Odd holiday destinations

I'm just catching up with this afternoon's Tour de France coverage, which I recorded on Eurosport HD, and I have seen an advert promoting Lebanon as a holiday destination.

Lebanon! I remember when Beirut was used as a sarcastic metaphor for visiting an absolute shit hole.

I also remember up until the 1990s, Yugoslavia was a popular holiday destination.

In the last decade, places like Estonia have become trendy for stag weekends.

We have a lot of old farts on this forum, please tell us what's what oddest place you ever been on holiday? World War II does not count.

Cape Verde is an interesting place for a holiday. I stayed at a place called Sal. Very nice beach but very little to do. It's a former Portuguese colony and the natives are friendly but I wouldn't recommend more than a week. Photos of the President seemed to adorn every single building and shop.

Don't go on holiday to Swaziland. I spent a week there staying at the Holiday Inn in the capital Mbabane. Great for scenery but it has no beaches because it is a landlocked kingdom within South Africa. The place was teeming with prostitutes who plied their trade with the rich South Africans who headed across the border most weekends for a trip to the casino and a spot of shagging.

Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe was a great place to visit before benevolent Uncle Bob got senile dementia and thought everyone was plotting against him. I stayed in the Elephant Hills Hotel which has a massive thatched roof. The hotel also has a casino and was at one time the best hotel in Zimbabwe. Ursula Andress, Jack Palance and Guiliano Gemma stayed there while they filmed Africa Express. Victoria Falls is at the northern border with Zambia and if you have a strong stomach you can bungee jump into the Zambezi River or go whitewater rafting. The river is full of crocodiles so make sure you have adequate insurance cover.

Hammamet in Tunisia is an interesting place. All the hotels are 4 and 5 star. I stayed in the Phenecia and did the Land Rover safari. You go out into the Tuareg mountains and get to sleep in a tent. The local people are called Tuaregs and they live in caves made of stone. Part of Stars Wars was filmed in the Tuareg mountains. After the crew had finished filming they gave batteries, generators and portable tv's to the Tuareg people as a thank you and because of the cost of flying the equipment back to America.

At that time in 1978, the Tuaregs were the only people in Tunisia who had televisions but not electricity.

In 1974 I went on holiday to Lourenco Marques which is the capital of Mozambique and is now called Maputo. Back then it was a Portuguese colony and was very popular as a holiday resort with the Portuguese and other Europeans. Most Portuguese boys had to do national service and they were sent to Mozambique to fight against the Frelimo movement led by Samora Machel, who sought independence from Portugal.

You would be sat on your hotel balcony having tea and toast and a squadron of Portuguese squaddies would be running past every morning in full fatigues doing their training. It was very surreal. San Martinho beach near Maputo is the finest one I have ever seen anywhere and the locals were very friendly but hated their Portuguese rulers.

Very well travelled indeed RT. I can't come close to any of those destinations, however, talking of interesting hotel balcony views, I stayed in the Gran Hotel Casino Royale in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava in the late 80s, and the balcony was across the street from a football pitch, which was where Barcelona 'B' played. Even got to watch a game for free. The goalposts were about 10 metres away from the hotel.

LH, who knows ? You have have seen some future Barca and Spanish superstars that day.

As far as holidays are concerned I like going to interesting off-beat places to see for myself what they are like. My missus doesn't always agree with my choices so we have to compromise. Have you ever met any famous people on holiday ?

I went to Rhodes in the early eighties and met the Everton full back, John Bailey and the Sheffield Wednesday winger, Terry Curran on the plane. We stayed in the same resort. Bailey was a genuine nice guy with no airs or graces but Curran was very aloof and stand-offish and fancied himself as a bit of a ladies man with his curly perm and Pancho moustache.

One year I was staying in a hotel in Halkidi and these guys all came in wearing tracksuits. I actually thought they were a basketball team because they were that tall but the waiter told me that they were the Macedonian national football team who were due to play a football match against Greece.

Reebok Trotter wrote: Have you ever met any famous people on holiday ?

Other than meeting Mike Jeffrey in Zante in 2001, which I detailed in another thread, no. And he is only 'famous' if you're an old time Wanderers or Grimsby fan.

We also went to Tunisia in the late 70.s, stayed in Sousse. went on a trip to the edge of the Sahara Desert, Matmata to see the troglodyte people ( they live in caves).
Very interesting people and proud of the fact they fought against the Germans in the war.

We had a day trip to Sousse and visited the Medina. It was heaving but we got a few bargains..

I guess you might call it an odd holiday but some years back I toured the Somme battlefields and cemeteries.

I found it a very moving and humbling experience to be at the place where so many men gave their lives for their country.

I’d like to go again one day.





"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori"

Very true is that saying. My next door neighbour and his brother go away every year for a week to all the battlefields of Europe. He told me it is a very sobering experience. He hasn't yet managed Afghanistan or Iraq.

I did a 'battlefields' school trip to Belgium. We visited lots of graves and trenches and heard the last post and so on. We visited Ypres and Passhendale, I couldn't tell you the names of anywhere else we went though, it was 19 years ago. I didn't actually think we'd be visiting graves every day of the trip, but we really did. We stayed in a youth hostel in a town called Kemmel.

I can remember one family trip through Europe, after I had just done my GCSE's and near Munich, we went to see Dachau Concentration Camp, same day as results came out. I actually phoned the school up outside the camp!!!! Suffice to say I had passed with great grades and made the holiday even better.

If your grades were so good how come you're 40 and working in a chicken factory in a shit country?

largehat wrote:If your grades were so good how come you're 40 and working in a chicken factory in a shit country?

Not working in a chicken factory in a shit country.



I have my own business and part owner of the parent franchise of Nando's here in The Netherlands, plus I also work for someone else. Have enough money coming in, with my own place (not renting). So to be fair, I know I have done well!

OK, well done.

largehat wrote:If your grades were so good how come you're 40 and working in a chicken factory in a shit country?

Bali isn't a particularly odd holiday destination in fact it's rammed with Aussies these days, but when I first went in the 70s I found it odd in a number of ways, for example each village had a specialism - village of painters, village of stonemasons, village of weavers etc. Sure it makes sense that kids would learn their parents trade, but to have an entire village with no other skills seemed ludicrousm especially if you have to walk 10 miles to find a weaver for example.

Odd in other ways too, but odd in a nice way.

Another strange place is Singapore. Too f******** clean. Unnaturally so. Massive fine for dropping chewing gum. Basically a normal relatively affluent Asian City which is surreally clean and tidy. Also weird for the Tiger Balm Gardens which were perhaps the strangest place on earth and a total hommage to plastic.

Went to blackpool when i was a kid , i tell thee that is one odd place.

Did a Bulgaria combined with Romania holiday, it was like going back in time, especially Romania, but a good holiday... it was the same time we bought JJ when the world cup was on..

I love the cloggies. A really friendly people. When I was stationed in Germany, literally on the Dutch border, used to travel all over the place. Not too far away were the battlefields of the second world war. When you get there, its really fascinating, especially as many of the weapons, tanks etc are still there. Went to the Ardennes where we saw the last iger tank to be knocked out, in the Battle of the Bulge. Also been to the Belgium trenches, Paschendale, etc. I have also been to Belsen. A very eerie place. I was told that no birds flew over the place, which I didn't fully believe. However, on the day, I saw a squirrel on the wall as you go past the dokumenthaus, but absolutly nothing within the grounds. We were rained on by the only cloud in the sky, honest.

If you want to go somewhere different, go to Belize, I believe you can get a holiday there now, along with Ascension Island in the mid Atlantic. Both are fascinating places to go. I also like Death Valley near Las Vegas. Its not a valley really, its about 30 miles wide !

Northen Cyprus was like a step back in time, until fairly recently, but still worth a visit.