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I Feel Safer Overseas Than I Do in Most of America

I Feel Safer Overseas Than I Do in Most of America
I took this in Cambodia on a tuktuk; a country everyone thought I was an idiot for going to.|©JeffOpdyke

Do I have a death wish? 

An unhealthy number of people in my life think that, and they’ve all stated as much over the years, often just after I’ve returned from another trip to some random country where the average American is never showing up. 

But here’s my standard retort: I feel safer overseas than I do in most of America. 

Despite the nightly news reports of yet another mass shooting somewhere in America, and despite local newscasts the seemingly start every broadcast with the latest homicide, Americans want to believe the US is the safest country in the world… and that if you venture too far abroad beyond London or Rome, you’re tempting fate and that death stalks you just outside your hotel door. 

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I’ve never understood that sentiment. Then again, I’ve traveled now to 80 countries and very rarely have I ever felt my life was at risk. 

I’ve walked through the heart of Beirut, Lebanon, and never flinched, even as I took photos of bullet-riddled concrete walls from years of civil war. Same with the heart of Bogota, Colombia… Tunis, Tunisia… Nairobi, Kenya… Yangon, Myanmar… Crimea, Russia. Others I won’t bore you with. 

I can assure, however, that I would never walk around the heart of Memphis or Milwaukee or even Baton Rouge, my hometown, particularly after dark. The US is top dog at lots of things, for sure, but no one can argue that safety is on that list. 

But overseas? 

Never felt uncertain. Never worried I might be targeted. 

And I’m hardly the only one who feels this way. One of our writers, living in a little river town in Cambodia, put it this way in International Living back in 2014. “Friends, family, and well-meaning strangers sometimes express alarm at the idea of a female expat living in small-town Cambodia. But overall, I feel safer in Cambodia than I do in most places in the US.” Sure, I’ve had run-ins in a couple of places, and a few are worthy of separate stories, like the time I chased a thief across a beach in Barcelona when he tried to snatch my backpack off the sand when I wasn’t looking. But across 80 countries and 50-plus years of travel, those moments have been exceptionally rare. 

For the most part, people never pay attention to me. And if they do, the sentiment is curiosity not crime.  

Like the night I went strolling through Changsha, China by my lonesome. I wanted to find a “night market,” where the Chinese gather along crowded city street every evening to stroll from vendor to vendor, grabbing bite-sized bits of food here and there for what is basically a walking smorgasbord of a dinner. 

I passed a stall and noticed fried scorpions on a stick! I mean, how can you pass that up? 

Why would you pass that up? I’d just finished a small bowl of rice noodles in a spicy pork-bone broth, and I was still peckish.  

I pointed at a stick of scorpions—they look exactly like scorpions—and the vendor eyeballed me for a second, and pointed at the scorpions, too, as if to say, “This? The bugs? Really? For you?” 

I nodded. He shrugged. I handed over what was then the equivalent of $0.60, and he handed me the skewer of scorpions. I started to snack.  And a crowd suddenly encircled me like some kind of flash mob that had been practicing for this moment. 

A tall white guy is eating scorpions! Hurry—we gather… now! 

I probably had an audience of 30 or 40 people watching me eat a Chinese snack food, which is oddly disconcerting, frankly. (Note for foodies: Imagine popcorn doused in paprika; that’s fried scorpion. Good stuff, actually. Probably better with an icy beer.) 

But people were just curious about the foreigner in a place where foreigners aren’t as common as they are outside the Louvre or Big Ben. Though I was absolutely surrounded, there was no reason to worry. 

I finished my three scorpions (head to tail, each about the size of your palm) and offered a vigorous thumbs up. Some people laughed; others shook their head. Everyone dispersed and I went on my way to find something else to eat—some kind of fried salt-and-pepper chicken bites in a small paper bag served with a toothpick as your utensil. 

Walking a new city is one of the true joys of travel. Seeing a city from the pavement up, window shopping items you’ve never seen, popping into local supermarkets and minimarkets just to peruse the snack and drinks aisle. 

Somewhere in Koh Samui, Thailand, my wife Yulia and I were walking around late in the evening and came upon a woman closing up shop.  

I pointed to some kind of coconut drink made from fresh green coconut flesh, coconut water, coconut cream, and a bunch of ice all whizzed together in the Thai version of a Ninja blender. 

Best. Drink. I’ve. Ever. Had. 

We returned three or four a times a week for the next three weeks before flying back home to Portugal. 

I never would have found that place had I not taken to the mean streets. 

Becaussue even in places that sound sketchy, like Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, chances are very good that you’re safer than you would be back home. 

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