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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely confused by this. Most of my friends (pre-covid) would holiday fairly regularly outside of Eurpope. We're not especially wealthy or unusual as far as I know. I can't think of many people I know who only holiday in the EU.

South-East Asia is a hugely popular destination. Do we know different demographics?

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It's safe to say we know different demographics. I think this is more of an EU thing than a US thing. Also, likely an upper middle class or greater thing. I'm from the US and even pre-covid, most Americans in the bottom 80% of incomes are not "holidaying" anywhere, domestic or overseas on a regular basis. A large percentage of the remainder stick to the US for the majority of their vacations. Pretty much everyone I know(mostly top 20% earners) who travels overseas more than once a decade or so is foreign born, or at least 2nd generation, and traveling to visit family.

Apparently 42% of Americans have passports now, but it was about half that just a decade ago, and I'd attribute most of the growth to immigration, not vacations. Anecdotal, I'd say in SEAsia the "foreigners" I encountered were like 80% European. In Central America, the cheapest/shortest flight from the US, it was still like 50% Europeans. Whenever we're finally able to visit my wife's family again, she's goin to have to get special permission to take unpaid vacation time or else change jobs in order to be get enough time to make the trip to Asia worthwhile. That's pretty typical here.

Most of those passports are for flying to/from vacation destinations in Mexico, as well.

The Amoeba is most problematic in warm fresh water bodies. However, a couple of years ago a woman got infected from a neti pot- scared the crap out of me[1]. I now always boil the water.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-dies-from-brain-eating-am...

If a lower class person in the US goes to Europe or Asia, or really anywhere except other than the US, Canada, or sometimes Mexico at most, a lot of us of us will probably think of them as the particularly adventurous sort.

We do have a fair amount of people who go to Mexico, but even then, It's extremely common to not go.... anywhere, unless you have money, and especially not go anywhere regularly, mostly because it's expensive and nobody can afford time off work even if they could afford plane tickets.

It's semi-possible, but as far as I can tell lot of people don't really save up and make it a priority.

The reference is to natural freshwater, especially if it is stagnant. Most travel clinics will give advice against swimming in ponds, etc.

Just "having friends who holiday" is, alone, a separating factor, mate.

Only if you interpret me as in somehow trying to deny the existence of people poorer than me, which is not at all what I'm saying.

This has all gone a bit off track. To bring this back to the original context:

> Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual.

"Pretty unusual" is what I'm disputing. I'd say it's far from "pretty unusual" for average, regular people to go on holiday outside Europe.

Going on holiday and swimming in the ocean is one thing. Swimming in remote freshwater ponds is wholly another.

I can think of at least two holidays where I swam in freshwater.

I do not doubt that. Meanwhile, I didn't. At issue is how common your experience is. We know it is not universal, p=1. We know it is not nil, p=0. So, is it close to 0.5? 0.1? 0.01? My guess is it is between 0.1 and 0.01.

"Strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!"

I'll grant the freshwater bit pushes the probability down a fair bit.

But the comment that I was responding to was "Doing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual." which seems to be more about "outside of Europe" than it was "and swimming in freshwater. That was the part I found strange. I think there's a couple of countries with much lower than average travel (the US already mentioned and I seem to recall that the French tend to stay within their own borders more than the average)

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