So you want to know what my favorite place is?

"What was your favorite place?"

How's that for an answer?

I get this question all the time and it irritates me like a knitting needle stuck in my ear. Sometimes I think you ask it just to annoy me – but you’d have to be too devious for that, so I’ll go with the more reasonable assumption: that you’re opening your mouth only to ask the most predictable question because you don’t have anything to say, really. It’s a stupid question. I’ve been to 26 countries during my year-long trip; there wasn’t a lot that they had in common except that I had to eat, shit and sleep wherever I went, and the other tourists annoyed me equally everywhere… but I hardly think that’s a solid basis for a top-ten rating.

I don’t ask you if you like steak more than ice cream. Or whether Scarlett Johansson is hotter than Angelina Jolie. Or whether you prefer beer or coffee. Those, along with the one you keep asking me are stupid questions and do not deserve to be answered. Whatever the answer may be it doesn’t communicate any relevant information and is not going to advance the conversation in any way. It’s just meaningless chatting for the sake of it.

There’s a gazillion of reasonable questions you could ask, that may lead to a funny and interesting conversation. Let me help you a bit:

• Where did you have the toughest communication experience?
• Where did you spend the most money?
• Where did you have the craziest binge-drinking night?
• Where was the best diving?
• Where did you smoke the most dope?
• Did you get laid anywhere?
• Did you have to go to the hospital anywhere?
• Did you ever get scammed by a con artist and fell for it?
• Did you get robbed anywhere?
• Did you get into a bar fight anywhere?
• Did you steal from anyone?
• Did you run naked out in the street anywhere?
• Where did you have the worst diarrhea?
• Where did you make the best friends?
• Where did you have the worst hotel room?
• What was your weirdest experience?
• Were you ever afraid for your life?

But no, you all prefer to ask me the same inane question, one that doesn’t even have a relevant answer to boot. Look, I liked all the countries I visited and I hated some of them at the same time – sometimes for the same reasons. You could figure this out on your own if you paused to think for a second before opening your mouth, but since you’re so narrow and you lack any spark of imagination you keep asking me what my favorite place was as if I were 16 and I had to have a favorite movie, a favorite band or a best friend.

I think before I speak!

I should throw the nearest wireless mouse at you when I hear that question, but I’m medicated well enough so I usually restrain myself. Instead, if I suspect that the person I’m talking to has a bit of a brain left and would be able to see the error of their ways with a bit of help or if I believe that the question was just a momentary lapse into stupidity on the part of an otherwise clever individual (don’t we all?) I’ll say that the countries I liked fall into two distinct categories: those that you fall in love with at first sight, as soon as you get off the plane - like South Africa or Greece or Spain - and those that have to grow on you, like India, Laos and Bolivia. Aside of this coarse classification each country strikes you by one or more dominant attributes that make it unique: it can be the picture-perfect beauty of nature, the ethereal strangeness of the landscape, the good time you had with people you met, the rotting garbage lying in the open, the permanent harassment you were subjected to, the beautiful wild animals, the breathtaking diving on the coral reef, the raging night-life, the hot topless girls on the beach, the soaring snow-capped mountains or the delicious exotic food. You may prefer one or the other in certain situations but no single one tops the rest; I’d have to just pick one out of my ass. Not that you would care. You want clichés? Here’s one for you: stop asking me to compare apples with pears!

Even if I had a favorite country… how would it advance your knowledge of the world if I told you anyway? Stop asking me dumb questions just to be nice. If you don’t have anything to say, just shut up. Man, I hate people.

You want a list? I got one! You order it, stop asking me.

• I loved Mexico for the soaring Mayan pyramids lost in the jungle and its cheap tacos. And because it was the first destination on our trip
• Going to Belize because going there was a childhood dream come true
• I loved Guatemala for Antigua’s beautiful ruined convents and Tikal’s army of howler monkeys who scared me to death at 4 in the morning
• I loved Honduras because the bunch of guitar-playing hippie divers I met on Roatan reminded me of another time in my life
• I loved Ecuador because that’s where my Spanish unlocked its brakes. And because I met Michael and Mor in the Galapagos
• I loved Peru for the crushing dignity of its Inca fortresses and for giving me enough diarrhea to fill a bath tub
• I loved Bolivia because it’s the underdog of South America and the Altiplano made me feel like I was on the moon
• Argentina filled my belly with the greatest steak on the planet and gave me wireless internet in every coffee shop
• South Africa had the bluest skies I’ve ever seen
• In Namibia I floundered to the on top of a giant red sand dune at sunrise and saw lions having sex
• In Botswana I followed fresh animal tracks through the savanna and saw a herd of elephants coming out of the fog
• Zambia made me famous for fifteen minutes and helped me earn $1000 in royalties
• In Malawi I kept looking for the other shore of the lake while I sipped cold beer
• Tanzania showed me a place that redeemed all ugliness in the world
• Kenya… well, I didn’t really visit Kenya but it still had the coolest song in the world
• Egypt crushed me under millennia of history and showed me that sometimes locals just want to talk to tourists without demanding money
• In Greece I realized that I could drink tap water again but I turned into a wino instead
• Italy lead me back to Rome, and for a day I was an all-powerful pasta-eating emperor. Maybe Caligula.
• Spain had scores of delicious tapas and smoky crowded bars and Gaudi and pretty girls everywhere and Robert and Eva
• Romania is still where I return when I want to remember the smell of hay and fresh snow and roasted pig-ears
• I almost had my fingers amputated by frostbite for taking my hands out of my mittens to take pictures in front of the Hungarian parliament
• In Turkey I shed a tear for the defunct Constantinople and then gorged myself with pide and baklava in Istanbul
• India overwhelmed me with unusual sensations, crushed me with its mass of humanity and got me some peace of mind, if only just for a short time...
• Thailand explained to me what the song “One Night in Bangkok” was all about
• I loved Cambodia because you cannot believe that a place like Angkor Wat really exists until you see it
• In Laos I wanted to become a bearded, balding, homeless dope-head just to forget that I had to return home and look for a job...

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An open-ended list of things that pissed me off around the world (and still do)

I was going to call this one “Ten things that pissed me off around the world” but once I began to think about all the times I was annoyed, pissed off or wished I had a shotgun to blast someone out of their idiotic useless existence during the course of this trip I couldn’t stop counting and soon I used all the fingers of my two hands and took my socks off so I can start counting using my toes. Hence the current title.

• 1. White people waiting for a table in front of a restaurant in Cuzco.

  Why the hell would you want to stay in line for lunch with twenty other idiots wearing The North Face jackets at a place that has burgers, roast-beef sandwiches and steak fries at 3400 meters altitude in Peru? Because you’re too much of a coward to try to experience any of the local food in a city that has a million restaurants and because it looks very much like any joint you would find in your pathetic town back home, so it makes you feel safe. If you miss your own corner deli and their stinky pastrami so much, stay home.
  
  

• 2. Public service employees begging for a handout like they deserve it.

  This asshole day-guard walks up to me in the museum of Coptic Christian history in Cairo and asks me “You Christian?” “Yes” (I’m not but in Egypt you’re either Muslim or Christian, there’s no such thing as an atheist) “Me too, see?” (Shows me a cross. Grins. As if now we’re buddies) “I have 10 children. Give me money.” He’s following me through the building so I give him a 1-pound note to shake him off. He looks at me like I did him wrong “Only 1 pound? More! 10 children!” and stretches his hand again. Piss off. I took the pound note back and left him there. Asshole. If you really have 10 children and can’t care for them you should have gotten a vasectomy.
  
  

• 3. Listening to the same idiotic questions from other tourists you meet.

  Where did you come from? Where are you going next? Did you like X? Are you visiting Z? Shut up. It’s all the same. I didn’t talk to you, so stop talking to me because it’s obvious you don’t have anything interesting to say. Do something useful and leave me alone.
  
  

• 4. Dishonest hotel managers.

  So this place is a shithole and you still want me to pay in advance for four nights? And you told me 40 Euros on the phone and now it’s 50? How the hell did you get into Lonely Planet anyway? Their editors must be on crack.
  
  

• 5. Inane “must see” places that are just boring pieces of junk.

  If the top attraction in the city is the public library that exhibits some gorgeous murals from a celebrated local artist, just spare yourself the effort and time and don’t go there. Lonely Planet is on crack.
  
  

• 6. Imbeciles who show up early for everything.

  On our 40-day African safari our guide would announce every evening the schedule for the next day: “tomorrow morning, the wake up call is at 6:30, breakfast at 7, we leave at 7:45″. Each morning, as I woke up at 6:30, the other white people had already packed their tents. By 7, they were done with breakfast and were idling around casting passive-aggressive looks of disapproval at me. Bite me! I’m not going to bend to peer-pressure, I need my beauty sleep.
  
  

• 7. Yes, we have hot water. Yes we leave at 10am.

  Everyone lies. You’re just a big fat wallet on legs. Get used with it or bring a shotgun.
  
  

• 8. Rickshaw drivers in Asia.

  When you take a ride to town coming from the station with your backpack the driver always knows a great hotel, just around the corner – usually a shithole that gives them commission for every clueless guy they drop at their door. Those assholes all have an incurable ear disease – they can’t hear the word “no”. Maybe a jackhammer would help.
  
  

• 9. White people trying too hard to embrace local traditions.

  During the water festival in Chiang Mai everyone gets wet and everyone throws water about and nobody gets mad. But when you see a group made exclusively of tourists armed with buckets and water pistols, dousing every open-back taxi truck that passes - a day after the festival has officially ended - showing them the finger is not only ok, it becomes mandatory.
  
  

• 10. Paying 2 Euros for plain coffee.

  Seriously. Europeans are crazy. They should all grow a pair and boycott Starbucks but I’m afraid it’s too late, they’re hooked.
  
  

• 11. Local travel agencies that charge a heavy markup for stuff that you can get for less around the corner.

  And the morons who do not do their homework and keep paying, perpetuating the scams.
  
  

• 12. Fat balding Anglo sex-tourists trying to make dinner conversation with Thai prostitutes who don’t give a shit.

  You know who you are. And I stared and snickered at every single one of you just to make you feel even more self-conscious, defeated and worthless than you are.
  
  

• 13. Paying too much for poor service because you have no choice

  Getting on the island… cheap. Getting off the island… not so cheap. What are you going to do? Ask to speak with the manager?
  
  

• 14. Douchebags who rave about how awesome and spiritual India is.

  All you little shits who act elated, telling everyone who’s within earshot that “India is, like, soooo awesome, so spiritual, I wish I never had to leave, this is the best place ever, man! You don’t understand!” like you are the first person in the universe to ever get laid - go live in the slums on a less than a dollar a day like 90% of India’s population, without bottled water, internet and your stupid iPod, go sell paan or drive a rickshaw for a living and then come and proclaim your epiphany to the world. You are an idiot and nobody cares about your pseudo-intellectual bullshit and your condescending “enlightened” attitude.
  
  

• 15. Retarded teenagers checking their Facebook “walls”.

  You absolutely have to stay in touch or else your friends will stop loving you. And make sure you use all caps and poor grammar, it makes you look smart. “I’M IN THAILND LOL AND ITS SO KEWL WE HAD DA BEST PARTY YOUR NOT GOING TO BELIEV WHN U C THE PICTRES!!!!1” Seriously… better free that bandwidth for someone who has more important things to do, like uploading an angry blog that nobody reads!
  
  

• 16. Horrible European tippers.

  I don’t tip more than the norm (whose norm? mine!) because I think that some professions are already making lots of undeserved money. Take bartenders, for example: one dollar a drink? Are you kidding me!? But even I wanted to take a shotgun at the Euro-dipshits who dropped only 10 dollars in the tipping pot for the army of porters who, for four days in a row, had set up our tents, cooked our meals and transported all the heavy equipment on their backs running barefoot at lightning speed while we were trudging and sweating our way on the Inca trail for the sake of our crusty pathetic egos. Israelis, Aussies and Kiwis included at a discount.
  
  

• 17. Losers who visit the Coliseum and have no idea where they are.

  Who is this guy Octavian Augustus? Look, that statue is naked! (chuckle) Who built all these ruins? Was it the Romans? What's the capital of Rome? Not that anyone cares, but these people make us look like a nation of uncultured idiots and help perpetuate the stereotype that all Americans are stupid and they only know how to make war on other countries. Amen!
  
  

• 18. Jackasses on group tours, who show too much skin in public in Muslim countries.

  Nobody, anywhere, needs to see your lard bulging under your belly-shirt. If you happen to be hot you’ll get more attention than you want for that deep cleavage and the short skirt. Maybe some of those pious, innocent men will get into accidents turning their heads because of you. The traffic will be jammed for hours and I’ll be stuck in a cab without air conditioning, listening to bad music, until they dig the bodies out and remove the rubble. All because you showed cleavage. You monster!
  
  

• 19. Everyone else.

  Stay home. I hate people.
  
  

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