The Travel Matrix ®

In our blog posts to date, we admittedly sometimes have over-simplified some of the complex context concerning the individual countries to enhance readability – some would consider that stereotyping. Yet, the worst stereotyping is about to come in the present post. If you read through this and feel personally offended because your favourite (or home) country has been misrepresented, you can either terminate your friendship or family ties with us (if you ever had them), or write a mean comment below. But be warned: the following data has been compiled in an extremely scientific & objective manner – it's not simply the result of several beer-based discussions. Well, maybe a little. And in case you are wondering - yes, this is what happens when former consultants get bored: they start drawing matrices.

Travelling through 11 countries on this trip to date, and having done a bit of travelling before, Judith & I couldn't help but to start categorising travel destinations. We did so along two dimensions: the first one is how much of a challenge it is to travel in a country, and the second one concerns the age of the travellers/ backpackers/ foreigners visiting. The result is the beautifully coloured matrix below. 

The first dimension, travel challenge, is of course made up of a number of factors, including:

• Language: spoken - is it related to a familiar language? How difficult is the pronunciation? - and written (Latin script vs. strange signs?)
• Transport: how accessible is the country? Do they have decent public transport? Are they familiar with the concept of roads (unlike in Northern Mozambique or Western Mongolia)?
• Safety: is the worst you can expect pub fights (like in New Zealand) or being shot/ abducted  (South Africa, Colombia, Brazil)? Are there any military generals in the country likely to stage a coup while you are there?
• Health & hygiene: can spoiled sissy stomachs cope with the food? How rampant are Malaria & Co? How about dangerous animals? Would there be backup local medical care in case of an emergency?

The second dimension, age, is based on our perception of how old the typical traveller/ backpacker or other foreigner (e.g. expat) is. Of course, age is likely to be correlated to travel experience, but from merely looking at fellow travellers from our bar stool (which is what we did), it's easier to estimate their rough age than to guess the amount of travelling they have done.

You might have noticed that we've excluded monetary considerations – i.e. how expensive is it to travel – since that would make our pseudo-analysis even messier. It's bad enough as it is.
 
In the matrix, you will see that we've given a name to each of the four quadrants to make it appear clever.

1. The first quadrant, “Freshman backpackers” (low challenge, young), is where the travel bug first bites you. Classic examples include InterRailing in Western Europe or “doing” the Australian East Coast. The basic staple on trips like this is made out of water, hop, & barley.
2. Once people have gotten a taste of travelling, they aim for countries which may be considered less common travel destinations (high challenge, young). We think a lot of Latin America would fall into this category. Many people extend their stays in those places to do e.g. volunteer work or language courses.
3. A totally different animal are the classic expat countries (low challenge, old) – people are of course more senior since they often go there to do 'real' work (not fruit-picking), but the countries are highly developed (think Hong Kong). However, there are some outliers such as Cuba, which falls into the quadrant in terms of dimensions but clearly isn't an expat destination. I don't think Fidel would want those 'capitalist swines' in his country.
4. Finally, we got the “Been there, done that” quadrant (high challenge, old). Travelling in those countries often requires more preparation and can be more tedious. Typical conversations between backpackers (including us) in this quadrant may convey an air of travel arrogance as in “what, you've only been travelling for 7 months?”. Also, you often find very dedicated religious people such as missionaries (this, now, doesn't include us) in these places.

So what are we trying to tell you with this? Hmmm. Judith thinks it's a good basis for discussion. Right. The fact I wanted to point out is that travel challenge and age/experience are not necessarily highly correlated – otherwise we'd see a straight line as opposed to the scattered potato salad we have here. 

In our next post, we will return to our regular type of travel post – with beautiful Laos. Apologies for today and bis denne.