I’m writing a book about travel. Foreign travel. Transformational travel.

Not about how to travel, or where. But why to travel. Far away. To weird places. The weirder, the better. I hope to inspire more people to travel, to venture away from the familiar.

But not everyone. Some people should stay home. With their remote. See whatever they need to see on any of 188 channels of cable and Netflix on their 60-inch high-def TV, from the comfort of their couch.

After all, it’s a scary world out there. There are hijackers who will commandeer your airplane. There are Muslims with bombs. There are Mexican drug lords who will behead you, bartenders who will drug you and gypsies who will pickpocket you. There are diseases in Africa that will kill you. Don’t take a cruise, because you might get the Norovirus. If you swim in the ocean in Australia the Box Jellyfish will sting you and you’ll suffer the most painful death imaginable. Either that, or you’ll die from a spider bite.

Far safer to stay home.

They don’t speak English. They have weird money. The food – it might make you sick. They probably have bedbugs over there. Some people say they don’t like Americans.

And then there are the airports. You’re supposed to check in three hours before your international flight departure. Only to stand in an interminably long line for TSA where they preach and shout, “Take off your shoes and belt. Liquids cannot exceed 3 ounces. Empty your pockets. Place laptop computers in a separate tray . . .”

Once you’re endured that experience with security, you then sit at the gate with nothing to do except pay exorbitant prices for food and drink and snacks to take onboard. When you finally get on the plane, you fight for space in the overhead bins because nobody wants to pay to check an extra bag. Then you find your seat – your hard, skinny seat which is home for the next 8-10 hours and hope that the person who sat here on the inbound flight didn’t have some horrible virus that you’ll catch because the cleaning crew don’t bother to sanitize the tray tables and the armrests.

If you’re lucky, it’s not a middle seat, or anywhere near a screaming infant or a restless toddler who sits in the row behind yours and kicks your seat for the duration of the flight. If you’re lucky, you don’t have to pay for the crummy plastic headset to watch a pay-for-view movie on a tiny screen embedded in the seatback which is about 18 inches from your face.

When the Captain gives permission, you recline your seat the maximum three inches and manage to fall asleep since you had to wake up at 4 AM to get to the airport on time. Then you’re awakened when the guy behind you pulls your hair and uses your seat to hoist his rotund body out of his too-tight seat so he can use the toilet in the back of the plane – except the beverage cart is blocking him so he stands in the aisle with his fat ass in your face.

Now that I think about it – traveling is not worth the hassle.

Foreign countries are so – well, foreign. Much better to stay here – where it’s safe.

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I confess. I don’t fly economy too much anymore. But even if I had to fly in the back of the “bus” – it would still be SO worth it. And airfares can be so ridiculously cheap, even internationally!

I did a quick check of an internet site called momondo.com, which my stepdaughter Erica uses to book her flights. They have a fun feature called, “Just take me anywhere . . .” If I wanted to travel from LAX on Oct 26, returning on November 2, here’s where I could go for less than $1,000 – including all taxes and fees:

Hong Kong for $484? Japan for $509? India for $699? Italy for $729? (NOTE: Some of these fares are for multi-stop routings or lengthy layovers . . . but still . . . it’s tempting, isn’t it?)

What’s stopping you? Hopefully not any of the reasons I listed above!

Next week, I’ll write about “A dozen (or more) reasons TO travel!”

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Everyone has an airline horror story. What’s yours?