Adventurer Andy McGinlay believes he is the world’s most fearless traveller. He spends his holidays in the world's most dangerous countries.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What practical reason does Andy give to go to war zones for his holidays?
2 How old was he when he was in a war zone for the first time?
3 How much money did he have to pay to the soldiers in Fiji to be released?
4 Where was the Central World Mall burnt down?
5 What business has Osama Bin Laden's house in Kabul been turned into?
6 How old is Andy?
7 What does he do?
Whoa. This is scary.
While most of us look forward to relaxing on holiday, Andy McGinlay spends his vacations in some of the most dangerous places in the world seeking out coups, civil unrest and even war zones.
My idea was that by going to dangerous countries I kind of got my head above the parapet and it gave me more to talk about, I had more of a story to tell after those kinds of trips.
He got the taste for adrenaline while travelling around the world aged 18, when he found himself in the middle of a military coup in Fiji in the year 2000.
I arrived into Fiji, just after the coup started and, well, they have curfews during the coup. You have to be indoors by 6 p.m. and I just disregarded it and the soldiers caught me, they arrested me and after a couple of hours, he ended up asking me for a bribe. I payed $2 and that was it, I was out.
From then, he started to make a beeline for more exciting holiday destinations.
Yemen, the feeling was very uneasy; it was a very tense situation. Al-Qaeda was huge at the time and the war in Iraq was still very, very much ongoing. I was taking pictures of the Red Shirt protest movement in Bangkok in 2010 and I was on the front line between them and the Thai army in a park in downtown Bangkok and at one point the soldiers were shooting at us, firing live rounds way over my head. It was very scary. I was literally running for my life. There was a protestor; he was wearing a black bandana. He came up to me while I was filming and said that he was going to burn down the Central World Mall.
Smash the **** Central World Mall to ****. Steal everything out of it and burn the **** down.
Within 2 days, the mall burnt down.
Last year I was in Kabul, Afghanistan and I payed this local guy to drive me around and at one point he said, “Look out on the left hand side, look there’s Osama Bin Laden’s house.”
“Osama Bin Laden’s house was there? When did he live there?”
During the Taliban
During the Taliban.
Turns out now, it is a restaurant. So if you want, you can go and have a shawarma or something.
The American black hawks, they were flying over head. I could hear the pop, pop, pop of Kalashnikovs. I think that kind of gun, just firing up into the air. I can assume some local Taliban were trying to hit the helicopter.
Originally from Glasgow in Scotland, the 34 year old is now a teacher in Saudi Arabia. But even where he lives, isn’t proving that safe.
There is of course the constant threat that you are surrounded by maybe people who are sympathetic towards IS or Daesh as they are called here. The week I arrived in Dammam in the east of Saudi Arabia, there was a bomb in a mosque which killed a few and then right here in one of the mosques behind me just about a month ago at the end of January, IS bombed another mosque and killed four. So, you gotta be on your toes.
