Travel wankers, think on your sins.
Hello darlings, am making a temporary return from a long hiatus as I am currently suffering from a mental health issue known as ‘backpacking’. In my wisdom I have decided to do the middle class thing of ‘finding myself’, largely by spending a disgusting amount of money I don’t have, dragging a 23 kilo backpack full of shit I don’t need, to meet other backpackers that I can barely tolerate.
Almost six bloody months into this farce, I believe I have created a nifty little guide how to not be what I fondly refer to as a ‘travel wanker’. Let me enlighten you my little land bound sugar lumps.
1. Don’t dress like a douchebag
For some perculiar reason upon arriving in Thailand/South America/India my fellow travellers appear to bin their Jack Wills hoodies in favour of the down and out, beaded, bearded, elephant trousers, wanker look. I’m not sure what part of the human psyche deems it appropriate to immediately start growing dread locks and donning 27 beaded anklets upon arriving in a third world country. I mean, do you dress like a homeless crack addict back in Blighty? Doubt you rocked up to your internship at Daddy’s office sporting a nose ring and luminous green harem pants. Sort your shit out.
2. No one wants to read your travel blog
I mean Jesus of the Christ can you imagine anything more excruciatingly dull? Thanks to the world wide webs, any idiot backpacker with a sporadic wifi signal in a mud hut can now post yawn-a-minute mundanity about their ‘adventures so far’. Here’s a hint morons, doing an organised bus tour of New Zealand South Island is about as adventurous as having a rummage around your own pants. Yes, yes it’s all very special to you and you alone, but there will be time enough when you have burnt out your credit card to literally bore the bejesus out of everyone back home with your hilarious ‘mis adventures’ without putting this crap online. Trust me, even your parents think this shit is dull and how they ever spawned such a cretin? Bill Bryson you ain’t.
Don’t play the most travelled game
Inevitable travelling alone means that you sometimes have to converse with fellow human beings so as to maintain some sense of normality. For those of us travelling alone especially, there are frankly yawning chasms of absolutely-fucking-nothing in between traipsing around yet another tourist hell hole with 13,000 other gawping travel wankers, wondering how the actual Christ it came to this? When you are forced from sheer, crushing loneliness to interact with fellow, inevitably Western Europeans, on your travels, the back packers code appears to dictate that you have to be have had a better time than your fellow traveller, your experience has got to somehow be more life affirming, shit your soul out better. If it’s not, what is the point in any of this? What am I doing here? Why would anyone chose to stay in a 2 dollar a night, shit hole of a hostel surrounded by public school wanktards on a “gap yar”. When finding yourself in this position, I can personally guarantee that literally no one cares about how you once trekked across Cambodia with just 5 bucks and a ‘wing and a prayer’, everyone is more concerned with where the next shag is coming from, how much the local beer is in pound sterling and how can I get hold of some Xanax for this upcoming 67 hour bus journey?
You are not here to save the locals
For those of us on the path less backpacked, it’s easy to listen to a U2 live album and develop an intolerable Jesus complex when traipsing round some third world country. Trust me when I say this though, when on the poverty tourism route, posing with confused, semi starved locals for your photography project about their ‘plight’ is completely self serving and indeed pointless. Turns out, you can’t eat pity.
What’s even less helpful is when you rock up in Bondi beach clad in your orange robes, with your ridiculous henna tattoos, lecturing the rest of us about poverty, spirituality and how you had that epiphany that may or may not have occurred round about the time you dropped all those E’s on a beach in Shi Lanka. He’s some free advice, if you do want to help these people, donate to a charity on the area, so people who actually know what they are doing can make a difference, stick to what you are best at treacle, which is losing every single wet t-shirt competition on the East Coast of Australia and crying yourself into a box- wine-induced coma of shame, you waste of humanity.
Hostels are holding pens for the mentally disturbed
Who in their right mind chooses to stay in a un air conditioned, grimy, prison style room with 27 other people, to suffer the indignity of sleeping in a bloody bunk bed? Broke backpackers, that’s who, in both the cash and the soul. Also Lonely Planet has brainwashed us all that we need to meet and ‘share our experiences’ and god forbid our ‘feelings’ with other travellers. Jesus wept.
If you do insist on sharing my personal space with me here are are few things to keep in mind. If you do have sex, or any sort of fornication in the bunk bed above me, I can and indeed will, provide a running commentary. And I promise you it will not be flattering in any way. If you snore, I will kill you in your sleep. Just because we are sharing a room does not mean I want to talk with you about your university plans/travel plans/ex boyfriend/what does it all mean? In any way shape or form. Touch my wine and it will be the last thing you ever touch. I reserve the right to construct a bunk bed fort whenever I like. With absolutely no notice.
No, I do not want to hear you play guitar
Anyone travelling with a musical instrument should be deported immediately in my opinion. Also if you dare bust out a ukulele, I will insert it where no medical professional will ever be able to retrieve it. Fact.
