The Embassy’s Trudy McGowan’s advice to Aussie tourists in Thailand

THE Embassy’s Trudy McGowan has one piece of advice to Aussie tourists in Thailand. Don’t do things on holidays that you would not do at home.

SHE’S the breakout star of Channel Nine’s factual reality series The Embassy, but Trudy McGowan’s time as First Secretary and Consul in the Australian embassy in Bangkok is almost up.

Australian staff can spend only three years stationed at an overseas posting, so McGowan’s tenure will end early in 2015.

Which means viewers should soak up every minute of her forthright wisdom and cool, witty summations as the first series of the show wraps up.

Heading home ...The Embassy’s Trudy McGowan. Picture: Supplied

McGowan has enjoyed seeing the embassy’s work showcased on television — although initially she says initially she and her colleagues may not have been the most helpful when it came to pinpointing stories.

“We’d deal with something we thought was routine, and at the end of the day one of the film crew would say ‘why didn’t you tell us that?’ McGowan laughs.

McGowan hopes Aussie tourists have learned a few vital points from watching the show — including what the embassy staff can and can’t do to help Aussies in trouble.

“There’s no magic money bag. A lot of our job is helping people help themselves,” she says.

“We can be the cool voice of logic, but we also need a good bullshit antenna — absolutely — it only takes two or three weeks in Bangkok before that’s developed.

Help away from home ... The Embassy staff. Pic: Channel 9

Tonight’s episode features the Embassy’s Australia Day party, but McGowan says these events are the exception, not the rule.

“The reality isn’t cocktail parties. There is less schmoozing than people think. But sometimes what we have done at that cocktail party helps us with the next person in prison, the next dispute,” she says.

Her advice to Aussie tourists in Thailand?

Trudy McGowan said tourists shouldn’t ride a motorbike without a helmet or a licence.

Beau Goetz was involved in a serious motorbike accident in Thailand.

“Don’t do things on holidays that you would not do at home,” she says.

“Don’t think that because you are on holidays you can ride a motorbike without a helmet or a licence, or stop taking the medication you always take at home.

“Thailand can feel like Disneyland but you cannot forget that the law of that country is the law which applies to you. We don’t have a magic wand to get you out or trouble.

“And get travel insurance. I have seen people have $500,000 medivacs which saved their lives; they never could have paid for it themselves. Just get it.”

Next for McGowan is a return to Canberra with her family, then ‘hopefully another posting’.

“I love Thailand but the life of a diplomat is move to different places.”

THE EMBASSY, SUNDAY, 6.30PM, NINE

Originally published as The Embassy’s Trudy McGowan’s advice to Aussie tourists in Thailand