The Disadvantages of Spending a Holiday Abroad

How nice to have a long break from your hectic study life? How about a fabulous holiday that costs you a little, no worries of security and safety, and what most, no hustle on food? Being a student, time and money are not always on your side, so don’t you want to spend your holiday wisely? Definitely, you would be discouraged to spend your hard-earned time and money abroad.

Firstly, it is the fact that having holiday abroad would cost you more money. Due to present drop in Ringgit value against major currencies, spending holiday in countries such as the US, United Kingdom or Australia will be more expensive. It costs you more on tickets fee, room, transportation, food or even your shopping lists. Plus, having a vacation abroad would lead you to unnecessary and additional costs for getting your passport or visa ready or you may end up paying tax for items you purchase abroad. A part from that, you also tend to get cheated for paying more for items or services that you are not familiar with on foreign soil.

Secondly, having vacation overseas may raise security and safety concerns. We may often get carried away while in shopping heaven. We may be exposed and fall victim of crimes such as pick pocket, car-jacking, robberies or even kidnapping. Moreover, being a Muslim, we might be a subject of religious prejudice because not all countries are Muslim-friendly and due to racism by local people, Muslims are not well-received. Furthermore, being in foreign country, their rules and regulations are alien to you as things deemed legal in our country might be illegal in other countries. We may get caught and penalised or even worst, we may get arrested unnecessarily.

Lastly, food is major disadvantage when you are on a overseas trip. Why food? The obvious issue is that majority of Malays eat rice in their daily meals. In overseas you may find it difficult to find rice and if we do, it may cost you a lot just for a plate of rice. As for Muslims getting ‘halal’ food is a main concern and we might face problems in finding ‘halal’ food especially in a non-Muslim country.

When travelling abroad, cooking your own meals is almost impossible. Unlike in Malaysia where cooking facilities and raw materials and ingredients are easily available, how much time do you have for searching for those items and if you do so, does the hotel abroad allow their guest to cook?

In a nut shell, even though there are a lot of disadvantages of spending a holiday abroad, we still can enjoy our break by going on a vacation in our country, Malaysia because you might be surprised to have beautiful scenery of beaches, various kind of food that you may want to enjoy and of course, there are great shopping heavens that offer reasonable price and lot of goodies too.