Tourist horror stories
I do not kid myself that people look at me and see Agent 007. I tell someone we will shortly be visiting Dublin or Naples and concern falls across their face, imagining all the ways a cheerful fool such as I might get mugged, scammed or otherwise left for dead.
Happily, we managed to spend weeks in both those cities without coming to any grief at all, and also such risky places as Rome, Paris and Tirana. But I did get mugged in Venice.
I never saw it coming. We were in St Mark’s Square and had just bought some deep fried treats. Karren was already enjoying hers as we looked about for somewhere to perch, and I was holding my delicious arancini up out of the way of every other bastard and very much looking forward to my first bite, when out of the blue this huge whhomph comes hurtling from behind me, over my shoulder and just whoompfing the arancini clean out of my hand. It’s a seagull that knows exactly how this works and the fucking fucker has already landed about a hundred metres away and is fast scoffing my treat. I called the fucking fucker a fucking fucker as loud as you like and apologies St Mark’s Square but did you see that, the fucking fucker took my deep fried treat. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to kick it. But then I calmed down and Karren kindly offered me a bite of hers and the day slowly began to mend itself.
If we were to follow the thinking of our prime minister, you would rid Venice of all its seabirds. Poor Chuck and Mary! Fresh into Venice after witnessing homeless Aucklanders and this happens. So sorry that fucking fucker snatching your Whopper, Chuck.
What will they think of us if they have to see homeless beggars, wails the PM, his eyes forever on the takings and nothing else.
I see Chuck and Mary most days at this time of year. Over they come from their cruise ship, up one side of the main street of our seaside village and down the other with the glazed expression that asks when does the fun start? I have written before about this, and how our pursuit of the tourist dollar is a sorry reflection on the limitations of our effort and imagination.
Bloody TouristsDAVID SLACK·NOVEMBER 18, 2020
7.15am Usually it's the coffee that provides the necessary morning jolt. But not this morning. Coming at me from every speaker in the house is a truly bracing masterclass in crassness and venality.
Read full storyRemaking tourismDAVID SLACK·DECEMBER 13, 2020
If you can call domestic tourism a patriotic act then it has been a pleasure to serve my country for a couple of weeks.
In Kuala Lumpur I veered towards a shortcut through a long alley and as I drew nearer I wondered where the wind was coming from on this still early evening to make all those leaves tumble in the alleyway like that and also where on earth did the leaves come from and then I was a few paces nearer and I was thinking Jesus surely not, and have I ever seen a literal sea of rats before?
Truly, the lane was alive with them. They didn’t really watch me and I kept pressing forward and I did think about half way along: this would make a hell of a video but I considered how things might go if I were to get down for a a wide angle ground level shot and let’s face it I’m not 007.
Does it weigh against my impression of KL, those rats? Does the seagull make me tell people don’t waste your time in Venice? As if. Pearl-clutching about looking our best and what would the visitors think is just so tragically small.
What do we look for when we travel? What are Chuck and Mary looking for and expecting?
A mugging by a seagull ends up being a yarn you share many times, people are always more entertained by the bits of your travel adventure where the wheels came off. I have dined out many times now on those rats and the frisson of apprehension as I describe the moment where I took out my camera phone.
If that arancini was my last food for a week my perspective might be different. But all of us who travel are the world’s most comparatively advantaged, greatly so in fact. The least you can do as an advantaged person is try to take in all you see and get some kind of understanding of it.
It took a lifetime for me to finally get to India. When I did it managed to set me back on my heels a lot: raw fetid smells, waste, muck and filth. I have enough nose for two ordinary people and boy did I inhale the blood and shit and guts of it all.
You step into a Mumbai shopping mall and its marble and air conditioning and designer brands, but there’s a stench, still, on your sandals because you maybe unwisely walked here. Outside can be an abandoned no-mans land where common areas are not cleaned at all in any way and the grime and filth can take your breath away.
I found myself overwhelmed by it all. But the failing was mine, not India’s. The point, surely, of travel is to see more, understand more, learn more; enrich yourself through genuine encounter with difference and difficulty and beauty and mess. And count your damn blessings and maybe ask if we’re doing enough to share them.
In London, walking with our daughter past junkies in a park near Bloomsbury Square, I turned to look and she discreetly indicated eyes ahead is best. Take it all in, but don’t make yourself the story.
What would the visitors think? Here’s what I’d like the visitors to think. I’d like them to see our country unvarnished, unsanitised; I’d like them to take in that whole picture and say: What a place. What a life they have here.
