In these totalitarian circumstances, I'd certainly think twice before taking my laptop with me on vacation!

I'd take the risk only if I had absolutely NO choice to bring it with me (special applications, no computers easily available where I'm going, etc.). And then I'd probably replace the hard drive with another one containing nothing but a strictly functional Linux distro, send my data in advance by mail to where I'm going, or just download the necessary data (encrypted) from a web to be able to work. This is not ideal, but feasible.
There's also the liveCD option. But it's not as easy as one would probably think... There are not many internet cafés around that will allow you to reboot their computer with a live CD (

) , and, depending on where you're traveling, using someone's (or whatever) computer might be not be an easy option either! Still... carrying a liveCD (or USB stick) with everything you need, is not a bad idea as it
could be useful. It could.