Ordinary Gweilo

The South China Morning Post reports that “Indonesia has advised its citizens to avoid travelling to Britain over fears of possible terror attacks following the recent bombings in Spain”. I couldn’t find any confirmation of this on the AP website or anywhere else, but I don’t suppose the SCMP made it up.

Later – Proof that they didn’t make it up – I found the story here

There is, of course, some resentment about ther way that Britain, the USA and other countries issue travel warnings, as The Guardian reports:

[British Foreign Secretary] Mr Straw acknowledged this when he recalled that after the bombing of the British consulate in Istanbul the advice was not to travel [to Turkey] except for essential business. “I thought the Turkish government had a point,” he said, “when they observed that no such prescriptive advice was issued in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities in 2001 in respect of travel to New York or the rest of the United States.”

So perhaps the Indonesian government is trying to make a point. As The Guardian notes, the official advice from the British Foreign Office is still that British citizens should avoid travelling to Indonesia except on “essential business”. This is continuing to have an effect on tourism and hence the local economy, and the Indonesian government have protested to Britain about it.