There’s something about being on holiday that makes a certain type of traveller want to drop his drawers, ooze alcohol from his eyeballs and push local laws to the limit. Sounds like fun, right?
Aussies behaving badly overseas have been a hot topic in the last month, leaving many of us rolling our eyes in despair.
Earlier this month, the “Budgie Nine” made headlines when they stripped down to their Malaysian-flag undies out at the Kuala Lumpur Grand Prix, aggravating local authorities. Just the month before, three young Aussies had to be rescued at substantial cost from the top of Uluru, despite pleas by the traditional landowners not to climb the sacred monolith.
The drunken antics of Aussies in Bali and other parts of the world have long made headlines.
Image credit: The Australian
If you take a look at the 2015-16 Consular State of Play, the annual report shows that incidents abroad are increasingly commonplace. Of the 10.2 million Aussies who travelled abroad, government assistance was provided to 15,740 people.
The number of people arrested overseas shot up by a worrying 23% to 1551, while those imprisoned number 391 – an increase of 5%.
The US recorded the highest number of arrests with 262, up from 169 the previous year.
Drug-related offences were the most common reason for arrest and imprisonment, followed by fraud and assault.
“The advice to travellers is simple,” the report said.
“Don’t carry or consume illegal drugs overseas. Ever.”
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned travellers about the dangers of their reckless behaviour overseas, particularly highlighting the lack of knowledge about local laws and customs.
Australian consular action is “significantly constrained” once people are subject to a foreign legal system, she stressed.
“The Australian government can only do so much,” Bishop said upon the release of the report.
“The Australian government is not a hospital, it is not a hotel, it is not an internet cafe and our consular officials cannot just whisk you out of jail. People have to take responsibility for their behaviour overseas.”
In a column for Traveller, Ben Groundwater puts the phenomenon largely down to a “misplaced idea of ‘larrikinism’”.
“It’s the notion that because we don’t take anything seriously, neither should anyone else,” he writes.
But these law-flouting, culturally insensitive Aussies are not alone. The obnoxious traveller has become a worldwide epidemic.
Take the high profile tale of US Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte at this year’s Rio Games. Lochte’s account of a robbery at gun-point has come under much scrutiny by Brazilian authorities that claim instead that he drunkenly vandalised a gas station bathroom and got caught out, then lying to save face.
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Last year, US tourists were arrested for scratching their names in the ancient bricks of the Colosseum in Rome.
More recently, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland had to warn people not to try and catch Pokemon on the site of the former Nazi concentration camp branding it “disrespectful”, with players also posting photos catching the imaginary creatures in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
Last week, after the death of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, embassies warned party-loving tourists to respect the feelings of the Thai people while visiting the country.
But, as idiotic as these tourists may be, at least they are travelling.
Why is that a good thing?
Not because they are spreading their own special brand of idiocy around the world, but because travel is an amazing thing.
Not only have its benefits for heart and brain health been proven, but research shows that experience in other countries makes us more flexible, creative, and complex thinkers.
It opens our eyes to other cultures, ways of living different to our own.
Idiots abroad are actually helping their chances of being less idiotic in the future, although they may face a few tough lessons along the way.
Which is why low uptake of passports in a number of countries around the world, especially the US, is particularly concerning.
In 2010, only one in two Aussies had a passport.
Only 36% of Americans have a passport. Furthermore, a recent study found that Americans that possess a passport and do travel overseas are less likely to vote for Donald Trump – that’s got to say something, right?
Of course, economic factors come into play, but travel is cheaper than ever before and accessible to those on a range of budgets.
So, although the stories and statistics about these idiotic tourists are frustrating, at least they are travelling. Which leaves us with some hope, that one day, they won’t be such morons anymore.
The real danger doesn’t lie in when we do travel, it lurks in when we don’t.