Something new happens every day in the world of travel. The great news is that there are a number of outstanding resources to stay up to date on travel restrictions. Want to get out of the country? It may be easier to do than it is to go to some states!

We'll talk about this as well as some hypocritical actions that some people take when they decide to travel while condemning the freedom of those at home to move about freely. Yes, I do have rants every now and then on this podcast. :)

Here are some references we make in today's podcast:

Product Hunt - A great resource for software. Whether you own a business or have a hobby that requires a variety of different tools, there is often something here. This was where I found a great travel website.

CanITravel.net - Great website with updated information on travel restrictions. Found this one on Product Hunt!

Please note that we are testing the transcript and there will be errors. :) Thanks! - Cam

[00:00:00] : Welcome to the know where you want to go. Travel podcast Where we talk about what we know in the world of travel Hello again and welcome to Episode 11 of the Know Where You Want to Go Travel Podcast This is Candy Young, your host as always, and also, as always, time flies. Oh my goodness, It's been over a month since we had our last podcast. And of course, time always flies. It doesn't stop. It doesn't slow down. But speaking of flying, I sure wish we could be flying more than we do right now. As we know, travel is still a little bit up in the air, although I will say I've seen some friends on social media. Um, they've been traveling a bit lately, and that's great. You know, it's it's awesome to see it, but not to get off topic, because the topic of today's podcast, as you can see in the title of the show notes, is really just looking at where you can go right now. What were the restrictions are what's open, what's closed, etcetera for those looking around. I did find a good website on that on one of my favorite software websites actually wish. I'll tell you about the moment as well. And of course you can see it in the show notes if you want to get ahead or if you already are ahead of me, but just as a little bit of a rant. I don't like ranting too much on here, but I find it interesting that people are traveling and that's great all about it. I'm totally on board with people traveling, but these are the same folks and almost every case that are all about social distancing, all about lockdowns, all about everything, pro government and pro restriction on liberties when it comes to Covid. And I totally agree with wearing a mask in public social distancing, being reasonable, you know, and doing just doing the right thing. But I'm not going out on one side of my face saying we need more restrictions or we need to clock everybody down or we need to do this and that. Closed businesses cause businesses to go out of business, and then I turn around and go travel somewhere, which requires going to an airport which requires being around people, which requires a lot of those things. I'm just saying, Don't be a hypocrite. If you're gonna travel, that's fine. But don't you know you can't condemn things that others are doing and then you go out and do it yourself. So what's going on? You know today's episode we're going to talk about a website called Can I travel dot net And I'm just looking at that. And I saw it on one of my favorite websites called Product Hunt, where there's always you can check that out a product hunt dot com. And there's always a lot of cool software and cool links there for those that are looking to either get a business going or have a business going and looking to establish or expand a tool set. So there are some really cool things there. But what I like about this can I travel website. It's called It's a Your Covid travel partner, and you can look to see what you do is you go to this website and you can kind of see where you can go from the United States from other countries and and of course, it's subject to being updated and so on. But as of today, March 1st 2021. It shows that you know there's 248 total countries that they have in their database and 48 are open to travel. 90 restricted, 110 are closed from the United States would curse out my favorite place. Uh, it is open as long as you have a covid test within 72 hours of departure or has to be 72 hours in advance of departure. So that's on the restricted list. But it's interesting to see what's open you have Turkey. Mexico. Um, I've seen people traveling there. Excuse me. Morocco. Costa Rica is open. Colombia, Tanzania, Serbia, Egypt, Brazil, Montenegro, Albania and Dominican Republic. There's several that are open, which is interesting to me, and I think it's important that you know you if you want to travel. A lot of people think that you can't travel unless they see their friends on Facebook travel, and then they realize, Oh, maybe I can travel, So I would highly encourage you to take a look at these countries. So when you think about the top countries that people want to travel to, um, you you look at excuse me like in Europe, for example, if I wanted to go to Europe and I'm just gonna pull up, for example, a couple of places where I've been to the Netherlands, the motherland not really but close Definitely have ancestry there, as you could probably imagine, based on my Dutch surname. So if I want to get to the Netherlands, for example, you get to this website and the Netherlands is, uh certainly got a lot going on, you know, in Amsterdam right now, as a really turn it around there, looking at turning around, you know, where it used to be red light district and it still it is. And you have the marijuana and other drug use. They're really trying to get away from that as a society which I find interesting just because, you know, that's it's a draw. But at the same time, he is it. Do you really want to to draw that kind of of crowd? So that's that's very interesting. As I looked this up, I just talk as I looked this up. So if you look at like going to the Netherlands, for example, use a few examples here, you get this website again. Can I travel dot net? Choose your passport country, United States. That's where you're from, you're from, which would be the United States. Then you can say you go to the Netherlands. So it's again closed, closed entry limited to residents and essential reasons. So certainly, um, interesting. There it is closed. If you look at Germany, which there's gonna I know I've done some business folks that have traveled there recently. It's limited to residents and essential reasons. And I think when you think about essential, it's it's a very loose definition. You have to look at that sexual emergency. Is it an emergency as a family? Is that this or that? It can be business reasons, so you have a business reason you can certainly travel, so there's a lot of that, too. And, of course, Germany being a great country that I love, can't wait to go back there sometimes. But that's a pretty exciting place again. Curacao, Dominican Republic of I'm not a huge fan of the Dominican Republic. There's some wonderful people there, and there again, you got to have a health certificate or negative tests or your subject without if you don't have a PCR test certification. You have to take a covid 19 tests when you get there, another great country Barbados again. You could do this all on your own. You can stop the podcast right now and go to travel down there and do this on your own. But I'm just giving you some examples of countries I've been to. Then you got like, Barbados and yeah, you got got to arrive at a covid 19 negative test and then you have to, uh, you know, make sure that you're good to go and be subject to to quarantine, and that would be the worst thing. And I think that's where you got to be. Careful is things can change at any time. And I think we have to be very aware of that is, let's say that you go to a country like Mexico that doesn't have heavy restrictions at the moment, and they probably won't have the restrictions coming. But you, all of a sudden let's say you're taking a 10 day trip and you reminds me of the cruise we went on last year when we went on a cruise at the very beginning of Covid where we didn't know it was going to explode into what it did. And we thought we were gonna be lost at sea for a while. But you think about Mexico in this case five days into your trip, an emergency hits. There's a huge outbreak in Mexico or a huge outbreak in the United States. You can't come back without quarantining or you can't leave Mexico. U. S won't let you back in because of what's going on there. So you got to be careful and I and I and I hate that because I I really I really do hope for and expect the day to come where things get better. But again, you know, don't be afraid to travel even though I pretty much said, Be afraid to travel and don't do it but just keep, you know, keep an open open. I open mind. As I said at the beginning, Time flies. I wish we were flying. Um, we do have a still have a cruise scheduled for later this year in December. I'm hoping things settle down by then and you know, you know, and the questions asked, Hey, you know, Cam, are you gonna get a vaccination if it's required to travel. And I'd say, you know, I'm undecided about that. You know, I feel healthy, but I'm not open minded. I mean, obviously I'm not closed minded to the idea, but we'll see when that time comes. But as it stands now, there are a number of countries that are allowing entry 48 open right now and again open doesn't mean you walk in the door of their wonderful, uh, the Wonderful Country, but it means that there's a lot more accessibility. And I think a lot of people believe that everything is still closed. And that's the problem. In a sense, if you're in the US and you're looking at businesses that are closed and towns and states that are closed and then you're looking like heck, I can get to Mexico, you know, and have a good time, I can get a turkey. I can go to Costa Rica, Tanzania. You know, Serbia. I mean, there's a boatload of places you can go with very few restrictions again. Should you? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not here to tell you to do that, but again, check out this Web sites in the show notes. And so its product hunt And and again this is, You know, I just want people to be comfortable thinking about travel again. Think about it. It's going to be there. It's going to come back. The world's going to come back to normal. We can call it a new normal and old normal. Whatever we want to say, it's going to come back. We're gonna be fine. And we're going to be able to to do things like again. And I'm very confident of that. And I very much look forward to it. So hopefully this is This is a little bit more of a and a kind of A It was a ramble, but it's an ongoing conversation with myself about travel here, but certainly hopefully it's helpful for you. Um, definitely subscribe. If you don't mind to this podcast, share your thoughts on it. You can email me Cam Cam john travel dot com anytime and, uh, look forward to being back in April with another podcast, and I'll just keep updating. I might even do a quick check in on this list, every podcast, just to see where we're at from 48 up to our down front, down from 48 or up from 48 doesn't see where we're at, so hopefully this was helpful for you. If so, please let me know I'm here for you and all your travel needs and appreciate very much and stay safe and be, well, thank you so much. We'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to today's Know where you want to go. Travel podcast. Subscribe to stay up to date with upcoming episodes, plus visit US online at cam john travel dot com that c a M j o n travel dot com Mm.