Why do Americans not travel more internationally ?

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 23:16:18 GMT, "Bill McKee"
wrote:


"Alan S" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:16:49 GMT, "Bill McKee"
wrote:

Big country. Lots to do and see here. Europe is actually a lot of small
countries. So a 2 hour drive gets you international travel, while a 2
hour
drive in California, does not get you out of the state. Statistics are
marvelous aren't they?

Have you driven two hours south of San Diego? Or two hours
north of Buffalo?

Cheers, Alan, Australia

Actually yes to the San Diego question, and I have driven across Canada from
Winnipeg to Vancouver. But I have also been to Europe and Asia several
times, both pleasure and business. As well as Oz twice on business, both
Perth and Sydney. Will probably return to Oz for the Queensland and Great
Barrier Reef areas. But as to international travel for US residents, You
can get most of the same destination type activities without leaving the
English speaking USA. Without the 9 or 10 hour flights. You will not see
the different architecture you find in 5-600 hundred year old towns and
villages of old Europe, but the money is familiar, the skiing can be better,
and you can read the menus, by staying in North America, except for Mexico,
and most of those places know enough english to talk you out of your money.

I travel for many reasons; but the most important one is to
see things I can't see at home and experience cultures I
won't meet at home. As an Aussie, there is also the wish to
see antiquity - ancient Grece, Rome, Egypt, medieval sites
and so on.

I realise that your country, like mine, has an enormous
range of views, geography, culture - but I could not live in
New England without visiting French Canada, or live in Texas
without visiting Yucatan, or Florida and not visit the many
Caribbean isles.

To get to and from here, for someone on limited means, is
expensive. So, when I do go I go for a long time and see as
much as I can - becuse I may never be able to return. I had
not had the opportunity to go overseas since limited trips
with the military many years ago, so I saw this country
instead - but I always itched to see the world.

It's a different mind-set. I know very few Aussies who don't
want to travel, it's just that it's expensive so they do it
less often but for longer. The people I met in the USA - or
the UK - who had never left their home county except to go
to college astounded me.


Cheers, Alan, Australia

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:01:58 -0600, Doug McDonald
wrote:

As far as I am concerned, for example, most of Europe is
totally uninteresting ... the only part I would be interesting
in seeing for an extended time is the inside of museums, which
admittedly is something I will eventually go over and do.

I think you just answered the original question. Sadly.

Cheers, Alan, Australia

On 6 Nov 2005 21:45:45 -0800, "markbyrn"
wrote:

Alan,

Small world - I was stationed at Keesler for AC&W training in 1978. A
six week wonder, I was in & out of Biloxi in the blink of the eye, and
then spent the next 10 years avoiding frostbite, including one very
long year at Thule, Greenland. After Thule, everywhere else I went
seemed like paradise, including Dyabikir, Turkey & Yerevan, Armenia,

Mark

I was in Cody Hall from Feb-May 1967.

I remember there were more trainees on the base than we had
in our entire Air Force, and there were 43 countries under
training at Keesler. I also remember the night when a duty
officer filled the top floor of a barracks with an incoming
bus load of Greek Trainees. It didn't occur to him that the
ground floor being filled with Turks may be a problem. Our
bus on the way to Cody Hall passed the burning remnants of
the barracks next morning - they re-fought the war for
Cyprus that night.

We spent one week in barracks; that was enough - we rented
an apartment in Gulf Towers on the beach for the rest of our
stay:-)

We met lots of guys from the FANG (**** Air National Guard)
and the USAF. The incentive for their trainees on the
AN/CPN/4 was that the bottom guys on the course went to the
unit at Greenland.

Cheers, Alan, Australia

markbyrn wrote:
Jeff,

Better yet, let's move this entire thread to the wrestling newsgroups -
we might some get some rational discourse. Alternatively, we could
move the thread to the alt.bash-america newsgroup, and those who have
the need to build their self-esteem by ragging on the US, can post
loaded questions & make sweeping generalizations.

Mark


No, no .... just think of this:

Why do all those Europeans who travel "abroad" (i.e. "overseas"
or "out of Europe") have to do all that? WHAT'S WRONG WITH EUROPE
THAT THEY HAVE TO LEAVE? Whereas America is so wonderful that
it really is not necessary.


Doug McDonald

Doug McDonald wrote:

No, no .... just think of this:

Why do all those Europeans who travel "abroad" (i.e. "overseas"
or "out of Europe") have to do all that? WHAT'S WRONG WITH EUROPE
THAT THEY HAVE TO LEAVE? Whereas America is so wonderful that
it really is not necessary.

There are probably several reasons that Europeans like to travel overseas.
The one you are probably most interested in is cost. Things in western Europe
tend to be expensive. Anywhere they go overseas is likely to be cheaper than
home. On the other hand, there are places in Europe that are relatively
inexpensive. Spain and Portugal are generally inexpensive, as are many
destinations in the old eastern bloc. Young people flock to places like
Prague where beer is cheap. For most of the Europeans I know, it is a general
love of travel, the chance to see new places and experience different
cultures. Living in small countries, having diverse cultures and being
multilingual, they are not intimidated by having to deal with a different
language.

larry wrote:

Guinea, (as well as Canada) already. It was as easy to get to most of
those places as to Mexico, if somewhat more tiring.

Doug McDonald


Why do so few Americans visit South America?



A VERY interesting question!

Why have **I** visited South America so little?

Well, there are two reasons:

First, and the biggie, is that I am an academic and so can
go to the non-tropical part only at our Christmas break. Now this is a
long break (almost a month) but still, since I like to take a
certain kind of exotic tour, I have to find one, usually
two weeks to 18 days, that fits in the time available.
Whereas I have the whole summer off for travel in the northern
hemisphere. It's a biggie for me ... and an even bigger biggie
for people with kids in grade to high school, as they get
only a week off for Christmas.

Second, since I like certain kinds of "adventure travel tours",
I have to take what exists. I have been to Macchu Picchu, hiked
around the Cordiella Blanca in Peru, visited the Galapagos,
and done a trip to the Ecuadorian Amazon. I will next year
go to Patagonia. There just seems to be a scarcity of tours.
S.A, outside the areas I mentioned, seems unpopular. I have
wanted to go to Venezuela to see Angel Falls and climb up
Mt. Roriama or Auyun Tepui ... but twice I have signed up
and had trips cancelled from under me (once for low signup
and once because the local tour guide quit to become
a full time artsy potter (!)). Now there seems to be no
similar tours available from the US or Australia. There are some
from England ... but they seem to be rather shoestring-like
affairs rather than first rate offerings. Also, of course,
Venezuela at the moment seems not to be exactly a nice place.
Ditto for Columbia. I do say that while the trips I did in Ecuador
were absolutely stellarly wonderful overall, especially the trip to
Zabalo, I found the "jungle lodge" at Kapawi I went to
to be, while a fabolous lodge per se, rather lacking
in nice jungle. If the other lodges were that poor compared
to Zabalo for seeing pristine jungle, I see why they are not
too popular. I have not been to the Peruvian jungle places,
but suspect that they too are somewhat run down compared to the
incomparably wonderful jungle at Zabalo. And the trip to
Macchu Picchu and the Cordillera Blanca was simply not a great one.
MAcchu Picchu itself was not exactly a great place .... some of the
other nearby sites were better, as were the Mayan ones in
Guatemala and Honduras, and the Buddhist ones in Ladakh. The Inca Trail
(this was decades ago before it was overrun) was just OK. And the
Andes were just not as nice mountains, overall, as a full trip,
as the Rockies, Canadian Rockies, Sierra Nevada, Alaska, the
Himalayas, etc. They are just too narrow a mountain range ...
you spend most of your hiking time on farms, not my idea of
a great vacation.

And there is one whole large country in S.A. that seem terra incognito:
Brazil. It is as if it were not there. Paraguay? Uruguay? Argentina
outside the very souther tip ... not there! It's not clear why. Bolivia
is there, but barely.

It's not particularly hard or expensive to get to South America,
so it does seem strange that it is not very popular.

Doug McDonald

Rita wrote:

On the other hand, I've talked to people in England who never have
crossed the English channel, something that is very hard for me to
understand. And to others who have vacationed at times in one of the
winter resort communities in Portugal or Spain but never have explored
European cities.

And it is so easy for them -- they can drive there.

They can drive there now :-) Maybe it is the island mentality that makes people
reluctant to travel when every trip involves a ferry trip. I have no idea what the
Chunnel costs, but links like that tend to be just as expensive as the ferries
they replace. Perhaps it is a problem many English seem to have with different
cultures and languages, similar to many Americans and Canadians. I was amazed at
the English staying at the same hotel as us the last time I was in Paris. The
breakfast buffet had a great assortment of cheeses, croissants, baguettes, great
coffee. The English were drinking their tea and munching on plain white toast. I
saw them one day in an English pub down the street from the hotel, drinking
English beer and watching soccer. I had to wonder why they had bothered to go to
France.

Alan S wrote:

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:01:58 -0600, Doug McDonald
wrote:


As far as I am concerned, for example, most of Europe is
totally uninteresting ... the only part I would be interesting
in seeing for an extended time is the inside of museums, which
admittedly is something I will eventually go over and do.


I think you just answered the original question. Sadly.

Cheers, Alan, Australia

Why "sadly"? Europe has a long and interesting past ...
I want to go over and see some of it. I did spend
a day in Rome and found the Vatican wonderful. Ditto
the British Museum. I want to go to Scotland, where my
ancestors come from, and visit their ancient homes ...
which are all now either museums, the public parts of
Scotch Whiskey empires, B&B's, or bizarre creationist
activist centers (!). Except the one who lived on the Strand
in London, which is now what it was when my ancestor
lived there 450 years ago: a shopping mall.

But I'm going to wait till I'm old and decrepit and
can't do much else. I still have too much of the wonderful
parts of the world to see while I am still young (60)
and fit.

Doug McDonald

larry wrote:

"Doug McDonald" wrote in message
...

Alan S wrote:

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:16:49 GMT, "Bill McKee"
wrote:



Big country. Lots to do and see here. Europe is actually a lot of small
countries. So a 2 hour drive gets you international travel, while a 2
hour drive in California, does not get you out of the state. Statistics
are marvelous aren't they?


Have you driven two hours south of San Diego? Or two hours
north of Buffalo?


Well, yes .... but most of the USA is nowhere near an international
border. Only three countries actually border on the USA. One
does not count because it is very expensive to get there directly
(Russia). One other only touches the USA at two or three highly
populated spots (Mexico: San Diego, Phoenix/Tucson, and arguably
south Texas.) Only Canada has a long border and it is populated
only at the extreme ends. Most of the USA, such as where I live, is
well out of a one day reasonable drive to another country. The closest
drive for me is to cross over at Detroit: and that's an 8 hour drive.

In fact, I am 60 years old and had never been to Mexico until I
was 57, whereas I had been to England, Italy, Greece, Iceland, Kenya,
Tanzania, Israel, India, Nepal, Peru, Ecuador, Australia, and Papua New
Guinea, (as well as Canada) already. It was as easy to get to most of
those places as to Mexico, if somewhat more tiring.

Doug McDonald


Why do so few Americans visit South America?




In part it is an artifact of the airline schedules & structure. It is
far easier & cheaper to visit Europe than South America from the US.

TNSAF wrote:

Frank F. Matthews wrote:

wrote:

The per capita percentage of Americans that travel internationally
for pleasure is low compared to other western nations.

This seems strange, given the relatively high standard of living and
disposable income of Americans.

Although there has been a recent spike of US citizens obtaining
passports, thi sis mainly due to recent legislation and it is
doubtful the passports will increase the amount of travel outside
North America.

Why is the international travel so low ?

Partially because you have to go farther than 100 km to cross a border
for most folks in the US.

The passport spike is because it will be needed for travel in North
America soon.


What a joke that is... We (GF and I) have gone through a background check
(FBI/RCMP), finger printed and interviewed by the opposite customs agencies
(GF is American, while I am Canadian) yet the NEXUS cards will not trump the
need of a passport in 2007 - even though a passport is easier to get and
less secure. So is it being required as a cash grab or more window dressing
to appease a overly cautious nation? I say that after a one month "test" of
the Minutemen along the US/CAN border seems to have netted zero observations
of illegals penetrating the "porous boarder".




The story I heard about the minutemen up north is that they got lost in
the woods and couldn't see the border. I hope that they didn't stumble
into an occupied moose bog in Vermont.

Actually the Vermont - Quebec border didn't look all that porous. The
small crossing stations appeared to have a fair amount of antennas.