Safety on Atli eSIM Blog

WhatsApp location sharing: live location and pins explained

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:35:00 -0700

WhatsApp has two ways to share where you are: a static pin showing a fixed point on a map, and Live Location that updates your position in real time for a set amount of time. Both are inside WhatsApp, send to anyone in your contact list, and work without any third-party app. For travellers, and for solo ones in particular, they are genuinely useful.

Dropping a pin

A pin shares your current location as a static point on a map. It does not update.

Is Vietnam safe in 2026? Yes, and the roads are the main risk

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:45:00 -0700

Vietnam sits at the lowest advisory tier of the US State Department, and the UK Foreign Office keeps no red zones on its map at all. Its one-line summary reads: violent crime against foreigners is rare, petty theft occurs regularly. For visitors, the main risks are the traffic, phone snatching in Ho Chi Minh City, and scams.

The risks in order

Risk	How common	Where
Traffic	The one that injures visitors	Everywhere, worst in the big cities
Phone and bag snatching	Common, non-violent	HCMC District 1 above all
Scams and overcharging	Constant, low-stakes	Tourist zones, taxis, cyclos
Violent crime	Rare enough to make the news	Nowhere in particular
Typhoons and floods	Seasonal, regional	Central coast, September to November

Vietnam’s police counted nearly 10,000 road deaths in 2024.

Traffic and road safety

Vietnam’s police counted nearly 10,000 road deaths in 2024. Most involve motorbikes, because most vehicles are motorbikes, and the UK Foreign Office notes that motorbike accidents have killed and injured British tourists. Two habits cover most of the risk. Crossing the street: walk slowly and steadily into the stream and let it flow around you; the danger is stopping or stepping back suddenly. Riding: if you rent a bike, the rule depends on where your licence was issued. UK drivers can use a 1968 IDP with the motorcycle category together with their UK licence. US, New Zealand and Australian licences and IDPs are not accepted, so travellers from those countries need a Vietnamese licence. Ride without the licence Vietnam requires and an insurer can deny claims connected to the bike, including accident or medical claims, depending on the policy.

Is Bali safe in 2026? Scooters, scams and rip currents

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:53:00 -0700

Bali’s reputation for being gentle with visitors is mostly deserved. Violent crime against tourists is rare, and you can walk back to a villa down an unlit Ubud lane at eleven at night without giving it much thought.

That is not the same as low risk. What fills the emergency room at BIMC Kuta is not muggings. It is motorbikes, and after that water, bad spirits and untreated tap water, in roughly that order of how badly travellers underestimate them.

Is Mexico City safe? A neighborhood guide

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 18:09:00 -0700

Tell people you are going to Mexico City alone and someone will pull a face. The reputation is built on cartel headlines from states most visitors never enter, and it does not describe an afternoon on Avenida Ámsterdam.

The honest answer: the US State Department has Mexico at Level 2, exercise increased caution, and Mexico City itself carries no additional restriction, which puts it in the same tier as France or Italy rather than the border states. Violent crime against travelers in the central neighborhoods is rare. Theft is not. Almost everything that goes wrong on a trip here is a phone off a cafe table, a hand in a bag on a packed Metro car, a card skimmed at a sidewalk ATM, or a taxi fare invented on the spot.

Is Myanmar safe to visit in 2026? An honest answer

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:11:00 -0700

Is Myanmar safe to visit in 2026? For most travelers, no, and the reasons are structural, not headline panic. The country is five years into a civil war. The pagodas are as extraordinary as ever, the people who look after them more so, and neither fact changes the risk math.

What is happening in Myanmar right now

The military seized power in February 2021, jailing the elected government. Resistance to the coup became an armed uprising, and the uprising became a nationwide civil war that has not stopped. In 2026 the military holds the main cities, including Yangon, Mandalay, and the capital Naypyidaw, while ethnic armed organisations and resistance forces control or contest large areas of the borderlands and the interior, by some estimates close to half the country’s territory. Air strikes and drone warfare have escalated rather than wound down.

Is Bangkok safe in 2026? Scams, taxis and real fares

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:53:00 -0700

Bangkok is one of the most visited capitals in the world and one of the least physically dangerous for the people visiting it. Violent street crime against foreigners is uncommon enough to be news when it happens, and you can eat at a night market at one in the morning surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing.

What Bangkok has instead is a dense, well-practised economy of small extraction: the friendly stranger outside a temple, the driver who will not use the meter, the boat tout at the pier. None of it will hurt you. Most of it will cost you an afternoon and a few thousand baht if you have not heard the script before.

Is Marrakech safe? A street guide to the medina

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:58:00 -0700

Marrakech is safe in the way a large, busy market town is safe. Violent crime against visitors is rare, the police presence around the medina is heavy and partly in plain clothes, and the US State Department keeps Morocco at Level 2, its second-lowest tier, on terrorism grounds rather than street crime.

What you meet instead is commercial pressure, applied constantly by people who are very good at it. A stranger tells you the square is closed today. Someone takes your wrist and starts drawing on it. A driver explains that his meter is broken. None of that is dangerous. All of it is wearing, and it is far easier to handle the second time you see it, which is the argument for reading it once before you go.