ex-husb is afraid to let me take children to the DR!

please give me any information you have on tourism safety, we would be staying at a resort entire time, never leaving resort properties other than coming and going to airport. l want to get their passports, need his permission. he is worried about '3rd world country'. looking for saftey information.
thank you!!!!

If that's his attitude, then nothing is going to convince him. Resorts are plainly safe - if perhaps a little bland - anywhere, including relatively dangerous countries like Jamaica and Haiti. DR may be poor, but it's stable, though crime is a problem in cities. To someone prone to fear other countries, I expect the only credible source is the state department, which unfortunately tends towards the overcautious end, and probably isn't going to make him feel any better. In the real world, the US has unusually high crime, comparable to many developing nations, but no one ever reads their own travel advisories.

The fact is that if he's not going to sign off on a resort vacation, I don't think anything is going to convince him. A couple of possibilities:
1 - visit somewhere that doesn't require passports (my understanding is that you can still travel to US Territories like Puerto Rico without a passport).
2 - sell him on a vacation somewhere wealthier...maybe Europe or Canada. Once you've got the passports, you can take future vacations elsewhere.

2wanderers wrote:If that's his attitude, then nothing is going to convince him. Resorts are plainly safe - if perhaps a little bland - anywhere, including relatively dangerous countries like Jamaica and Haiti. DR may be poor, but it's stable, though crime is a problem in cities. To someone prone to fear other countries, I expect the only credible source is the state department, which unfortunately tends towards the overcautious end, and probably isn't going to make him feel any better. In the real world, the US has unusually high crime, comparable to many developing nations, but no one ever reads their own travel advisories.

The fact is that if he's not going to sign off on a resort vacation, I don't think anything is going to convince him. A couple of possibilities:
1 - visit somewhere that doesn't require passports (my understanding is that you can still travel to US Territories like Puerto Rico without a passport).
2 - sell him on a vacation somewhere wealthier...maybe Europe or Canada. Once you've got the passports, you can take future vacations elsewhere.

That's very good advise! You will never change the opinion of someone with his point of view.

Yes- people who think that anywhere in the 'third world' is unsafe, even if its in a secluded resort in the DR is not going to be convinced by many peoples testimony.

So, think about Spain, the "Costa Blanca", which is more expensive but definitely not third world.

When it comes to resorts, it always seems to come to at least 100 dollars a day for a room and more for food in the long run, no matter where you go. Or so it seems to me after investigating these deals. Cheapest I saw was 50 a day, double occupancy.

However, there is always Cancun and Mexico. If you fly directly to Cancun, you can't get much safer.

My mother recently went to a resort near Brownsville texas, on the Baja coast. It was in the US of A and fairly cheap.

She liked Mexico, Xijuatenao, better.

Then there is GASP, that word that independent travellers hate. Cruises in the Bahamas! Ships are pretty safe places, and they only stop in safe ports.

Um, lets try to be more sensitive people. "3rd world country" is politically incorrect. I believe the correct term you are looking for is "developing nation."

Carl24 wrote:Um, lets try to be more sensitive people. "3rd world country" is politically incorrect. I believe the correct term you are looking for is "developing nation."

Just hate the term "politically incorrect" makes me think that one is lying (political) to cover up the truth (incorrect).

"3rd world" is an obsolete term anyway as most of the countries falling into that category are more advanced in many ways than the so-called 1st world ones.

All that makes "developing nation" a completely redundant term.

Just call all countries, what they are countries11