5 Reasons Why As A Brit You Should Travel!

Although we often forget it, the reality is that the majority of British citizens have got it good, especially when compared to a lot of developing countries around the world and even compared to other well developed countries such as the US and Australia.

Not only do we have it pretty good in glorious Blighty itself, we also have it pretty good when we step off our little island and explore out into mainland Europe and even out into the wider world!

In this post I share my view of 5 practical reasons why as a British citizen (and as a British passport holder) you should get out there!

1 – Cheap and Strong Passport

You can’t get off our little island without a passport! luckily for us the cost of a UK passport is relatively inexpensive when compared to other countries. The cost of an adult passport can be as low as £75.50, when compared to another developed countries such as Australia where an adult passport of similar validity is a whopping 293AUD, even when factoring in the exchange rate this still comes to around £160!

Once you have got your passport you will find that we can go to quite a lot of countries without having to get a visa, according to the Henley Passport Index as of mid February 2019 the British passport is ranked 6th strongest in the world allowing visa free (or visa on arrival) access to 185 destinations in the world! More info on where the British passport can be found here

2 – Highly Favourable Exchange Rate

Despite slight fluctuations of the exchange rate, largely down to political events, the pound has always been one of the strongest currencies in the world with not many others being able to beat it. Likewise there are only a handful of countries where after conversion British people have less money than what they started with, these countries can be mainly found in the middle east and include; Jordan, Oman and Kuwait. In Kuwait you need £2.50 just to get 1 Kuwaiti Dinar!

3 – Excellent Travel Infrastructure (Thats Cheap!)

Although we can certainly have a moan about how bad the busses and trains are in the UK, once you get out onto the continent you will find there to be an abundance of travel options which are largely on time and very cheap. The best bit for us Brits is that it takes us as little as a couple of hours to reach the continent, when compared to Americans and Australians where it can take up to an entire day to reach Europe! It can be said that where the British have neighbouring Europe, the Aussies have got places like Bali and Singapore just a short distance and Americans have the Caribbean, however to get to either can be a small fortune when compared to how little is costs people in the UK to travel to mainland Europe

4 – English

Although it is not just ourselves that benefit from this, luckily for us the rest of the world primarily uses the English language and the latin alphabet to communicate. For example, in airports around the world you will always find everything wrote and spoken in the English language and latin alphabet along with the local language and alphabet. So it is a little bit easier for us, when compared to a 3rd party nationality such as German or France which needs to understand English or the local language to get by!

The drawback for ourselves however is that a very low percentage of the UK population speak a second language when compared to a country such as Germany where most of its citizens learn a second language, typically English.

5 – Paid Holiday Leave

Its not much use having all that money to travel with if you cant get the time of work to get out there! Luckily for us Brits almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, compare this to some other countries that get much less or even in the case of the USA where companies are not legally required to offer employees a set amount of annual leave and is just down to local policy!

In Conclusion…

If you are able to afford it and have nothing stopping you, I think you should definitely see whats out there, remember not many other countries and nationalities can do so as easy as us. What are you thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!

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