Without trying too hard to be a pedant… you won’t deal with the TSA going to the U.S.! However, you will have the TSA grope-a-thon happening once you take an internal flight, or decide to come back home to the UK.

Though honestly, the TSA isn’t any worse than say the French airports if they decide you need to be patted down. The new TSA procedures are adopted from quite long-established European pat down techniques.

U.S. immigration… well, apart from the at times interminable lines, and JFK and Dallas airports suffer especially, it’s not bad. Fill in a form, answer a few questions, and as long as you don’t seem like an illegal immigrant or have a criminal record, you’ll be let in quickly. Again, not unlike anywhere else in the world. At least as long as you’re a citizen of an ESTA country…

Travelling around the U.S. is about as frustrating as anywhere else. It also has plenty to offer.

Your reader’s experience is regrettable, but it could have happened anywhere. I was stuck on a plane after landing in Sao Paulo for over 3 hours because there was basically congestion with too many airplanes.

Bad experiences happen. It’s part of travelling. It’s a little worse now than a decade ago with getting around, but it’s really not that bad.

I’d rather take the train than fly though…

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The TSA has become a worthless organization. However, the worst experiences I had when traveling were in Zurich and Paris. For the latter I was on my way from Paris to Seoul, South Korea, through Beijing. In Paris three police officers entered the metal detector in front of me as a sign of intimidation, although I didn’t realize this at first.

After waiting in the lobby for a few minutes I was called over to the counter and informed I wasn’t allowed to enter South Korea without a ticket to leave, which is ridiculous, since at the time I lived there. I told him I’d be entering Korea, picking up a ticket to Japan, and leaving the next day to renew my work visa. He said I had to have the ticket then, I informed my work was paying for it, and it was already bought. He said again that I had to have it with me and he had absolutely no way of checking it out, which was again, BS. After a few minutes of arguing he used my passport to find my ticket to Japan which had already been purchased.

During this entire time 3 police officers have formed a half circle around me. The guy at the ticket counter said I could go… then 10 min later I was called over again by someone I think was another security official for the Chinese airline I was flying on. He got really pissed because he thought I was somehow getting off easy, and walked through the glass door behind the desk and started screaming at someone on the phone. It was all Chinese and all I could understand was him saying “American” about 6 times. Eventually I was let go. The French officials were actually quite polite overall. Shitty long and frustrating day though…

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