better to stay at home…in your basement. By what if you can be singled out and targeted as a foreigner like the Japanese photographer who was killed last year in Myanmar? If foreigners in a certain country are targets and there seems to be no repercussion for harming them, it is probably best to stay away.

What about past situations in your destination? Thailand has frequent coups. Most do not turn violent; though there are some exceptions. As long as you avoid demonstrations and other confrontational situations, your greatest risk will be a traffic accident. That said, things can happen in the heat of the moment. Even if you don’t feel that you are a target, you might find yourself as one. Australian photographer Neil Davis survived covering the Vietnam War only to be killed by a trigger happy tank gunner during a minor, otherwise non-violent coup, in Thailand.

Aside from the general situation on the ground and a country’s past treatment of visitors, you have to remind yourself about the risks associated with normal travel. The biggest chance you’ll take in most places comes when you try to negotiate your way through unfamiliar traffic.

Travel and racism: What’s love got to do with it?

by Jamie Rhein on

I posted a story about an on-line test developed by the University of Chicago to help people learn about their tendencies to think a wallet or a cell phone may be a gun depending on the color of the person’s skin. Two commenters wondered what the study has to do with travel. I think most things have to do with travel, but I majored in sociology as an undergraduate, so I see connections in EVERYTHING. Name two subjects and I’ll find the connecting dots somewhere.

Since my post, Iva wrote a post about gun related deaths in Chicago during one weekend, and the people she knows who wants to see bad neighborhoods. This is not that different, I don’t think, than people who drive through Appalachia looking to see if people have teeth.

When I learned about the study about racism and guns, I flashed to ideas about safety and travel. Perhaps, I was thinking, people’s ideas about safety have something to do with where they choose to go on vacation, and perhaps, if they travel at all. There are plenty of reasons why people choose vacation spots, but there are reasons why people don’t pick certain destinations as well. I don’t think racism is it, but a sense of security and the predictable is.

There’s a reason why Disneyland and Disney World get a crowd. Part of it has something to do with feeling safe, I would guess. The Magic Kingdom has a far-reaching comfort zone. When our daughter was five-years -old, we lost her in Disneyland for a few minutes because my husband thought she was holding my hand, and I thought she was holding his. We were busy arguing about something, thus distracted. Our daughter had stopped to look at something and we had kept going. We freaked a bit, running pell mell, retracing our steps, but I didn’t think something bad would have happened. Disneyland is about as controlled an environment as one can get.

New York City, also a popular tourist destination, isn’t controlled, and perhaps, because of this, people may feel more on edge, particularly on a first time visit.

The first time I went to New York City without adults, I was with a high school friend. We went for a day walking a tidy path from Times Square to Grand Central Station, down 5th Avenue to Rockefeller Center and back to Times Square. There wasn’t any risk of getting lost. Never mind that as a 4th grader, I had ridden my bike all over State College, Pennsylvania when I lived there. On my next trip to New York, also in high school, I did strike out on a subway for more of the unknown. Years later, I feel perfectly safe in the city, even when walking to my brother’s apartment at night by myself.

People have ideas of danger that are on a subconscious level. When a friend and I traveled across the United States by bus (yes, it can be done) after we got out of the Peace Corps, we spent a few nights hanging out at bus stations in the middle of the night the further west we got. For some reason buses don’t seem to leave any earlier than 1 a.m. or arrive any later than 5 a.m. once you get past St. Louis. At least that’s what we found when we were traveling.

While we were waing for a city bus in Denver to take us to the bus station, after we went to a movie blocks away from the theater we asked a woman about the safety around the bus station that time of night. She gave us a police whistle she had around her neck. In Salt Lake City, one couple, who knew that we were heading to the bus station late at night, decided they would take us there when we stopped to ask them for directions. As far as I could tell, we were as safe at the bus stations as we would have been at Disneyland, but there are impressions people have of bus stations at night.

I’ve lived several years outside of the United States and have talked to many, many, many people who think that cities in the United States are not safe because of all the guns. At times it has seemed like people think that as soon as you step off the airplane at JFK or La Guardia, you’d better duck and cover. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but people, mostly taxi drivers in Singapore, have said that they worry.) Whenever people mention a thought of the United States not being safe, I tell them that it is safe. Really.

My thought is that people who travel extensively may see the world as a much safer place just because their exposure to diversity is that much higher. The unknown becomes less threatening because the unknown is smaller. This is my hunch based on conversations I’ve had with people who don’t travel much. I’m not saying that those who travel are better people, but their experiences may give them a broader knowledge of humanity.

To mr, the study by the University of Chicago is not a definitive account on racist attitudes, but one that is looking for an explanation about an aspect of human behavior. Just like it is surprising to think of Robert Quest, the CNN reporter getting caught in Central Park with a small bag of meth in his pocket, we have notions of who we think might be more likely to be holding a gun. As I said in my post, I never think anyone is holding a gun. I actually don’t know anyone who has a gun besides two people–one of them a hunter. There may be others who think everyone is holding a gun.

I do think that which type of person travels, and where people go, has something to do with safety. Whether people think an object that is pulled out of a pocket late at night is a gun, a wallet or a cell phone probably has more to do with where someone is and the circumstances. Where someone is may have something to do with where the person feels safe. That’s my opinion, anyway. I can’t help it. I majored in Sociology.

Oh, and what does love got to do with it? The line from the song, “What’s Love Got To Do with It?” played in my head for some reason when I was thinking of a title for the post. It stuck. It’s a line from the Tina Turner song. The next line line from the song is “What’s love but a second hand emotion?” I don’t think this has anything to do with travel, but it’s catchy.

How racist are you? Is it a gun or a cell phone?

by Jamie Rhein on

In Diversity Inc, there is an article about a pop psychology test from the University of Chicago. The test, self-administered on-line, runs through various photos of black and white men who are either holding a gun or something else. The test taker presses the “/ ” key to shoot the guy with the gun, or presses the “z” key to put the gun away.

The idea is for the test taker to see how racist he or she is in terms of who he or she thinks is more likely to be carrying a gun. I took the test and found out that I would have been shot dead several times over since my reaction time was so darned slow. I scored into the negative numbers. It didn’t matter if the shooter was black or white.

The test is pretty slick, even if, one is not prone to give much stock to this sort of study. The pondering about who is packing a gun reminds me of those discussions I had in college with friends of mine. We wondered what each of us would do if walking alone at night. If a man was coming, who crossed to the other side, and under what circumstances? Each of us admitted that our radar went up regardless of who the man was and how fast he was coming up behind us or towards us.

I don’t tend to think of people walking around with guns. I do notice the no guns stickers on signs since carrying a gun is legal in Ohio. As far as I can tell from my terrible score, when I look at a gun, I see a wallet or a cell phone. It doesn’t matter who is holding it.

Here is a link to the test to see how you do. Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times about this study where he expresses some dismay at his own results.

What I think is missing from the data is the background of the person taking the test. I wonder how much age, sex, and whether a person grew up in a city or in the country has any bearing on reactions? I also wonder if people who travel often are more likely to see a wallet? Or do our experiences have nothing to do with our trigger finger? I also wonder if, when we are traveling in a country where violent crime is rare, we react differently? I would guess yes.

Are soccer players from violent countries more likely to get yellow cards?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

A new study [pdf] by three researchers purports to show that soccer players in European leagues who come from countries with histories of civil war are more likely to play violently on the field, as measured by their tendency to get yellow and red cards. Check out the chart here— and notice that the two countries nearly off the grid are Colombia and Israel.

So does growing up in a violent country mean you’ll be a dirtier soccer player? Well, not necessarily. There are, of course, a couple problems with the study:

  • As any Stat 101 student knows, correlation does not imply causality. Perhaps the soccer played in certain countries– Colombia, Israel, Ivory Coast, Georgia– is just more physical than the soccer in Europe.
  • Maybe the referees are biased.
  • Maybe the players are getting yellow cards for diving rather than hard tackles.
  • Maybe a lot of things.

Despite these apparent problems, I find the study ingenious and fascinating. As the study says: “Beyond providing a novel real-world measure of individuals’ willingness to commit acts of violence, this finding indicates that some aspects of national culture are persistent even when individuals are far from home in a different institutional setting, here, a professional sports league.”

More here.