A few unattached thoughts about recent travels:One: Why is it that, for some people, a visit to some site of natural or manmade beauty is incomplete without a photograph: moreover, one that includes the photographer's travelling companion gurning like a moron in front of said site, usually masking the best bit. And this isn't a sarky dig at Japanese people: they do take lots of snaps, but execute them with searing speed and efficiency, so that an entire coach party from Kyoto can aim, shoot and move on in the time it takes for a retired estate agent from Rotterdam to reposition his wife, fiddle with his exposure and wonder whether now would be a good time to try out that pristine tripod.
Two: Am I alone in finding it rather charming (albeit very arrogant) that French people are the only travellers who do not presume that strangers have English as a default language? "Bonjour!" they all chirruped as we met on the path to the weird underwater carvings of Kbal Spean.
Three: Back in Bangkok, there's a delightful French restaurant called Le Bouchon, nestled amidst the deepest, dankest fleshpots of Patpong. The highlight of the pudding menu is vanilla surprise; the surprise supposedly being the massive slug of whisky that the chef adds to the ice cream. In reality, the surprise comes when my mother, about 20 minutes after consuming said delight, staggers into O'Reilly's Bar and starts boogying to the Beatles cover band, wielding her plaster-encased right arm with gay and dangerous abandon.
8 comments:
When I went on holiday on my own I wasn't in the pictures so nobody believed I went there.
I hope they were joking.
1. Haven't these people discovered Photoshop yet?
2. Yes
3. Plastered you say?
Murph, haven't you realised that anybody who is anybody is getting plastered at the moment?
2. Isn't that just becasue Cambodia was a Frence colony back in the days and the French visitors are aware that people are therefore likely to speak some French? I noticed when I was there that the kids all asked for 'bon-bon' and 'stylo'.
3. Is Betty your Mum?
This is why I find holiday snaps so tiresome, Billy. Are they just to prove you've been somewhere exciting?
Murph/Betty: Plastering is the big look for 2008. Along with pierced eyebrows and tweed bras.
Sound point, Spin, but I've discovered the same phenomenon in Thailand as well, which was never colonised by anyone. And shhh, we were trying to keep in a secret, like in Green Wing.
Won't it have been funny if the surprise was just a massive slug... I bet there won't have been much dancing then.
Thanks for that, KW. No, really, thanks...
I am trying - and failing - to imagine my mum doing that! Drink goes straight to her legs and stops them working.
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