Jim Eagles: Horrors of holidays in hell

Welcome back to work. How did the holiday work out? I don't think I've ever had a really bad holiday. In fact I'd almost consider the very idea an oxymoron. How can you have a holiday that isn't enjoyable?

It's a question that arises quite often when people discover you're a travel journalist. "What would you do if you went on a trip which was terrible?" they want to know. "Would you really write a story saying it was no good?"

The answer is that, yes, of course you would, otherwise you'd lose all credibility. The first responsibility is always to provide accurate information to readers.

But, that said, it hasn't happened yet and I'd be surprised if it did.

For one thing, a travel company would be crazy to send a journalist somewhere unpleasant. For another, what's not to enjoy about being paid to visit new places and have new experiences?

Sure, over the years I've had some tricky moments, but they usually end up seeming amusing more than anything else.

For instance, there was the holiday in Spain when a machine-gun toting officer at the airport picked me out for special attention - I suspect it was the beard - insisted that my passport had expired when in fact it had been renewed, searched my belongings several times and refused to let me board the flight until the last minute.

Or the camping trip in Wales when we had to put up a tent in a high wind, at which point our baby daughter swallowed a blade of grass and made choking noises, my wife let go and went to investigate, and the tent took off, sustaining a few rips before I managed to get it back under control.

I think the most galling part was having our travails watched by a couple of Poms in Pierre Cardin camping outfits who sat in front of their caravan, sipping pink gins with their little fingers cocked and stirred not a muscle to help.

Or the flight via the United States, when my wife and I and two young children ended up spending eight hours under armed guard in a Los Angeles departure lounge, with nothing to eat or drink until the very end, missing all our connections and unable to advise the people who were meeting us because some idiot had left a parcel on a plane.

Or the hotel in Myanmar where the floor of the en suite shower and toilet - a rare luxury - was covered in a mysterious growth several centimetres deep, which looked so scary that we created a bridge out of a loose board to avoid standing on it.

Or the visit to Paris when I was caught up in a general strike, the restaurants closed, the streets filled with rioters and police, the train back to the relative tranquillity of Britain was cancelled and the New Zealand Embassy was entirely unhelpful.

Or ... but you get the idea. None of them ruined the holiday. On the contrary, most were funny even at the time and made good talking points afterwards.

On the other hand, I know some people do appear to have bad holidays. In fact I've just read a book about them.

The Idler Book of Crap Holidays, edited by Dan Kieran (Bantam Books, $34.95), contains "50 tales of hell on earth" sent in by readers of the British magazine The Idler (www.idler.co.uk).

They include:
* The cruise to the Bahamas on which all the passengers, and most of the crew, spent most of the time puking over the railings, into the rubbish bins or anything else available.
* The guilt-ridden week at a Cuban resort, where politically sensitive tourists sunbathed on a beach from which locals were excluded, courtesy of a barbed-wire fence patrolled by armed guards.
* The rustic chalet on the shores of Lake Champlain, in New York State, which turned out to be in the middle of 500 other chalets all occupied by heavy metal fans while the nearest thing to a beach was a busy oil-slicked boat ramp.
* The holiday on Ios in Greece, where the highlights included a chicken which relieved itself in the hotel beds and cheap sunblock which resulted in a disastrous case of sunburn.
* The diving trip to Egypt, which a bad case of diarrhoea transformed into a week in a hotel room where "the only entertainment involved scorching passing cockroaches with my lighter and a can of deodorant".

Together they make an entertaining read though, for me, the fun was a little spoiled by excessive use of obscenities as a means of emphasis.

Probably the most amusing is this little gem about a two-week, 2500 ($6390) holiday in Bulgaria, submitted by a disconsolate John Johnstone:

I realised something wasn't quite right about this family holiday to Bulgaria on the Balkan Airlines plane on the way out. The in-flight meal was a cucumber salad, which involved cutting whole cucumbers in half and presenting each passenger with half a cucumber - not sliced or peeled or washed - just half a cucumber and nothing else.

The wreaths of cigarette smoke from the many smokers a few inches away on the opposite aisle forced me to complain because we had specifically asked to sit in the non-smoking area.

"You are," said the stewardess. "The whole of the left side is non-smoking and the right side is smoking."

The hotel on what had been advertised as "Sunny Beach" seemed to be mainly occupied by seriously drunk Swedish guys taking advantage of the beer at 10p a pint. Some of them appeared to have messed their pants at some time over their stay.

One particular guy was scarily loud and aggressive and although the hotel had hundreds of rooms it was, of course, inevitable that he occupied the one above ours.

His favourite sport was to scour the hotel for glass ashtrays to smash down on to our balcony into the small hours.

In our room it appeared at first as though the previous occupants had wet the bed but fortunately it turned out just to be damp accumulated over the winter as the sheets waited for us to arrive.

The family holiday consisted of my Yorkshire in-laws, their six children and partners with a few grandchildren chucked in for good measure.

We all headed for the poshest restaurant we could find where the choice was veal, Wiener schnitzel or chef's surprise, which was also veal, but did come with a choice of three salads: tomato, cucumber or mixed salad. We went for mixed, which was, of course, the first two mixed together.

The following night we tried the next poshest restaurant as it boasted chicken. The 17 of us were first in when it opened.

"What would you like?" said the waiter. "Chicken please," said the first. "OK," said the waiter, "and the next?" "Chicken for me too." "Sorry, sold out," he said.

We asked for a bottle of their best Bulgarian wine. "That will be from Morocco then," he said, "we re-label it and export it to England."

And so it went on. From the beach strewn with broken ashtray glass and the thousands of sellers on the beach (NO, I DON'T WANT TO BUY ANY &^%$@ SHELLS!), to the indoor hotel pools mysteriously full of water and soil.

"When do you sleep?" I asked the hotel manager (cum-night-porter-cum-waiter-cum-illegal moneychanger) as we left. "September," he grinned, "till then the drugs."