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Comment by gtop3 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure other western countries have costs increase during peak travel seasons and their children have limited time off school.

The reason people in the US are less traveled is because you essentially have to cross an ocean to go anywhere. Some people like to go to Canada, but that is pretty similar to the US. Most of the people that I know that go to Mexico stay at resorts for safety concerns.

Edit: I would assume the median number of times an individual has crossed an ocean is still 0. Even for citizens of rich countries. I don't think this number is going to change with the current technology branch being developed by Boeing and Airbus. Maybe in a century Hyper loop, Electric Airplanes, Space Elevators, or trains on floating bridges will have advanced enough to change this to 1 or 2. Maybe a seemingly low-tech solution like Zeplins or Boats can be done fast enough, cheap enough and safe enough for broad appeal.

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> The reason people in the US are less traveled is because you essentially have to cross an ocean to go anywhere.

Australians manage to travel more than average despite being an island surrounded by ocean. The need to cross an ocean discourages travel much more in a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation allowance and thinks extended mid/pre-career breaks for international travel are a weird anomaly rather than the norm.

I think another huge difference here is that the Australian continent has ~25 million people living on it whereas United States + Mexico + Canada is ~500 million.

There are far more communities and cultures to explore without the need for overseas travel.

As an American who has spent 6 years living abroad, I think foreigners vastly underestimate the size and diversity of the United States and North American how many meaningful travel experiences can be had despite the fact that there are relatively few national governments

Could you describe the diversity and the different communities and cultures when exploring the US? I'd love to hear about all the different cultural experiences that can be had, compared to if an Australian were to travel to their common destinations (Bali, NZ, Japan, South Korea, Fiji).

I'm not sure if the variety is greater than what an Australian might experience, but the variety is greater than what many people outside the US think it is.

* The US has 63 national parks. Some of these have cultural and historical significance. Many have biological or geographic significance. We also have over 6,000 state parks, many of which are significant. The variety and sheer amount of public land we have is truly a national treasure. It's really common for people travel for activities such as hiking, camping, hunting/fishing, skiing, mountain climbing, snorkeling, kayaking, etc etc.

* The US exports a lot of culture. It's very common to travel for culture. Concerts, festivals, broadway plays, museums, world class theme parks, mardi gras, fashion week, hollywood tours...

* The US has some of the top international travel destinations. Maimai, Las Vegas, Disney, NYC. D.C. attracts tourist and is very dense in monuments and museums.

* Due to the large amount of worldwide immigration, the US is pretty diverse.

> As an American who has spent 6 years living abroad, I think foreigners vastly underestimate the size and diversity of the United States and North American

Sure, but if you leave the tech bubble my experience is that those other Americans quote something like a single 14h trip by car in the last 10 years as their "remote vacation" experience so I'm not sure how much that really applies. Yeah, you can totally see different stuff with just this, but I have a feeling even trips to other parts of the country are rare for many people.. and even when they live in California they go to Las Vegas, Hawaii, or Mexico.

That said, I'd say at least 3/4 of the "normal tourist" Americans (again, not the tech people) I met here in Germany are from flyover country and not from where you'd expect from the population density map (both coasts), but it's all anecdata.

We also have more staggered school breaks throughout the year. With two weeks off after every term, many more public holidays, and the ~2 month summer break there are a lot more opportunities to go on holiday. As an Aussie dad in the US, I'm struggling to think how I'm possibly going to get them back to Australia when they're at school throughout the entire year.

> Australians manage to travel more than average despite being an island surrounded by ocean.

A large fraction of that is to New Zealand and Indonesia, where they aren't crossing an ocean. Sydney to Bali is a roughly six hour 4,600 km flight. That distance won't get you from Boston to Dublin, which is about the shortest international flight from the US to someplace outside of North America. Los Angeles to Tokyo is almost twice as far.

> a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation

Cultures don't think, individuals do. And almost every individual in America doesn't think that two weeks of vacation is adequate. They think having a job and being able to put food on the table is better than not being able to do that. Most Americans are victims of shitty corporate policies. It's hard to push for better working conditions when billionaires have spent millions dismantling the labor movement over the past several decades.

>Cultures don't think, individuals do.

I was up to 3-4 weeks of vacation at a job I had pretty much the whole 90s. During that time, I took a few month-long vacations to places like Nepal. I had coworkers who basically questioned out loud "How could you do that? I could never go away for that length of time." Depends on the company and role of course. (I was subsequently with a very small company and it would have been difficult especially for non-summer months.) Never had an issue and, in fact, they pulled out all the stops when it was time for me to leave to try to get me to stay. But a lot of people assume that norms are carved in stone and they often aren't, especially if you're valued.

In software engineering you can find jobs with 3-6 weeks of vacation a year. Even 4 weeks is long enough to spend 2 weeks abroad and have a enough time left over for a few long weekends and extra time off during the holidays.

Even in my experience that even when you have these several week long PTO positions you don't get to use them. It seems like the PM is always concerned about a timeline or a manager won't approve it unless you give a year lead time. So, I've personally just ignored PTO as part of the benefits as long as it's at least two weeks.

Hopefully this isn't the same for a lot of the folks on here. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to take even a few days off only for it to be denied by a PM or EM or HR because "we're busy".

> Cultures don't think, individuals do. And almost every individual in America doesn't think that two weeks of vacation is adequate. They think having a job and being able to put food on the table is better than not being able to do that. Most Americans are victims of shitty corporate policies. It's hard to push for better working conditions when billionaires have spent millions dismantling the labor movement over the past several decades.

The average unskilled Australian teenager doesn't have more ability to put food on the table or negotiating power than the average US software developer, but will be much, much more likely to spend the next six months travelling round Europe (closer to San Francisco than Sydney) without even having to join the Peace Corp or learn a language to prove their worthiness, or to turn down or quit a job that doesn't give them enough holiday entitlement.

Corporate policies and legislative priorities are a product of culture too: it's not like Australian billionaires love their labour movements.

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