Foolish food fun
On holiday in Tunisia, and on first night we went to a fancy restaurant (Everything is relative, so when I say fancy I mean there were only a few feral cats running around the place). The menus consits of two things, essentailly: Cous cous (I cannot stand cous cous) and an item called 'Akods'.

We ask the waiter what Akods is and he explains, making a face, that "it is meat...tunisian". Excellent I say. When (another) waiter comes back to take our order, and I ask for akods he stops short and looks up at me. "You know what it is?" he says, eyebrow raised. My mother then has the foresight to ask specifically what meat it is. The waiter moos at us, in order to establish that it is a cow. He then goes on to say "It is...how you say...the dick of the cow".

I considered my options, cous cous or cow cock.

Bull cock is almost flavourless, suprisingly thin and very rubbery. The tip is liable to make one throw up.

Apologies for the length of both my tale and my meal
(Dromedary, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 20:23, Reply)

not my holiday but..
For those of you who havent been, there is a metal shead on top of ben nevis about 6 foot square. If you get stuck up there you can spend the night instead of getting lost and dying.

On my way back down about halfway up the mountain, I ran into a group of about 12 germans. They wanted to know "is there shelter on top of the moantain?"

me "errm, yes but.."
german hiker "is it free to stay the night "
me "oh yes very free but its not that big.."

they caried on their way, heavy back packs and all. If they didnt know each other well, they must of done by the morning ;-]
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 18:50, Reply)

... Spanish hospitals, police and airplanes are shit.
Went to Spain on holiday when I was younger and began to have terrible asthma and major asthma attacks. Left it for about 2 days thinking I would get better. On the 3rd day I had to spend about 4 hours sitting next to creepy ill spaniards to see the GP who told me I had asthma... I FUCKING KNEW THAT YOU SPANISH BASTARD! So he gave me an inhaler (which I already had about 5 of) and told me that if it continued, that I had to go to the hospital down the road. However, down the road to this prick means 2 hours drive. So I get driven 2 hours to the hospital and then have to wait another 5 hours waiting in the accident and emergancy. SURELY IF IT'S AN EMERGANCY YOU SHOULD'NT WAIT 5 HOURS! Then I get put on some dodgy breathing machine making me breath some dodgy air for about 10 mins. Then I as soon as get off the machine I puke lime-green-coloured puke. LIME-GREEN! Then they tell me that because I puked, I need to go back on the machine. IF ITS MAKING ME PUKE, THEN I PROBABLY SHOULDN'T GO BACK ON IT! So after another 10 mins of breathing they let me go back home (feeling worse than I did before I got there). Eventually, I got better. Then the next day, I wake up and discouver that half our clothes our stolen. So we have to drive to the police station which is about 3 hours away. Then we spend about 4 hours trying to tell some guy who doesn't speak English that our clothes have been stolen. Eventually they tell us nothing can be done and so we drive all the way back with nothing.
And to top it off, we fly back to England on some dodgy shed with wings they call a plane which has the most fucking terbulance ever! Some fucking holiday!
(Although they do make great English Breakfasts)
(I Want Billy, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 18:01, Reply)

The olive in the belly button trick..
1st holiday away with friends. Went to a crappy 1 star resort in Mexico but then again, it was open bar...so not all bad.

Arrived at 4pm and headed for swimup open bar. Drank like fish. Strangely enough, did not recognise inability to stand due to being in water.

Tried to get out of pool. No luck. Eventually made it to standing position only to fall like giant sequioa.

No matter, only missing a toenail, and the blood did look very pretty as it spread into the puddles by the pool.

Decided a quick lie down before dinner was in order. Miraculously found room at which point I lose all memory.

A few hours later, friends found me crouched outside the door of the room with my knees up and my chin in my chest - key in hand. Turns out I had thrown up between my cleavage and into a giant pocket of puke that had been my swimsuit.

Friends (boy and girl - shudder), carry me inside - strip me nekkid, wash me down as best they can in the shower being none too sober themselves. Put me into nightshirt (which they rip) and put me to bed.

Rudest awakening of my life. Wake up next to my friend (boy), in ripped nightshirt, naked underneath, giant 5 inch bruise across one buttock, only 9 toenails and olive (inc. pimento) nestled in bellybutton.

Only slightly embarassing. My friend who put me in the shower went to dinner wearing only t-shirt and a pair of thong underwear as she forgot to put her trousers on..
(Peelmytangerines, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 17:32, Reply)

Cheap package holidays are cheap for a reason
Went to Spain with my Mum, Dad and brother on a package holiday. It was going great, until we went on one of those excursion things to some shabby marketplace, the bus we were going on was too full and before I knew where I was someone had literally dumped me onto one of the local buses, not one designated for my holiday.

Being about 12, in Spain, surrounded by people you don't know and not having a fucking clue where your parents are is pretty scary. I wasn't even sure where we were going, so I couldn't try and tell someone. I just sat there like a lemon.

Turns out the bus wasn't going to the same place, but another market across the other side of the town. Cue me crying, and another tour operator coming to my aid. A few hours later im happily re united with my family in a posh restaurant with them doing anything they could to make up for my abandonment.
( Goon, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 17:03, Reply)

Absinthe + 'Space Mountain' = green spew

This is an apology to my sister I guess. I WAS 26 at the time that this occurred.

I had gone out to visit my sis during her placement year in France. So pleased were we to see each other that we embarked on alchopocalypse as soon as I arrived - little caring that we were off to EuroDisney the following morning.

I woke up with that Wow-I-feel-MUCH-better-than-I-expected feeling that inevitably morphs into Wow-I'm-actually-still-LEGLESS and we embarked on the two hour drive to the theme park... Once there I was compelled to purchase one of those sets of 'Mouseketeeer' ears that you normally only see on under-8's, jam them on my noggin and proceed directly, giggling like a hoon, to the biggest rollercoaster on site - 'Space Mountain'.

In the queue I was, INEXPLICABLY, overcome with nausea. 20 feet from the front I produced a veritable GEYSER of green absinthe vomit, wiped my mouth, jammed my 'Mickey' ears back on and, I'm told, totally failed to register the multitude of disgusted and offended parents/children around me.

Little wonder that my shamefaced (younger) sibling spent the rest of the day claiming that the giggling spew-covered man-child accompanying her was 'differently-abled' and she was 'my carer'.
(scunnydelight, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 16:23, Reply)

Twin Towers
Mrs. Evil & I spent our last evening in NYC up the Twin Towers in the Windows of the World bar. We flew home on the Saturday and they were rubble by Tuesday. I read that none of the staff in the bar and the reataurant survived. Haven't had my photo's developed from that trip......
(Doctor Evil, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 16:11, Reply)

never take drugs on a school trip
a trip to paris with an 1/8 of weed will end up with 8 weeks exclusion. Beware.
(nutsgeezer, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 15:57, Reply)

Inter-rail
Many moons ago when I was a callow youth and just out of University, I decided to see Europe by rail. Those of you of an age will remember the month long Inter-Rail card that allowed you limitless travel around the continent.
The arrangement was to meet my gf in Athens in Sintagma Square at noon on a certain date but I was going up to Helsinki first to visit a mate of mine working out there. That was fine, spent a week having a good time, had saunas, met some corking Scandanavian girls (in sauna!)etc.
First travel tip. Never go form Finland to Greece overland on one go. It leaves one a trifle jaded after about day 4 (that's about Austria/Yugoslavia).
Tip no. 2. Don't share a train compartment with Greek gastarbeiters who are returning from Cologne with half the Comet warehouse in tow, especially if you're a tiny bit claustrophobic.
Tip 3. Don't buy 3 days of food which includes camembert as the further you go south, the hotter it gets and the compartment begins to smell like a bad night out at the Gare du Nord.
Tip no. 4. Buy bog roll. Lots of it.
Tip 5. Wash by all means but don't shave on a moving train. Think of Donald Sutherland in the last reel of 'Don't Look Now'.
Tip 6. Pray the train doesn't stop outside Belgrade railway station for any length of time greater than 2 minutes. They used to empty the bogs onto the tracks.
Tip 7. Don't stay in the shithole of a youth hostel I did on the first night where these swarthy whatever-they-weres tried to dip my wallet.
And finally tip 8. Remember to pick up the piece of paper with the address of the hostel your gf is staying at before you leave Helsinki as Sintagma Square is pretty fecking big.
PS Weirdest experince on this trip was that the Hellas "express" from Cologne to Athens (only 10 hours late) stopped for 2 hours in the middle of the former Yugoslavia. Middle of the night. Middle of nowhere. Bored, I got off the train and wandered to this station building full of local peasant folk just wating for a train. Strane.
(Doctor Evil, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 15:51, Reply)

Dad's cock
We were early teens when my folks took me and my brother to Las Vegas on holiday. Obviously being too young for cocktails and bankruptcy at the casinos we busied ourselves at the local 'Wet N' Wild' water park fucking about on huge waterslides and such like. There was one ENORMOUS slide there that twisted, turned and dropped like a motherfucker. Me, my brother and my dad queued for it as my mum wimped out. In front of us was a woman and her daughter who looked about six. On getting to the top it turned out that the little girl was too short for the ride ("You must be yay tall to ride..." etc.) and this started her crying. The lifeguard guy at the top decided to let her ride anyway, probably trying to avoid a scene. Her mum went first, presumably so as to 'catch' the little girl at the bottom. The little girl followed her mum, then my brother went, then I went. Half-way down this slide there was a fully-enclosed 'tunnel' bit that corkscrewed around and as I approached it I could hear crying. I just had to time to register the little girl bawling her head off and holding on to the side of the tunnel before I passed her in a watery blur. I splashed down and my brother was stood there with the mum who was wondering how 2 people had managed to exit the slide before her girl had. The mum was just peering up the exit to the slide in a comedy "looking at the end of the hosepipe before it spurts in your face" type gesture when we heard the crying girl's approach. She was promptly squashed flat by my dad and the little girl arriving together. As if this wasn't already creasing me and my brother up enough it seemed that the perishable underpant lining of my dad's ancient Asda-bought swimming shorts hadn't quite survived the trip intact and his hairy cock was plainly on display for all to see.

Me and my bro were sharing a room and we got no sleep at all that night for collapsing in laughter every time one of us said "That woman had dad's cock in her face!!"
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 15:29, Reply)

Not that bad really ...
Like anyone I've had a few iffy moments on hols. The ones I remember:
* Realising that I didn't have any money on me on the ferry over to Zambia and having to sneak onto a bus (where I was the only white person) without paying.
* Overstaying my visa and pulled off a bus 50ks out of town for a chat with the customs guy. Watching said bus (which comes every three days) leave was very sad
* Noticing that my tent in Germany (in Oct) was not in fact waterproof.
* Starting to think that the guy leading me through the back sts of a fishing village in Senegal might be a bit dodgy.
* Being threatened by my driver in Severe cause I wanted to be dropped in Mopti instead.
* Coming down with a fever in Peruivan jungle with my guide trying to get into my pants.
* Condom breakage with slutty Mauritanian dude
* Not speaking the language at all and no one speaking yours
* Going to the toliet in the desert
* 20 people in a Land Cruiser and some sheep on the roof.
* 12 hours straight of Celine Dion thanks to lift giving truckie
* Running out of petrol, having to walk 7ks into town (got a lift back) then having the engine die 30ks out of town, hitch to next town, get it fixed, they don't put bonnet down prop so it flys up, detach bonnet, jump on it to bend back, cue bus load of tourists
* Realising that your bus doesn't have any brakes
* Jordanian guy driving like a mad thing to scare us "oh and one of my friends plunged over this ravine only last week"
* Running out of money
* Being threatened by fake coppers in Bucherest
* Staying in a "hostel" in Cairo that should have been condemned with a girl who slept with a stray cat tied to her bed
* Opening the fly to my tent and having a couple pull up an armchair to watch me like a tv
Actually its getting a bit long so that'll do.
(r0slynne, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 15:23, Reply)

Newquay Caravan Site
Instead of spending loads of cash me and my mates decided to go to a caravan site in Newquay. But it wasn't any where near Newquay. The caravan next to us was full of 15 year old girls from Warrington who decided that we were all evil. Threatened by a local farmer for playing football outside our caravan at 10pm. Forced to pay ridiculous amounts for food at camp shop, no pub. Caravan offered no sound insulation at all and you could hear a mouse fart. Last day we all got totalled with a group of Welsh girls, the best looking of whom looked like Cat Slater after a bad night out. Ended up sleeping with one of the Warrington girls who turned out to be 18 and had fancied me all week.

Funniest bit was my mate having a dump in the shower and stinking the entire caravan out.
( The Beast can't help looking at womens breasts on the tube, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 14:28, Reply)

Fencing trip
Must've been 6 years or so ago now.
I was on a trip for a fencing competition in France, with some of the countries best under 15 fencers. As you all undoubedtly know, fencing competitions take a long time of doing absolutely nothing, followed by around half an hour of something, then nothing again.

In one of these many periods of nothingess, I was sitting on a rail fence outside the sports hall. I was quite happily rocking back and forth, talking to people, thinking nothing of it. Then my rocking got the better of me - I fell backwards.
But it was no ordinary fall off a fence. Oh no! I was holding onto the rail, so I rotated around the top of the fence, whacking the back off my neck on the rail that ran along the middle, parallel to the top. This followed by me falling off completely, in a crumpled heap.

I spent the next 3 days unable to compete in the competition, and concstantly throwing up from concussion.
(sky blue sam, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 11:55, Reply)

...a French bouncer wouldn't let me and my friend into a nightclub.
Mysteriously, we failed to fool him by returning to the back of the queue and trying again. The guy was obviously incredibly highly trained as he also saw through our ploy of going up an alley and swapping our clothes with each other. That time he dragged up up the street by our necks and threw us on the floor. We satsified ourselves by hurling obscenities at his back and then running away. I got quite a shock to wake up the next day waering clothes that weren't mine.

With hindsight, his reluctance to let us in might have had something to do with the fact that it was a smart club and we were both in shorts and trainers, such that swapping into each other's brought us no nearer the minimum dress code...
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 10:55, Reply)

It was a great holiday but...
...in retrospect, it was probably not the wisest thing in the world to throw rocks off the top of the Brecon Beacons to see how far down the mountain they'd roll.

And roll. And roll. And roll.

Right through a posse of extremely angry SAS men, all of whom resembled Grant Mitchell, only bigger, angrier and seething like a man who'd accidentally wiped his arse on the bleach-flavour toilet wipes.

Honestly, some people just have no manners, and we DID say we were sorry.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 10:41, Reply)

Recent trip
What do you call a pretty girl in New Orleans?

A tourist.
(Wrecked Tums, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 10:30, Reply)

Juvenile prison
Belfort, France, summer of '99. Having foolishly overestimated my command of the French language, I spent some weeks hitchhiking the eastern part of the country. I planned everything as I went along and located the youth hostels by asking at the tourist offices.

Apart from having spent the first night at the Strasbourg train station this lack of planning had worked out and I had located the youth hostels in all the other cities. In Belfort, however, I arrived half an hour after the tourist office had closed. With the aid of the police and a bus driver I ended up in the other end of the city. I asked some of the locals but they had never heard of the hostel. However, being very nice people, they made a phone call for information, then offered to drive me to the youth hostel. Once again I went to another part of the city.

They were friendly at the place, and the standard was no worse that at some of the other youth hostels, yet I suppose I should have read the sign ..

Or maybe I should have been tipped off by the smile when they put down the reason for my stay as "holiday".

Or maybe by my mysterious roommate who seemed to live quite permanently in the room (he turned in much later than me and I never saw his face).

Or the prison like breakfast where everyone was staring at me.

I guess I finally figured it out when I left and they wanted no money at all. One hell of a story, though.
(spinoza, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 10:29, Reply)

Ugh
Waking up naked outside my hotel room door (locked behind me).
(finbarr, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 9:47, Reply)

One time, in spain. Somebody poured lemon juice into the swimming pool....
...after that, the holiday turned sour

/coat
(rhyswynne - on every social network mullarkey known to man, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 9:31, Reply)

Slip Slidin' Away
My friend suggested climbing snowcapped Mt. Hood, Oregon, U.S., and I eagerly agreed. I had heard they recommended climbing up and back before NOON in summertime, but didn't understand why. I also thought it was a bit nannyish about everyone using crampons and ice axes: my bamboo pole and hiking shoes were up to the task!

Turns out, the surface snow melts as the day gets longer. And it was very steep near the top. We reached the peak at about 4 p.m., and the snow was now amazingly slippery.

Heading into the sunset, my friend sat on his ass and slid downhill, stopping with the aid of his ice axe. I tried the same with my ineffectual bamboo pole, lost control, and crashed hard into my friend.

Now I was scared. There was a sharp cliff immediately below us, leading into a crevasse, or "bergschrund," and I was going to die. My friend had absorbed my impact and had saved my life. I immediately called him every foul name I could think of (for having suggested the hike, not for saving my life). A panicky young death is not a pretty death!

After more scary sliding experiments that brought us closer to the brink, I discovered I could roll over, hug the snow, and stop on my own. And I could take tiny baby steps downhill. After an eternity, we got out of there. I apologized to my friend: I would have kissed him, except our tongues and lips were now all sunburnt from the panting and cursing, and neither of us needed more pain.

Evil place: Here is a particularly horrible accident, from 2002, at exactly the same location.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 6:14, Reply)

deject
walk!

You lazy arse hobo
And we wonder why America won't sign the Kyoto Agreement
(monkeyseemonkeydo, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 5:45, Reply)

this Thanksgiving
my roomates and I went down to some friends of ours who were coocking a large dinner. It had been snowing for the past few days, so there was about 4 or 5 inches of snow.

It took about 45 minutes to get home, which was only a mile away up a hill. Fucking tires have no snow traction at all.
( deject one time dreamt that he was involutarily digesting, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 3:24, Reply)

The lighter side of second-degree burns
Went on holiday for the first time by myself to Florida back in the late 90s.

Things were going well until the last couple of days when I decided to go for a swim in the hotel pool. Without suncream.

Two hours later I was blood red and any movement resulted in sheer agony, it felt like I was tearing my chest apart with every step.

Packing and catching the flight back home was an enjoyable experience as you can imagine.

When visiting the doctors soon afterwards, he said I was very fortunate that they weren't third-degree burns and gave me two weeks off work, complete with perscription for burns cream.

Still, popping the blisters was fun (especially the two inch high ones) and it gave me a glimpse to how Simon Weston must of felt.

No apologies for length, you love the big 'uns!
(Chuckman, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 2:42, Reply)

Trauma in Tunisia
It probably wasn't a good idea for my mother to take my sister, then about 28, me, 12, and my niece 8 to Tunsia for a week with no men. Yes we got hastled, my mum got many offers for all three of us, hard cash not camels, and on one or two occations in the Bazzare, they didn't even barter, they just tried to steal me and my small neice.
However I did have the roughest holiday, and this was apart from the kidnapping attemps:
1. I got stuck in a lift for 2 mins (enough times) with a Tunisian male cleaner who had a fair good grope in that time.
2. Mother took me horse riding, horse threw me off and kicked me in the back.
3. After deciding to stay in the 'family room' I saw a fellow british child fall threw a plate glass window. I promptly passed out at the sight.
4. The diet of cous cous and stewed pumpkins, and various 'meat' didn't do much for my guts either and landed me in A&E.
By the end of it I think my mum wished she had sold me into white slavery to the highest bidder.
(Gert-Big-Robot-Gal, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 0:18, Reply)

It was a great holiday, but...
waking up in the middle of the night, only to find some git climbing in through the hotel room window was slightly unnerving. He didn't manage to nick anything, but when we went downstairs to complain to the staff, the night-manager was mysteriously missing.

I never knew Bournemouth was such a shady place.
( Calqhoon, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 23:40, Reply)

I was 16
On hold with my girlfriend, her best mate, and her boyfriend. We were in the bar on the campsite and some 14 year olds tried to pick a fight. One threw a beer over me. Well, I say a beer, it was an almost empty pint glass. I would have been wetter if he'd have spat on me. Later they came back, a whole crowd of them. Me and my friends had been playing the simpsons arcade game, and I was the last one left in the game. While I was playing and not caring about what they were doing, the smallest one came from the back and punched me in the head, then fucked off again. I carried on playing. My favourite part of the night was when the ringleader said "come on then, I'll be outside, I can wait all night", left for literally 20 seconds, then came back sayin "you comin or what?!"
( Styxx hates when people talk in the third person, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 23:13, Reply)

A monster ate my fortune...
A few years ago I was on holiday in Mexico, which was going particularly excellent as I had just won 20000 pesos (2000 American dollars) in a hotel raffle.

Happy as a lark, I skipped through the sandy flats nearby, holding my winning ticket with pride. I tripped over something, and suddenly couldn't find it.

A GILA MONSTER! A FUCKING GILA MONSTER ATE MY 2000 DOLLARS!
( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 22:19, Reply)

It was a great holiday but...
lets face it...australia is a bloody long way to fly.

so its not much fun when after begging and pleading to get on the plane and u get shoved down the back of the air craft (no leg room) with an entire welsh choir. who were completly oblivious to everyone else on the plane. basically lots of singing and shouting to eachother in welsh.

then when i get to perth, i find out my bags never actually left london. so i'm 12,000 mils away from home with only my purse and a clean pair of pants to my name!

but they did manage to leave the entire choirs luggage in london as well...

tee hee hee!!!
(La_Rousse, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 21:48, Reply)

my mum died.
so you know, the whole experience turned *rather sour*.
(mr_chopper pluggin' up yo' plopper, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 21:13, Reply)

The Donkey was too big for me
I must of been about 7 at the time and me and my parents went to Rhyl which is near where my cousins live . Had a donkey ride and i started falling off it , crying my eyes out ...and most of the beach was looking at me .
Why wasn't Magic Donkey around ? !
(m1ssy, Sun 24 Apr 2005, 18:03, Reply)