Idiots abroad

A thought has just occurred to me: What is it with British travel shows lately, in which the protagonists do not enjoy travelling at all?

By far the best example for this has got to be An Idiot Abroad. And what an idiot he is. Mind you, what do you expect from a show that is basically a prank done for Ricky Gervais' own enjoyment? An English guy gets to travel the world, sees places so many people would love to see in their lifetimes - China, Egypt, India, for example - and he hates every minute of it. Here is somebody who makes fun of people who are not like him, has no intention of getting to know his host cultures and generally just whimpers "I wanna go home!" for an hour. When asked what he thinks of an experience, his usual answer is "I hate it."

I'm sorry, but that's not a travel show. That's just a show about the blinkered world view of one man. Maybe it's enjoyable in mute mode, when you can't hear the complaining and moaning. I don't know, I never tried. I lost interest after the first 5 minutes.

The other example that comes to mind was an episode of My Family's Crazy Gap Year, that aired on Monday (27th September). A mum and her 9-year-old daughter go around the world, immerse themselves in volunteering projects and township stays. So far, so good. But about halfway through their trip, they have a month in Indonesia for which they have not organised any projects or host families to stay with.

So they travel around a bit, and instead of checking out the culture, enjoying some time off or finding another project to help with, they decide to head back to England because they've had enough of bumming around and can't wait around until their next placement starts somewhere else in the world. That entire Gap Year had been planned for quite a while, so the free time should not have come as such a big surprise. If anything, that's just bad time management. I personally know quite a few people who would quite happily travel around Indonesia for a month without any plan.

And I am sure, that Shoestring readers and contributors combined could come up with hundreds of things to do while out there. The real loser in this episode was the little girl, though. She missed out on so many stories to tell and so many cultural experiences she could have had.

The travel shows I remember where alwys about: "I'm here and I'm doing this, and isn't this amazing!" "Did you know you can do this too?" and "Here's an adventure for you to have." Truly inspiring stories and documentaries that opened your eyes. Unfortunately, all that's on TV these days is: "I'm here and I'd rather be home." And they call those travel shows....

My Family's Crazy Gap Year - Channel 4

The idea behind Channel 4's latest travel show is simple: A British middle-class family goes around the world and tries to get well out of their comfort zone.

In tonight's programme, the Willmott family travelled through India, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea and South America, in an attempt to educate the kids - two boys, aged 13 and 9, and a girl, aged 6 - all the while filming their adventures.

Mother Raffia, a bhuddist, does not believe in conventional medicine, and puts her family at risk when they depart for the jungle without any of the recommended vaccinations or malaria prophylaxes and only homeopathic remedies in their bags. Although the family stays with host families in remote parts of India to interact with the locals, My Family's Crazy Gap Year soon turns into a dangerous ego trip when Raffia decides that she just has to meet the Dalai Lama. Head over heels, two cars are organised to drive them 200 miles into the Himalayas to get a chance of meeting His Holiness. On treacherous mountain roads, one of the cars looses grip and rolls twice, with the kids in the back. The Willmott's finally meet the Dalai Lama, and the kids summarise the experience with the words "It wasn't that important to me."

Somehow, the family then ends up on the Mongolian plain (how exactly they got there is any viewer's guess), staying with Nomads in gers (yurts). Within hours, they have to help herd yaks, horses and sheep, and look on as their breakfast is slaughtered before their eyes. While the father of the family has to pitch in, mum looks away in disgust although she claims that they had told the kids "where their food comes from." Only the boys seem to be getting really into it, tucking into breakfast without problems and they even herd the yaks by themselves at the end of the stay.

For some reason, the family then backtracks to the Mount Everest basecamp, before ending up in the jungle of Papua New Guinea. Here, the family seeks out a remote tribe that has never met a Western family before. Next to abandoned huts, the family and their guide set up camp, just to be surrounded by tribesmen armed with bows and arrows as soon as they are finished. Although they are then invited to join the tribe, and the kids definitely seem to be making good friends, the one constant in this episode is the lack of communication between the family and their hosts, most of which do not speak any English at all. But the family only seems to pick up a few words in their hosts' languages throughout the programme. Unfortunately, the viewers only get glimpses of the Willmott family gap year. Huge parts are skipped or only explained with one sentence and one picture, which leaves the viewers wondering: "What happened and how did they get there?" And the whole issue about travel health and homeopathic is not touched again throughout the programme - without medication or vaccinations, I doubt that the entire family managed to travel around the world for a year without any illnesses whatsoever.

The immersion idea is a good one. It definitely takes them all out of their comfort zones and into the unknown, where they have to live like the locals and work like the locals. The children learn not to take things like running water and flushing toilets for granted, and even try insects as snacks offered by the Papuan tribe. Children should learn about these things first hand, make new friends in faraway places, hear different languages, eat different food. The more they learn, the more tolerant towards other people and cultures they will become.

Channel 4's show has left some questions unanswered, though. What kind of luggage did this family take with them? Suitcases or backpacks? When did they get the idea of going around the world and how much planning has gone into it? How much did it cost? Where did they get fitting local dresses upon arrival from? How did they pick the places, and, most of all: how did they arrange all these host family stays?


It's a good show, if you are interested in one family's travels, or want to see middle-class Brits getting back to nature. But from experience, I can only say that meeting the Dalai Lama and living with a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea are not your average Gap Year experiences, nor do these exploits, as down to earth as they might be, sound like they were planned on a budget.

My Family's Crazy Gap Year, Mondays 9pm, Channel 4.