Let’s not sugar coat it; we students work bloody hard. We’re the generation that soldiers on despite rising tuition fees, a stagnant job market and thousands of pounds of debt. It makes sense that every once in a while, under all that pressure, we’re going to eventually want to blow off some steam.
So what better place to forget your troubles than on a distant island? Bronzed and basking in the glow of exotic sunshine, around 12,000 of us every year jet off to post-exam paradises to dance and drink away our woes. With the click of a mouse we can be lounging on sandy-white beaches, windsurfing through a wall of ocean spray, relaxing over a fishbowl cocktail with friends, throwing up in the gutter, sprawling out in a pool of our own vomit, lying in hospital with a £5,000 bill…. Wait, what?
The worrying thing is, this is the reality more often than you’d think.
According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), ten Britons a week in Majorca and neighbouring Ibiza are hospitalised after binge drinking. That’s the equivalent of your entire college flat being seriously injured every few days. “Bustling bars, neon lit discos and trendy clubs” is a very diplomatic way of Thomson holidays describing the Magaluf strip. It neatly misses out the 4am sight of cheap kebab takeaways, sticky pavements and passed out revelers.
It’s not that group holidays with your mates are wrong. Seriously, the pressure on young people today really is akin to the force a heavyweight boxer exerts trying to punch his bulging suitcase shut. We’re stressed, we need an outlet, but whilst it’s tempting to find that release at the bottom of a vodka and red bull cocktail costing next to nothing, we often forget the consequences. There has been a significant rise in the number of British holidaymakers admitted to hospital while abroad. Majorca has seen a 132 per cent rise in such hospital cases and this spring three Brits our age were killed after falling off balconies or down steep stairwells in Magaluf.
Each year thousands of us find ourselves lumped with a heavy hospital bill after nights out recreating the escapades of the 16-25 year-olds in Channel 4’s “What Happens in Kavos”. You might argue that some of those scenes aren’t that dissimilar to what you might experience on a particularly rowdy night out during term time… but despite the cheap drinks, a night out abroad could cost far more than its equivalent back home. The thing is, if you go abroad without insurance, a drunken stumble and a broken leg that would land you a night in A&E and a red face here, could set you back a couple of thousand to fix in Zante or Corfu.
I’d never really thought that hard about insurance until a friend of mine went on a girls holiday to Greece, and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to try some parasailing. Thing is, her harness wasn’t strapped on properly, and thirty feet in the air the cables snapped, slamming a metal bar in her face as she plunged into the ocean below. A couple of hours later she found herself writhing in pain on a bench in a hotel corridor with a fractured eye socket and broken nose because she couldn’t afford the astronomical sum it would cost to get treatment. She didn’t have insurance.
This isn’t meant to be a scaremongering article. Parasailing is on my personal bucket list, and there really is nothing better than boarding a plane with your mates for a fun trip abroad. With the stress of term time, encroaching deadlines and Yorkshire’s cloudy skies, we deserve a break in the sun. But by that I mean a rest, not a broken back from plummeting off a balcony because we’re too drunk to think gravity is actually something that effects us.
To help prepare for your trip abroad, check the FCO’s advice on staying safe abroad. It pays to be prepared, to Know Before You Go and have a travel checklist sorted before you board that plane.
You can also follow the FCO on Facebook (facebook.com/fcotravel) and on Twitter (twitter.com/fcotravel).
For any of you who have a smartphone, there is a great free app called Plan.Pack.Explore which gives you all the info you might need before going. It is also available on their website athttps://www.gov.uk/government/news/plan-pack-explore-a-new-guide-for-travellers.
Everyone loves a holiday, no one loves a big fat hospital bill.