Friday, July 17, 2009

All Inclusive Cuba or Compound Vacation Syndrome


I have been doing a show on Canadian Vacations in Cuba and I have come to some startling early conclusions.
  1. Most people who go to All Inclusive Resorts never leave the resort. (Why leave your sterile it can be anywhere hotel, when you have all you can eat cheeseburgers, shrimp, and bad cocktails and explore the wonderful cities and people of Cuba. And I know you will brag that you visited Cuba when you get home to Edmonton even though you never set foot outside the resort.)
  2. If you do summons up the courage to leave your all you can eat cheeseburgers you take a coach tour of Havana and never leave the bus. Isn't it a lot like visiting one of those drive through safari parks. after you go there you don't say you went to Africa do you? "Please don't feed the Cubans", or "tap on the glass it bothers the locals".
  3. Summer at a Caribbean resort attracts a special kind of tourist here is the breakdown; The Twenty something University Student: only mission is to get drunk on free booze, get drunk and pee in the hotel planters, and dry humping poolside. (was i like this when I was in university?) Bored Middle Class Housewives: Let the cougars free!!! they prey on their cabana boys, twenty something university students (see above) and by law all get their hair cornrowed. The Fourtysomething Sex Tourist; he sleeps all day by the pool and slinks off at night to the local brothels so he can get a Caribbean variety of Syphilis as a gift for his family back home ( you can spot these men by their large bellies mirrored sunglasses and greased up porcine like bodies).
  4. Enough with the Che Guevara tee shirts already!!!! I don"t wear a Reagan tee shirt when I visit the states or bring my pope on a rope soap to Rome do I. I also know that you, yes you wearing that Che shirt also drives a Mercedes, lives in a McMansion and owns 8 T.V.s.....
  5. Your pool boy/girl, Server, room steward does not want that bottle of maple syrup that you brought all the way from Hamilton or those Tim Horton"s Hats. They want cash!!!! tip them please and they don't eat pancakes here.
  6. Also Who raised some of you... Please stop littering or I will find out where you live cash in some airmiles and shit on your porch.
In conclusion, why travel to a exotic place when all you want is a pool and cheeseburgers. Is it fear of discovering a culture different than yours, maybe? Because sitting by the pool with other people just like you is not international travel. This trend of all inclusive vacations is disturbing for me on many levels. The hotels are mostly generic copies of other resorts elsewhere. It is like eating at chain restaurants. No matter where you go they taste, and look alike. A passport is a gift of discovery, the opportunity to meet and learn about other cultures to also build relationships between people of different cultures. Maybe they should just build airports at the resorts and cut out the middlemen, and while you are at it give these people a passport with a McDonald's logo on them.

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