About three weeks my husband and I moved from Sydney, Australia to Placencia, Belize. Shortly after arriving I was reading the expat forums where alarming statistics were being cited of Belize being a "murder capital" for expats. This was following the brutal murder of 74 year old British photographer, Richard Foster in Belmopan on 9 to 10 August 2018. Belize police have since charged three locals with his death. Nothing more is known about the motives although it appears to be a burglary. Foster lived in Belize for four decades and pioneered the establishment of the Belize Zoo and made a number of documentaries for National Geographic and the BBC.

Some of Foster’s films include “Tales from Belize: Underwater World” and “Paradise on the Edge”; “Mysteries of the Ancient Maya”; “Land of the Anaconda”; “Jungle Nights”; “Jaguar: Year of the Cat”; “Hope – The Harpy Eagle”; sequences for the highly acclaimed BBC documentary Planet Earth; and much more.

The Fosters won two Emmys and many other awards for their work in Belize and around the world. Although they still made films, of late they had been primarily focused on conservation efforts. (Source: http://amandala.com.bz/news/internationally-renowned-british-filmmaker-murdered/)

Possibly even more bizarrely, Foster rescued a jaguar orphaned by a hurricane but the jaguar later killed a neighbour, Bruce Cullerton aged 47. The jaguar was then euthanased.

In our third week here, a Canadian tourist was awakened in her hotel room on Ambergris Caye, Belize by a burglar and when she tried to retaliate, she was stabbed four times. She survived but had fairly significant injuries.

To be honest I was feeling a bit nervous after that. Then a few days later, a grizzly American expat, with a giant great Dane in his 4x4, came to our house to sell us local produce and he warned us that we were living in a dangerous area which we kind of already figured out. I spoke to my landlord who reassured me that we were safe enough and I had confidence in those words as our wonderful landlord and his wife - both of whom are Austrians who lived in Sydney, Australia previously, and are intelligent, sensible and decent people. They lived in this area for 10 years with no drama apart from the theft of a generator which was later recovered by the police here. My husband and I exercise situational awareness and take appropriate security precautions. I don't feel as concerned now. Although we do sleep with a machete under our bed.

I do know that older people who live alone are targets for crime and this is especially the case for older people or single women who make themselves more vulnerable by going out alone in the evenings, volunteering too much information about themselves, their finances, or simply because they are barflies and are visibly drunk a lot of the time. Alcoholism is rife here amongst the locals and the expats and fastidiously catered to by the large volume of booze in every supermarket. Lots of booze, but no Vegemite. In our little village there are about 20 bars or pubs for 2,000 people. They are always full and busy.

This is a massive contrast to Australia's lockout laws and "responsible drinking" requirements in pubs and bars and the always present mobile breath testing for drugs and alcohol in most metropolitan cities or country towns. They couldn't care less here. People drive drunk all the time which is particularly hazardous as the locals walk around in the evening or ride bikes with no lights on in the middle of the roads. You could be in a alcoholic coma and they would still serve you booze.

Cheap booze is plentiful here as is drugs - best cocaine from Colombia - I was assured by one of the local fisherman who tried to flog his local wares. I assured him politely that we were not interested. This is also another scam here. Apparently locals will offer you drugs and you will later be arrested and need to bribe police significant amounts of money to avoid jail. Saw this on the expat forum and on other pages - not sure of the accuracy of this. Again, like anywhere you need to exercise situational awareness and follow the local laws.

Despite this, it is a charming community in many respects. When I lost my cat the local kids helped me find him. The kids here are not addicted to gaming or constantly on their screens rather they are all playing outside.

We live in a very small village of only 2,000 people. We have only been here for three weeks but people know that I am the lady who walks the dachshund. Some days I feel as though I am living in an Agatha Christie novella.

Sleepy fishing village at dusk

Nonetheless, all of this got me thinking about the topic of expat deaths in paradise and what behaviours exposes them to risk. So far the worst thing that has happened to me so far here is that my cat Trim escaped from me when I was trying to teach him to swim in the Caribbean - yep dumbest move ever. I saw some cute YouTube videos and I thought he might like this. First time he didn't mind. Second time some kids startled him and he ran away. It took us almost a week to locate him up the top of a coconut tree near the beach several kilometres from our house, bearing in mind that this is the cat that we had paid a lot of money to ship from Australia to Belize along with our dachshund and other two cats.

The Coconut Tree where Trim was found

It was a bloody big tree and I had to climb a ladder to rescue him. Could have been killed by a falling coconut. Wasn't though.

One of the deadliest holiday or travel destinations appears to be Thailand. So much so that someone has created a website to record these called "Farang Deaths" - a particularly gruesome collection of statistics -https://www.farang-deaths.com/

What is interesting about the Farang deaths is that most of them are caused by drug and alcohol overdoses, numerous suicides and traffic accidents. My husband and I visited Thailand last December and considered it as a possible location to move to. We decided against it because we found the amount of sex tourism there distasteful and found the language barrier to be too difficult to overcome, despite finding communities of Scandinavians living in one area we stayed in - my husband is Danish. In the end we settled on Belize as an English-speaking Commonwealth country. I feel happy with that decision despite alarmist reporting about expat deaths here and high murder rates per capita. Most of the murders are a result of internecine disputes between gangsters and alcohol-fuelled domestic violence. We live a quiet life and keep to ourselves pretty much most of the time. We are not wealthy although all the locals here think that all white people have money and we have had numerous people come to our home asking for money to fix their car and so on, which I found rather unnerving.

I went to bingo last week to meet some of the expats. I could have died of boredom - it was an experiment though. I kept thinking of that episode of "Better Call Saul" in the nursing home running the bingo - but way more tedious.

In terms of more interesting expat deaths I kept thinking about conservationists like Dian Fossey (murdered in Rwanda in the 1980s) and Joy Adamson murdered in Africa in the 1960s or 1970s. These are such interesting stories. Both women were incredibly strong and independent but they also trod on many local egos and created enemies even among their colleagues. Where expats are murdered and it does happen, you have to consider what behaviours by those characters could have contributed to their deaths. I am not suggesting for a minute that any person who is murdered in a foreign country deserves such a fate. Instead I am considering what Westerners should consider when going to a completely alien culture, particularly one where they will be viewed as unwelcome interlopers and/or wealthy targets of crime and opportunity. You also have to remember that in a foreign country the local police will likely not care or bother to investigate your untimely demise. That is certainly the case here in Belize. There are many unsolved expat and local deaths. You never hear sirens here. I have heard stories of locals having to drive the police to the crime scene. There is no proper forensics - it literally is keystone cops.

For Australians, the data suggests that Thailand is the deadliest destination - not for murder so much - but more simply misadventure by traffic accident and tons of drug and alcohol overdoses.

We drove from Thailand to Laos around Christmas/New Year - scariest experience of my life. Whenever we stopped for petrol you would find motorists filling up their gas tanks who were so drunk it was as though they had been dipped in a bottle of Jack Daniels. I shit you not.

After we survived the roads we spent a few days in Laos where I got the worst food poisoning of my life. I was so sick I fainted on my way to the toilet - twice and hit my head on the bathroom floor. Survived, but was sick for days afterwards.

The bottom line is you have to take responsibility for your own safety, no matter where you live. Exercise situational awareness. Also I have befriended and I feed some massive and very scary looking dogs - who love me - and they guard our house, along with our miniature "killer" dachshund. You also have to embrace the difference in a new country and enjoy the cool stuff as well as the limitations. For me, I miss Vegemite and Promite, nice bread and chocolate from Aldi. Simple stuff. Otherwise I am good. Grateful for a roof over my head, my husband snoring in the other room and my massive friendly dogs sleeping on my verandah and my dachshund asleep at my feet.