I’ve done my fair share of risk taking overseas, but I’ve changed

This week I was staying in a picturesque hotel built into a fortress on a Greek peninsula.

The hotel’s rooms were scattered over the castle, and mine opened directly to a small courtyard that was crawling with tourists, even at night. Not knowing who these people were and not trusting the lock on my ancient door, I felt unsafe. So, I dragged a heavy ottoman stool against the door before I went to bed. I didn’t really expect that anyone would break in, but lifelong experience taught me I wouldn’t sleep if I were nervous.

I felt foolish for a nanosecond, but I slept well.

I’ve always been cautious, so I wasn’t the kind of young person who travelled without inhibition. Still, I’ve done some potentially foolish things such as riding on the back of scooters in Bali and in Vietnam.

I’ve been locked in a room in the Uffizi gallery in Florence by an amorous guard because I trusted him when he said he’d show me some Michelangelo sketches. I’ve boarded a train in Italy, heading to Paris with no money and no hotel at the other end, trusting that someone would help me (they did).

When I see parents waving off their children on their first adventure overseas, whether it’s a holiday with friends or a gap year, I understand the anxiety.

From the unintended consequences of partying too hard (we now need to worry about contaminated alcohol) to the horrifying accidents caused by careless selfies taken on cliffs, there’s a lot of danger out there for over-confident young people, especially those who feel they are invincible.

Learning judgment and making good decisions are foundation lessons of travel. So is learning to trust strangers. But these things are sometimes at odds.

You’re obviously lost in a foreign destination and a seemingly kind stranger pulls over in their car and offers to take you there. Do you take up the offer? A friend wants you to go on the back of their scooter to your hotel and insists it’s safe, but you’re not sure. Do you go? Everyone’s having fun throwing back tequila shots at a bar that looks dodgy and you feel like a spoilsport not joining them. Do you drink?

Sometimes being unnecessarily cautious can limit your ability to discover new things, meet new people, open yourself to new ideas.

There have been a lot of opportunities I’ve turned down because my vivid imagination focused on what might happen, however unlikely.

Perhaps this is good judgment born of experience, but it has stopped me taking part in what are considered reasonably safe experiences, such as (recently) going ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey.

I balance the pleasure I expect to get from the experience with the small, although real, possibility something might go wrong. It’s a risk-benefit assessment that we learn to make with maturity.

But the dangers associated with travel are not always the ones you expect. Life has the habit of throwing you curve balls and you’re more vulnerable when you’re away from what grounds you.

One that rarely makes the news? Being knocked down by a car when you look the wrong way in a country where they drive on a different side of the road.

Making the news last month was a danger of a different kind that occurred somewhere we should feel safe. A man was charged with indecently assaulting a woman as she slept on board a flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne. The man allegedly groped the woman inside her clothes as she tried to sleep during the flight.

When you think of the dangers of travel, this possibility doesn’t immediately spring to mind. The intimacy of sleeping next to strangers on a flight is a necessary unpleasantness. But it’s another example of something we all need to be vigilant about.

In this case, the woman spoke up and reported the man to airline staff, who responded correctly and moved her to a different seat for the remainder of the flight and alerted the Australian Federal Police. The man was charged.

Finding our voices when things go wrong or look like they’re about to go wrong is an important weapon.

For anxious parents waving farewell to their children at the airport gate, the best thing they can arm them with is the strength to say no in a sea of yes.

Which is something that independent travel is best placed to teach them.