Getting over that wall
Should you ever scrub a country from your itinerary because of its political regime?
‘Build that wall! Build that wall!’’ the redhatted crowds chanted on the TV screens in November 2016. In between attacking media and minorities, it was only rivalled in enthusiasm by cries of ‘‘Lock her up! Lock her up!’’
We were two tourists loved up in New York City, a bougie cocoon seemingly impenetrable to political will, and steadfast that the race for the White House would go only one way. It did not. Trump won. He would build the wall, we would have to get over it. We did not.
After we left the bright colours of Central Park and garish gold of Trump Tower days before the election, protesters took our place. I protested too, in my own small way, by not returning to the US since Trump won. Others thought the same.
It resulted in what the travel industry called ‘‘the Trump slump’’, when flight and accommodation searches to US destinations fell in the immediate months after The Orange One’s win at the ballot box. But did this travel consumer defiance have any real economic impact? Almost certainly not. And even if it did, who would be hit hardest? The hot-dog hawkers, not the higher-ups.
And, more to the point, if you’re going to use your travel dollars to make a political stand then disagreement with a democratically elected leader of a relatively liberal allied state perhaps falls quite far down the list of countries to class as ‘‘unethical to travel to’’.
Where to draw the line? I dismissed a trip back to Trumpland, but somehow allowed myself a pass to head to far-less-democratic Russia, amazed by St Petersburg and quietly ignoring how toxic Putin’s regime is. And I did the same in Egypt. And the UAE. Highlights of my travel experiences have occurred in the wilds of Iceland and the cities of Japan – just as long as none of us mention whaling.
For many years I’ve steered my travel buddy away from booking trips to Israel, but I was very enthusiastic about our island-hopping in the Philippines at the same time (dictator) Duterte’s drug war crackdown led to thousands of deaths.
And just as Myanmar was coming back into the tourism fold, a massacre of Rohingya Muslims and the refugee crisis that followed has it back on the list of no-goes.
It’s a list that, once you get started, becomes rather long. Even booking a flight back to New Zealand from my home in London could trip you up if you look at it through a certain lens. The cheapest flights are nearly always offered by airlines at least majority-owned by China or Middle Eastern governments – none of them bastions of freedom or democracy, some quite liberal with the death penalty. There are no protests on an Emirates flight because the service is great. There are no protests in the Emirates because that sort of thing will get you 80 lashes.
In short, you end up with few places to visit when you, from your moral high ground, concoct a list of tick-boxes that countries (or their governments) must adhere to – all based solely on your own experience and judgments. The result is a wishlist for a utopia that doesn’t exist.
However, you can see glimmers of a utopia in so many different societies when travelling around the world, glimpses of things that work better than at home. It could be community spirit, trust, their approach to life, dedication to a greater good or respect for nature and diversity. The best way to share these ideals, to rid ourselves of the illiberal or inhumane, and to push for change is through these cultural exchanges between people of different passport colours (or none at all).
If it’s a minefield for a straight, white couple, it is a whole different problem altogether for minority groups and LGBTQI+ travellers, who shun destinations because a certain regime makes them feel unsafe or at least unwelcome – taking a stand could end with you in jail, or worse.
That’s not to sugar-coat the experiences of repressed people, be they traveller or host (and your travel tales shouldn’t shy away from the full picture), but it’s about seeing for yourself what a country and its people are like – away from harsh policies and hard-to-like politicians. It’s about change from the bottom up, not top down. It’s breaking down barriers, not building up walls.