1. Brochures depicting idyllic scenes of white sand, hammocks and turquoise waters, when the reality is a scene from raiders of the lost ark. Set in Beirut.
2. Agents who insist on taking payment in full in January when you aren't due to depart until August. Next year.
3. Getting up at the crack of dawn for a charter flight which leaves from an airport somewhere in the shires. Greasy airport cooked breakfasts that you "treat" yourself to.
4. Boarding the aircraft to find you are seated next to a group of 18 30s teenagers on a stag weekend merrily tucking into a bottle of vodka despite the ungodly hour. Vomit down your back.
5. Purchasing an over priced rubber snack from someone orange posing as an undercover salesperson for a scratch card company.
6. Meeting your "rep" at the destination airport, only to find she is also the rep for all flights arriving from the UK that day, all due in several hours after your own. Realising you have no currency to buy a coffee while you wait.
7. Boarding a coach along with half of Essex, to be talked at for the duration of the journey by said rep about overpriced undersubscribed excursions you can book via the same company.
8. Taking a de tour via every hotel in the area before reaching your own, thereby adding 4 hours to the "transfer" time.
9. Reaching your own hotel to find there was a reason it was left until last. Wishing you could have been dropped at the previous hotel.
10. All inclusive holidays that only actually include cheap gin served by odorous, snaggle toothed waiters and a self service salad bar hosting hard boiled eggs posing as bullets.
11. Sunburn. Gastroenteritis. Ear infections. Insect bites.
12. Paying for your "holiday" twice when the tour company goes bust leaving you stranded in Turkey with an ever mounting hotel bill.
© 2011 Wilma Kay
