The Travel Survival Guide: Get Smart, Stay Safe

By Lloyd Figgins

The rewards you can reap from exploring this amazing planet are incalculable. Every year, more and more of us are discovering the joy, the excitement, the sheer sense of adventure in roaming the world.

But travelling, particularly to the more remote and volatile corners of the globe, can be a dangerous business. If you don't prepare properly – by looking for potential hazards and learning how best to deal with them – you may wish you'd never started out.

Written by international security expert Lloyd Figgins, using his experience of over 80 countries, The Travel Survival Guide is a unique new travel guide and essential reading for anyone planning an overseas trip, whether on business, as a tourist or gap-year traveller.

If you want no-nonsense, easy-to-follow, practical advice on how to recognise the warning signs, how to prevent problems and cope with emergencies (should they occur), this is the book for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781841658155

Lloyd Figgins

Lloyd Figgins is a travel risk expert, author and speaker. He is a former police officer, soldier and expedition leader who has worked in over 80 countries, including some of the world’s more hostile and remote regions. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and internationally respected authority on the subject of travel risk and crisis management, he often provides commentary in the media and makes regular appearances on the BBC, Fox News, ITV and Sky News.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

LOOKING FOR LEMONS

Travel is wonderful. I can’t think of anything better than exploring a new country or region. I believe that travel expands more than just the mind; it opens your soul to the wonders of this planet. My intention in writing this book is to encourage people to have the confidence to go out and discover the world and all it has to offer. However, it is important to do so safely and, of course, responsibly, in order to preserve our planet for future generations to enjoy.

My views on risk have been cultivated through my travels to more than 80 countries and the numerous experiences I’ve had, not all of them good. What I have learnt (sometimes the hard way) is that, if you ignore the warning signs, things can go wrong – and go very wrong, very quickly. And as with so many things in life, when you don’t act upon the small risks, they can quickly escalate into bigger problems that you are just not equipped to handle. My number one rule of risk management is: never push a bad position; it’s much more likely to get worse than to get better. So it’s important to act while you still can and while you have a degree of control over your situation.

Therefore, the best way to avoid a poor situation is to do your research and prepare thoroughly for your trip. When travelling, a little knowledge is not just a good thing: it is potentially a lifesaver, so the more knowledge you have, the better able you are to deal with the hazards that come your way. I believe that preparation for a trip should be an exciting and enjoyable part of the overall travel experience.

The purpose of this book is to show you that by using careful planning and forethought, as well as tried and tested safety and security techniques, you can dramatically improve your chances of having trouble-free travel experiences on every trip you take. I also believe travel is, and should be, a hugely rewarding experience, and what I would like to do is to help you learn how to recognise travel risks and then to mitigate them effectively.

Understanding the basic rules of travel is more important today than ever. I’m not alone in my constant desire for the freedom, adventure and stimulation of international exploration. Travel and tourism form one of the world’s largest industries, with an economy valued at £1.43 trillion (US$2.2 trillion) and growing. In the past 60 years, the number of people travelling from one country to another has increased exponentially. In 1955, just 45 million people moved from one country to another. Today, thanks to extensive air travel routes and higher disposable incomes, just over a billion people are exploring new places around the globe every year.

Over this period the nature of the travel industry has changed irrevocably. No longer are we limited to the suggestions of a helpful assistant at our local high-street travel agency. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we can ‘pre-explore’ all sorts of exciting and exotic destinations before we make our own carefully researched choices.

The current travel trend is dominated by ‘interesting’ or ‘adventure’ holidays, which may or may not involve going off the beaten track. Gap years, where both young and more mature travellers disappear for months at a time to places many of their friends have barely heard of, are also hugely popular. It seems that these adventures have become a rite of passage for a lot of people today. Meanwhile, as business becomes ever more global, executives can find themselves being sent out to far-flung corners of the world at a moment’s notice. There is no denying it: travel dominates all of our lives in one way or another.

But while the world is undoubtedly more accessible than it was, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is safer. Anyone with even half an eye on international current affairs will be very aware that the opposite is the case. In July 2017, the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) advised against travel to all or part of more than 50 nation states around the world. The vast majority were in Africa and the Middle East, with terrorism, kidnap and disease cited as the main threats.

None of this is to say that you should give up on your dreams of international adventure and stay at home. Far from it. It is extremely unlikely that anything bad will happen to you (particularly if you prepare well). To put this into perspective, the odds of your being killed by a terrorist overseas are one in 20 million. Your chances of being struck by lightning, however, are one in 600,000.

I’ve been teaching risk and crisis management all over the world for many years and my knowledge has been gained from direct experience. All of the incidents recorded in this book actually happened to me. I’ve learnt many lessons on my travels and am now able to share them, in the hope of preventing others from finding out the hard way what can go wrong.

***

It was a cool, still summer evening in Northern British Columbia. The water on the lake was clear and glassy and the gently swaying Douglas firs around its edge were perfectly reflected in the smooth surface. The only sounds that could be heard were the soft paddle strokes as our canoes nosed their way over the water. Everyone on board was acutely aware that we were edging towards the end of a nine-day trip, and our first cold beer was tantalisingly close. We could almost taste it.

It was not far now. The cedar deck was fast approaching and, with it, the promise of hot showers and maybe a soft mattress. In what seemed like no time at all our party of four was sitting on terra firma at the small lakeside lodge. In reality the lodge was pretty ramshackle, but to us at that moment it was a gilded palace. We all had broad post-trip smiles and were enjoying the setting as much as the eagerly anticipated refreshments.

‘You have an amazing place here,’ I said to the lodge owner, nodding at the picture-book view. ‘The lake is so beautiful and peaceful.’

The woman stared out to the lake and a sad smile crept across her face.

‘It’s not always like this,’ she said slowly. Tearing her gaze from the placid waters, she turned to face me. ‘That’s where, last year, two people had their lemons come up.’

I frowned and glanced around the group. The others had stopped talking and were focused on our conversation. We all looked perplexed.

‘How do you mean, their lemons come up?’ I asked.

She paused for a moment and then took a deep breath.

‘Well, life is like a one-armed bandit slot machine,’ she began. ‘If four lemons come up, you’re out.’

I looked at my group: no, clearly they didn’t understand either.

‘Sorry to be slow on the uptake, but could you explain?’ I pressed.

She nodded and paused again, clearly weighing up the best way to put it.

‘Life’s about looking out for lemons,’ she said at last. ‘Each lemon is a hazard, and unless a hazard gets sorted, it can be a problem. If you get four of them in a line, like you do on a slot machine, it’s not looking good. The people last year had all their lemons lined up.’

Everyone was silent.

‘To begin with,’ she continued, ‘they were novices and not confident swimmers. So that was lemon one.’ She started to count on her fingers.

‘Next, they were not wearing buoyancy aids: lemon two.

‘They ignored all the advice and were out paddling in the middle of the lake. That was lemon three.

‘This all happened at 5:30 in the afternoon, just as it was starting to get dark. The wind picked up and they capsized. That was lemon four,’ she said, holding up a fourth finger. ‘Four lemons, and sadly they died.’

For a few moments no one was quite sure what to say.

‘So looking for lemons is like doing a risk assessment – looking for potential hazards and what can go wrong?’ I asked.

‘You can call it what you like but it’s common sense,’ she said with a shrug. ‘We just talk about looking out for lemons.’

***

In a lot of cases, a good healthy dose of common sense is the key to avoiding unwanted incidents and I’d like to share a couple of stories from my childhood that demonstrate that not all of us are born with common sense. Especially me, it would seem. However, we do all have the opportunity to hone our skills so that we can protect ourselves and others in the most challenging of situations, and in this book I will outline the know-how you need to do just that.

But first to those stories. I spent my earliest years in Singapore. We were a military family and my father was posted to the Far East when I was just 8 months old. In those days, Singapore was a world away from the UK, and not just geographically. It was also a far cry from the bustling, modern and thriving city it is today. Much of Singapore was still surrounded by jungle and most people still got around by rickshaw or bicycle. The heat was profoundly oppressive and it felt like you could never get dry. I was always wet, largely because I was always in the sea or a swimming pool, trying to stay cool.

Despite the discomforts, I was something of a minor celebrity in Singapore, as a baby and later as a toddler. The reason being, I had the most brilliant head of blond hair, and when we travelled on buses local people clamoured to touch my head for good luck. My mum and I never had to wait in a queue or stand on a bus, as the locals would always give up their seats for the little blond child and his mother.

My older brother, Mike, being dark haired, was not extended such privileges. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why, following my arrival in the Figgins family, Mike dedicated his early life to getting me into trouble. In fact it’s incredible that we get on so well nowadays, given some of the mischief he got me into.

The first married-quarters accommodation my parents were offered was far from ideal. It was infested with cockroaches the size of large mice, as well as spiders and lizards that clearly had no fear of humans. Outside in the yard, snakes were regular visitors, and my mum recalls watching a python casually winding its way through a tree as she was waiting for a bus. Inside the house was no better: the furniture supplied by the Royal Air Force (RAF) was old and there were rusty nails protruding from both my cot and my brother’s bed.

Mike and I were oblivious to our surroundings and actually quite enjoyed our Singapore home. We would run around the garden half-naked and have all sorts of adventures. I started to develop an unhealthy interest in storm drains and the creatures, especially the millipedes, that resided in them. In fact, they became an important part of my diet, until my parents caught me tucking into a particularly large specimen.

One thing they couldn’t do was stop me from exploring, and this proved a constant worry to them, particularly as I grew older and roamed further afield. They would invariably find me in some corner playing with whatever wildlife came to hand, and in Singapore there were plenty of options.

My ‘expeditions’ became ever more adventurous and I became ever better at avoiding re-capture. Storm drains were still a favourite, but by then I was starting to realise that the creatures they hosted were just the hors d’oeuvres and that there were much bigger opportunities to be had outside the garden perimeter. Despite my parents’ attempts to ‘Lloyd proof’ the garden, I’d often find ways to escape and taste the true potential of the outside world.

Spring of 1969 saw the Figgins family take a trip to the local zoo. The animals and other attractions fascinated me. Now, zoos in the 1960s were primitive and crowded places, with little regard for safety. This undoubtedly played into the hands of my mischievous older brother.

When we arrived at the crocodile enclosure, the other visitors were engaged in a game of throwing loose change at the poor creatures, presumably in an attempt to get them to move. That the attempts were clearly futile didn’t seem to deter them. The activity seemed to be something of a daily tradition, judging by the ample piles of money littered all over the ground.

‘Those coins would make us rich,’ Mike whispered in my ear. ‘You just need to slip though these bars.’

I looked at him wide-eyed. Although still a toddler, I was wise enough to know that his by now regular schemes didn’t always bode well for me.

‘I’d do it myself but I can’t fit through,’ he said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘The family needs the money and Mum and Dad will be really proud of you…’

There was a huge gasp from the crowd as they saw the small blond kid squeeze through the railings and toddle towards the collection of coins.

On hearing the commotion, my parents immediately looked at one another and asked in unison, ‘Where’s Lloyd?’

Their question was soon answered by the large crowd that had surged forward to the elevated platform above the crocodile enclosure. To their horror my parents saw their younger child inside the enclosure and heading purposefully towards the water where a number of crocs were bathing.

I was actually making pretty good progress when a local chap recognised the seriousness of the situation and jumped the fence to remove the potential meal from the now very attentive crocs.

My parents were mortified and more than a little embarrassed, not only that they had failed to prevent my initial escape but also that they now had to come forward in front of the large crowd and claim this renegade child as their own flesh and blood. For my part, I was more than a little miffed at having been manhandled by a complete stranger just yards from my goal.

The family day out was abandoned and we headed for the exit and home, but not before Mike dared me to poke a monkey in a cage. The primate bit me for my trouble. (To this day Mike continues to deny he had anything to do with this and many other incidents.)

So there you go, no common sense. Worse still, I didn’t even learn the valuable lesson that I should clearly ignore everything my brother said.

Which brings me to the second story.

By the time I was nine, the family had moved to Cyprus. Mike’s dares continued, the incentives invariably starting with something along the lines of: ‘No one has ever done this, Lloyd. If you do it, you will be the first person in the world to do it… ever.’

At this stage I still believed anything and everything my brother told me.

One day, Mike came to me very excitedly. He had heard of a challenge that no one had ever completed and wanted to know whether I was interested in being the first person to do it. I would have been wise to say no, but I didn’t learn to do that until many years later.

The never before achieved challenge centred around a hill in a defunct corner of the RAF Akrotiri base. At the top of this hill was an old building. No one could remember what the building had been