TRAVEL NOTES

Just this month, a U.S. state moved to ban abortion travel for minors across state lines. In Russia, journalists can now be jailed simply for not supporting the war in Ukraine. And in China, your phone camera might determine whether you’re allowed on the subway—or anywhere else. Meanwhile, half the world’s population is either under extreme weather warnings… or extreme governments.

If that doesn’t feel like your typical vacation roundup, you’re not alone, baby.

Lately, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve woken up inside someone else’s dystopian novel — and not even the good kind with hovercrafts and chic uniforms.

If you’ve been wondering which fictional hellscape we’re living in: it’s all of them. Sigh. 

We’re in a mashup of Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, and 1984, depending on which airport you just landed in.

Welcome to Dystopia: The Global Tour!

No passport required, but you might want to carry a burner phone, a banned book, and a backup plan. 

First stop, the sleek terminals of Huxley International, where everyone’s smiling and no one’s thinking too hard. In Brave New World, people are pacified not by jackboots but by joy: fast pleasures, shallow feelings, and a little pill called soma. Sound familiar? Swap soma for a mood-stabilizer, a scroll hole, or an AI-generated crush with cheekbones carved by algorithm. We’re there.

Welcome to Dubai, where luxury is worshipped, surveillance is seamless, and no one talks about the workers building the glittering skyline. Or Los Angeles, where everyone’s glowing, sponsored, and one microdose away from enlightenment. Or your own living room, where Netflix’s “Are you still watching?” is less a question and more a digital lullaby, or demand. You don’t need to silence dissent if no one has the attention span for a full paragraph.

Fuckit. 

Boarding now: your flight into Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, courtesy of rising religious authoritarianism and truly disturbing U.S. state laws. Remember when dystopian fiction felt like cautionary tales, not documentaries? Me neither. Texas and Florida are now running beta tests for Gilead 2.0. Abortion access: gone. LGBTQ+ rights: evaporating faster than your sunscreen in Doha (I was just there and I was boiling). In Poland, a literal European Union member, access to abortion is nearly banned. Iran continues its deadly crackdown on women, protestors, and queerness — while the West decides whether human rights violations are “relevant to trade deals.” 

And let’s not forget the growing list of places where books are banned but guns are not. “Under His Eye,” indeed.

You thought Orwell’s 1984 was a relic of Cold War-era paranoia? Cute. China has built the actual blueprint. Facial recognition, social credit, state-controlled everything — it’s basically a Black Mirror episode no one turned off. In Russia, truth is a casualty of state propaganda. In India, history is being edited like a bad selfie. Eeww. Even in the so-called liberal democracies, you’re being watched. Your phone listens, your apps track, and your Tesla may be plotting a coup.

Big Brother isn’t stomping through the streets. He’s chill, lives in your pocket, and recommends podcasts you didn’t ask for. 

I’m off to Spain this week. So what’s up there? Spain feels chill. Too chill, sometimes. The wine is cheap, the drag brunches are fabulous, and queer rights are mostly intact. But don’t let the vermouth haze fool you — this is a country with a long history of authoritarianism, and the ghosts of Franco haven’t entirely left the building.

In 2023, Spain saw the rise of Vox, a far-right party that openly romanticizes the Franco era and wants to roll back protections for women, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants. They haven’t taken over — yet — but they’ve entered regional governments in coalition.

Book bans? Not yet. But cultural censorship and revisionist memory politics are creeping in, especially in conservative pockets. On the flip side, Spain passed a landmark trans rights law, and its digital nomad visa is weirdly utopian — if you’re a remote worker with Euros and paperwork patience. So is Spain a dystopia? Not quite. More like: “Brave New World with churros and a looming sense of déjà vu.”

It’s the kind of place where you can go dancing in Madrid all night… then wake up to news of another Vox rally just a few train stops away. Gorgeous contradictions, with a warning baked in.

Is there a country untouched by the long fingers of dystopia? Sort of. Portugal is vibing with decriminalized everything and pastel de nata. Uruguay quietly has some of the most progressive policies in the hemisphere. New Zealand is far away enough to feel like it’s on another server.

But ultimately, you can’t outrun this stuff forever. At some point, every traveler becomes a witness. And maybe — if we’re lucky — a resistor. Side thought:  Who would play her in the movie I’m wondering? Angelina. Duh. 

The borders between fiction and reality are blurry, and the global gate agents don’t care. Whether you’re sipping oat lattes in Berlin, navigating censorship in Istanbul, or watching democracy erode one headline at a time from a poolside villa in Bali — just remember: this isn’t a layover. It’s the main event.

Pack wisely.

Love,

Daniel