Aussies out of pocket for breaking the rules overseas

OFFENDING the locals? Not wearing a helmet? Over-estimating your skiing ability? We put an actual dollar figure on tourists’ stupidity.

AUSTRALIANS love to travel, but we have a talent for making a hash of things — and it turns out breaking the rules is a really expensive habit.

We are the most prolific rule-breakers on the slopes of Japan, for example. According to a report by travel insurer World2Cover, 89 per cent of search and recovery efforts on Japanese ski fields involve Australian citizens — at a cost of up to $1100 an hour. Unsurprisingly, travel insurance won’t cover you if you over-estimate your skiing ability and head off-piste.

WE DO SILLY THINGS ALL THE TIME

Take the Budgie Nine. They were thrown into jail after skolling beers from a shoe while wearing underwear emblazoned with the Malaysian flag at the nation’s Grand Prix in October. Locals were mortified, and the men faced lengthy prison terms. Luckily for them, a slick lawyer got them out.

Closer to home, the three 22-year-old Aussie tourists got stranded on the top of Uluru for 16 hours in September, after wandering off the track and falling into a deep crevice. It took a seven-person crew hours to rescue them by helicopter.

According to insurance expert Claudio Saita, a chopper rescue from an Australian mountain costs about $12,500 — and that’s on the cheaper side of travel mishaps.

Turns out dropping your dacks and hitting the booze isn’t a good idea.

“It can be upwards of $2500 per hour if you’re being rescued from Mt. Everest in Nepal,” he said. “America is particularly known for high medical bills, with a hospital bed costing up to $21,500 a night. In extreme cases a trip to the ER abroad can literally bankrupt you if you don’t have the right cover. For example, one of our customers was evacuated from Mongolia to the nearest medical facility to the tune of almost $150,000 — it would have cost around $300,000 had they required an evacuation back to Australia.”

STUPIDITY HAS A DOLLAR VALUE

Insurance will help you out of many sticky situations, but if your level of stupidity isn’t written into the fine print, you might find a very big hole in your wallet. World2Cover has calculated the dollar value of some common examples.

Offending the locals can cost thousands — for example, gambling is strictly prohibited in Indonesia, and you can be arrested if you get busted placing a few bets on holiday in Bali. A prison visit and court appearance will set you back about $3600.

Three Australians were rescued after falling into a crevice on Uluru.

If you fall off a motorbike without wearing a helmet in Thailand, a night in intensive care will cost about $3000. You’ll probably also have to shell out a few hundred bucks for repairs.

Spontaneously bungee jumping in Switzerland can nullify your insurance, if you have an inappropriate level of cover. Swiss hospitals charge deposits of up to $13,000, which will almost certainly make your headache go from bad to worse.

Finally, did you know you need an international policy to go on a cruise, even if you’re just visiting Australian ports? Your dream voyage could get a whole lot more expensive if you need shell out $20,000 for an air ambulance evacuation.

HOSPITAL VISITS AND ARRESTS ARE RISING

Eight per cent of Australians travel abroad without insurance, according to figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Insurance will help with our rising hospitalisations, up 15 per cent since 2014, but they won’t cover increasing arrests, which spiked 23 per cent in the same period.

Often, our encounters with the law are completely ridiculous.

Take Melbourne mother-of four Annice Smoel. She was arrested in 2009 for stealing a bar mat in Phuket, and was deported after pleading guilty.

Victorian Corey Donaldson stole $185,000 from a US bank.

There was also the Victorian man thrown into jail for robbing a US bank. Wyoming jurors refused to believe that Corey Donaldson was a real-life Robin Hood when he faced trial in 2013, finding him guilty after deliberating for just 50 minutes. He’s now serving a 70-month sentence.

More Australians are travelling domestically and overseas than every before. For everyone’s sake: get insurance, read the fine print, and behave yourselves.