Captain America May Not Be Able to Save You: Travel Smart and Don't Think With Your Girl Parts

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash

Yes, let’s adventure, but let’s not have it cost us our bank accounts, our health and/or our lives

This article by

Sunhats and Chardonnay

underscores some critical considerations for safe travel accommodations, and I’m going to add a few (as invited.) While she focuses on where you stay, she saves me some trouble here; I was going to write a piece about this for solo women which touched on different aspects of safety. First, her article:

How Can Solo Female Travelers Ensure Safe Stays in Their Accommodation?

This is super solid advice no matter where you go. Your sense of safety is worth the investment, especially if this isn’t something you’ve done a lot of, and especially if you’re exploring developing countries.

First, for the most part, I travel far more rough. Because of that I’ve taken very different precautions because I’ve always traveled solo. That’s taught me some very important skills based on observations and some terrible tragedies that have made the news.

Please be mindful that what I’m addressing here depends at least in part on your generation, so take this with a large barge of salt.

First and foremost, while I no longer date and I have never been a drinker, one of the biggest mistakes solo women make when they travel is to use Tinder (or similar) locally and to party locally.

If you were a predator, what would you use?

Tinder, bars and alcohol. This is why we find pedophiles working as school janitors. Why? because there are vulnerable kids there. When we’re overseas we too often let our hair down, take risks, and make ourselves vulnerable.

You can find horror stories as well as “EPIC” advice about using Tinder while traveling. I’m not a fan. Call me stupid, but call me canny. I’ve never been assaulted (at least in the worst sense, that is) while traveling and never been robbed or drugged, and I’ve traveled solo single female for years.

YES I’ve had to forfeit party nights. In countries like South Africa where the rape statistics were horrific when I was there, you were advised to 1) never go out alone after 7 pm, 2) always have a sober guide. Even that didn’t always work.

Knowing what’s going on locally can not just save your trip but also your life.

Ignorance of local laws isn’t a defense. Ignorance isn’t a defense to break a driving law in another state and it most assuredly isn’t a defense overseas.

Several things to keep in mind: tourists are fair game once they’ve left their home country. Local laws rule. Worse, those local laws may be so Byzantine that it’s years before you ever get out if you break one, and there are other factors to consider, like the host country. Can anyone say Brittany Greer?

Local law enforcement in your host country is NOT the USA police. No matter what you may think of our law enforcement, with rare exception I’ll take ours any day over those in developing countries. They are often paid so poorly that they work in cahoots with the folks breaking the laws.

If you’re caught up in that web, don’t expect justice.

Please also don’t expect Captain America to come save you. There are imprisoned Americans all over the world who may never come home, and plenty of others who got dinged, fined or jailed for not doing their research.

Please see this piece on laws that might surprise you.

It doesn’t matter if you think that a law is stupid. If you flaunt a law, like going topless where it’s expressly forbidden and the like, and think that because you’re a Westerner, you’ll be right, mate, you may well not be right, mate.

Americans and other Westerners in particular are not popular in many places these days, and a jailed Western tourist becomes a pawn. A kidnapped Western tourist is a pawn and possibly worse.

Older women might consider some of this advice ridiculous. However, years of tolerating American and other Western tourists flouting local laws and customs have painted a target on many of our backs. We’d be wise to be aware of where, and why.

For example:

Some kids have taken their Spring breaks to other countries and found out that what might have been acceptable in certain party-prone parts of America can get you in serious trouble elsewhere. Please see this article from the NYT. Those spring break events now affect other, older tourists as well.

No matter how old you are, if you and I are dumb enough to flash our jewelry and/or get dead drunk, there are plenty of folks happy to take advantage.

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

Now for the part that too many of us don’t take seriously. We need to.

I really don’t care if this irritates a few older horny older women. I find this trend dumb, despicable and downright dangerous.

You may deeply uncomfortable about all the old (mainly White men, at any rate men with enough money to shop) flowing like a river to SE Asia, especially Thailand, to take advantage of poor village girls desperate for Western money.

This Guardian article is from 2008 and it’s just as relevant today. I met a fellow pilot, a Brit, who got horribly fleeced by two Thai women who only saw him as a cash cow. It’s a business model.

But they’re hardly alone.

There’s been an increasing trend of older White women grabbing up local Brown and Black boys. Yes it’s a thing. The boys are all in because some can and will find ways to fleece their benefactors.

My safari operator warned me about sitting on the beach on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. If you’re out there alone, you’re likely to be propositioned by any number of young Masai men who troll the beaches looking expressly for older White women.

Research it. My safari operator fired his best, and my favorite, guide for that very thing. B. was a terrifically talented and well-educated young man and an excellent guide. He had also romanced and fleeced several rich White safari guests and was working on another when he was discovered.

The one he was working on was me. I wasn’t rich, but he didn’t know that, which is the problem. If you’re female and White and can afford a safari, they often assume you can afford to subsidize them and their extended family.

I wasn’t the slightest bit interested so I didn’t get the hints. My operator recognized the moves. That was the end of B. It was only after he was bounced that he found out that B. had been a busy B. indeed.

Please be aware it’s a thing. In some developing countries it’s a well-known way to get out of poverty. You may well be approached. Educate yourself.

All the years during my travels I watched this, heard about it and the locals told me about it. It shows no sign of slowing down, either, with the rates of gray divorce going up.

Even smart women who should know better get caught up. The marvelous author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back is one. That book was autobiographical. Go research how that all turned out for Terry McMillan.

Two years ago I was reading comments for a travel article. I was horrified to read one sixty-ish woman write, in all seriousness, that she had read Eat Pray Love. The only reason she was heading out was to get laid, and fall in love. As if.

This is so puerile it hurts my heart.

That woman is walking around with a target on her back.

This piece by

Julie Bindel

nails it. It’s an issue far and wide, and her points about HIV Aids and lack of condom use truly underscore how a fling can be a permanent thing.

Female sex tourism: white, middle-aged women paying for sex with young men in the Global South

It is just as inappropriate as old men who travel to SE Asia to get girls in their teens to hang on their arms.

Julie says: deeply exploitive. It sure as hell is. So if we women don’t care to be exploited, how is this behavior justifiable? That’s up to us to decide, I guess.

When you and I consider issues of safety, most of the time we’re thinking about physical safety. We often don’t take some of the above into consideration. Kindly, we’d better.

If we don’t, you and I can end up broke, or dead, or broke and then dead.

I want you to come home with lots of memories and a reason to head out again. To that end, please heed Sunhat’s advice. You can tell me to go spit, older girls just wanna have fun. You do that. Let’s just be wise about it, and respectful of the local cultures so that we aren’t continuing to exploit people.

I want you to be safe, confident and with a sunhat full of memories when you get back.

Let’s play.

Photo by John Arano on Unsplash

Thanks for joining me on this important topic and thanks as always to the other excellent writers who inspire me. If this was valuable please consider

If you know someone who is off to the hinterlands and might value some insights please also consider

Either way, travel informed and with your head squarely on your shoulders. Let’s. Play. Smart.