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Egypt? A dream holiday?
Are you
kidding! The multitudes of dirty children and unkempt beggars screaming
‘baksheesh’ is enough to make any tourist feel like the US
bestowing foreign aid. Give one person a few coins, a thousand others
appear, bleating for the same.
Las Vegas? Forget the TV Las Vegas, the real Las Vegas is crowds of overweight,
mentally challenged, badly dressed and dipsey-eyed middle-agers
gambling for dollars. Most tourists would look away askance, asking
themselves: ‘Would that be me if I stayed longer than a few days?’
<>London? Overpriced, notoriously
bad food, crowded, trashily dressed teenagers, and smokers outside
every pub complaining they can’t kill themselves inside. The Great
Westminster is an in-door graveyard. Theatre tickets are over the moon,
and who wants to litter their suitcases with made-in-China Big Ben and
Underground Tube multi-colored kitchen towels – memories of crowds, bad
smells and too much money spent?
Hong Kong cheap? Before I was born!
My hostel was a tiny, dirty room with a half-decayed, thin curtain that
allowed in all-night city lights. Sleep? Not much. A hotel? Pricier
than London!
Food? Chinese cheap. Nicest find? Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookie
stand in an outrageously lovely sky-rise office-shopping mall.
<>India? Squalor-shock. Men using
the open air for all their bathroom needs, even in the gardens at the
Taj Mahal. Airport rides to exotic five star hotels offer first hand
sights of homeless Indians doing their business on the narrow side of
the highway. Leave a hotel’s protected gates, and be immediately
accosted by demanding Indians worst than Egyptian beggars. Not just one
town, but for a guided tour of over five cities, but well-insulated
from India’s
realities within a First Class train cabin.
Los Angeles? Shockingly expensive taxi
rides, every Californian ripping off tourists as in the infamous 1984
Olympics. Back then, thankfully word got out of the Californian con
artist trick of smiling with ultra-white teeth and offering dreams with
one hand, while stealing with the other to every new person in town. No
one in their right mind would go to Hollywood & Vine if they knew
it was in the heart of a slum with lots of
extras, such as real-life drug dealers and users. And the lines at Disneyland are a nightmare!
The best holiday I
discovered years ago was to spend time with loved ones – wherever they
are.
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