Hey you, where you going on holiday this summer? Kayaking in
Andes, golfing in Russia or sunbathing in Thailand? Is this going to result in a washout drinking spree, a fall-in-love with local girl heartache story or a thief stole my purse anecdote?
How many times do people utter “where shall we go this year”? Is it to be hot or cold, adventure or boring, sun, sex, sand or shopping? A bit of one and a bit of another might be good, or two of one and three of another might be even better, but not sand and no shopping although I might need some new shoes! Mum wants shopping, dad wants golf and all wee bairns want something that parents do not – help!
A holiday is not an easy task to have. In actual fact it is more probable that actual organizing and dreams before hand are far more fun than holiday eventually turns out to be. If by chance two like minded people plan and go on a holiday then chances are that it will be a good one. But getting two like minded people together is quite impossible these days, so most holidays thus end in disaster.
In days gone by……people used to be satisfied with annual trip to Blackpool (for those in Scotland to Portobello: always take a wooly jumper and mitts). There was no need to disguise “home away from home” in these sea-side beach towns, it was home. Nothing was different, weather was constantly miserable, food fully fat and glutinous with no health aspect involved and people whose paths crossed could have been next door neighbor. So those holidays were not quite trails that they have become, since planes started to herd so-called tourists around world.
After local seaside town ……. came search for sex, sweat and coca cola in hot places. Places like Spain, Canary Islands and Malta opened their doors to white and unhealthy Brits by thousands. Then sent them back home after two weeks, out of pocket, looking like beetroots and without them ever having met a local of country. This was probably a wise decision by host countries as nothing is more embarrassing than seeing an extra large family (size not quantity) with remains of a steak dinner, some HP sauce and a milk shake splurged and streaked across embarrassingly and alternate pale white and red colored skins that typically adorn British like a national flag. The similarity between a quite spoken group of Spaniards playing chess in a Tapas Bar and a family of loud, obnoxious, skimpily dressed and drunk Brits is like an ant hill and Mount Everest. There isn’t any.
Then along came organized tour! As suntan lotion and insect repellant firms, overjoyed at such good business from this new and lucrative search for sun and sand, considered opening up some hotels of their own in mosquito infested jungles, along came organized tour. The mass collection of supposedly similarly minded holiday goers into collective bunches to be shepherded around to economics that they had previously prescribed. Lonesome and desperate teenagers, middle aged work-alcoholics or old aged pensioners who had minimal choice in matter found themselves squashed onto planes and buses, packed four thick into single hotel rooms and shouted at in different languages before being returned home: well shaken and stirred.
