Yes, I know that is a testy little title, but it grabbed your attention! But sadly I think it’s deserved. My mother will be horrified at my dropping of the C-bomb, but it is indeed a word laced with intent, sometimes these things ought be said. I don’t think ALL young travellers are cunts, just an alarming number of them. I should preface the following bundle of words, sentences and thoughts by saying I try to stay away from generalising in a real sense. I occasionally do for effect, or when noting observed tendencies within a group or another, but it is always done with the understanding that really, everyone is their own person and has their own ideas governing their conduct, that labels don’t really apply. Plus I am a massive hypocrite, just one with a bit of a brain and perhaps some conscience or humanity, or at least I like to think.

Back to travellers, particularly cunty young ones, I am again not saying it is all. I am saying that through our travels we have met, seen, bumped into or indeed been lumbered in the presence of some who show a marked behavioural deficiency. Those terrible folk who have earned a place amongst these grumbles show one or many of these deficiencies and tend to exemplify the horribleness of which I speak. The number of which is somewhat startling and also may just do what broad strokes do and tar the opinions towards young (Western) folk doing something good. I have met plenty of nice young travellers, I say plenty, a few, like Holly and Ivan in the last piece, or Felipe in the following one, but all too often I see the same shit attitudes.

Enough of explaining my thought process and negating any ideas that I am an ageist, travellist, cuntist prick.

I shall use specific interactions with some of the folk I have had along the way with people (loose terminology) to highlight my points, but by no means think that I will remember all of them and you will have to simply trust my judgement (I apply my judgement liberally, judgemental is a word that may have been bandied at me before, but then again, so has unassuming) that it all too oft seems to be part of the same malaise that affects a certain type of traveller.

First case in point. A young English girl and a young American girl. We were sat on a minibus for 2 or 3 hours, felt like an eternity, by the mid way stop I wanted to gouge out my own brain and murder the two girls, if I was going to hell, it sure as shit wouldn’t be fair to leave these two for other people to suffer, I would be dragging their bitchy souls with me.

It didn’t start well. Thirty seconds in to the ride “English”, as she shall hence be referred to, spies the box labelled Tips for Driver, Thank’s”. She and “Yank”, the American that I call a Yank because she has apparently got, in her own words “a problem with the Yanks”, got to talking about the tip box.

“I’ve got a tip for you, get another fucking job” cackled English

“Oh you tell it like it is girl, fuck off I’m not giving you[driver] a tip!” came the Yank’s response, eyes and face alight at the hilarity of their shittiness.

“Why should I give you a tip you’re shit?”

The statements and questions were obviously said without intent to be heard by the driver, just shitty little wimpy cat-calls from the anonymity of the dividing wall had he indeed caught it.

They then followed it up by mocking the use of an apostrophe in the word “thanks”. I happen to be a fan of grammar, even though in my haste it occasionally abandons me. I have a particular bug bear with the level of comprehension of grammar in people today, my face often twitches when reading the Face-walls of some of my friends or acquaintances. I can understand a typo or a slip in concentration but I frequently see too many mistakes that show a lack of understanding of the words that people are choosing to use. But therein lies the rub. These are more often than not British English mother tongue folk making these errors, many of whom do not appear to appreciate the difference between US and British English. How on earth one has the nut sack to criticise the English of people from another continent, who living in developing nations have managed a comprehensible grasp of a quite complicated and intricate language such as English, I will never understand. What a gaggle of cock-swallowers we must be to think that acceptable. I’m not saying I don’t occasionally laugh at things that end up being a little drole or odd looking, but really these girls spat venom with their words. Worse still, it’s not like us Anglophones who learn French or German, for example. Those languages at least share common threads of influence and an ENTIRE FUCKING ALPHABET. It just stinks of disrespect and fuck-tardery.

On the linguistics point, I was riled a mere few minutes down the line, when talking about Quebec.

Or a girl from Quebec I suppose. Yank mentioned that she had a friend from there and she softened the “Qu” to form the “W” as she pronounced it then went on to have a discussion that it may or may not be pronounced “K-bec” adding that as her friend was from there and she said it must definitely be pronounced with the hard K but who knows. Trying to be helpful I chirped in “it’s both, one is English, the other French” I offered to the party.

“It’s definitely K-bec” exclaimed English in a dismissive tone that boiled my piss.

“Have you been?” asked the Yank

“No but it just is”

I could have coped with this had their yapping not set my piss to bubble point, but it had, still I held my tongue choosing to just think what came next. It’s not her fault that she doesn’t understand that I am fluent in French, or that I have been to Quebec (in fact, Yank thought it was by Vancouver), or that our A-level French assistant was Quebecoise. I just found myself listing in my head the cities and ridiculousness of her logic. Who gives a fuck what the girl from Quebec calls it? When speaking English it remains Anglicised. English speakers should no more say it with a hard K sound than they should say (phonetically) Parree (for Paris), or Raaance (for Reims). The French wouldn’t or shouldn’t say London as opposed to Londres, nor should they drop their heavily accented veriants of Birmingham or Manchester. We don’t say “I’m doing a bit of travelling this year… I’m going from London to Gotebourg,then Kobenhavn, via München to Den Haag, then on to Napoli” with our best Swedish, then Danish, German, Dutch and Italian accents. Instead we use their names in English. Fucking twats.

Prior to this the bus had been asked by the driver if we would like a coffee stop later. I had said first that I always have time for coffee, which is true. To be fair the rest of the bus hadn’t heard. English piped up with “No, I don’t want that, I’ll veto that for the bus” then she turned to Yank and said “I can’t be fucked with coffee, if we don’t stop we might get on the boat earlier and get the best seats”

Yet again I refrained from attempting to argue, there is a way things seem to be done here, they always involve lots of waiting and you never get anywhere exactly before whoever is in charge wants you to be there.

Then conversation took a turn for the worse, if it could, it started out with Yank saying how she couldn’t wait to get back home, to spend quality time with her puppy. The two gush over how cute the dog is and that it really is like having a baby. Only as far as I’m aware people don’t tend to abandon their young children for months at a time (if we are talking doggy age here it’s years!) to swan off and get pissed in warmer climbs trying to suck and fuck as many different nationality boys as one drunkenly can (sorry, an assumption was made there, but I’ll stick with it, I mentioned judgemental, right?). Not only that but it was left with first her brother, then her flatmate. Turns out she doesn’t even like the flatmate. She is even bitching about the fact that the bitch should just pay her her rent “already” and not say “but I was looking after your dog”. Now although I a gree that the rent should perhaps not be abandoned like that poor puppy, but I would have though it would be smart to have come to an agreement on this, before either assuming that she will look after it for free or just agreeing on a separate rate for the dog care. From what I could hear, the former seemed to be what had taken place which again is a solid sign of a prick, but the malice of which she spoke about this girl. Fat, lazy, disgusting and unhealthy, a bitch (black pots and kettles did spring to mind at this point). Never does anything, never seen real fruit and veg. They then proceed to destroy her processed food dietary habits, again something that I have no problem with in theory, I prefer real food myself on the whole. Only problem is in the very same breath they got to talking about the food here being great. How they absolutely love the packaged tuna toasties from 7-eleven. English says she loves them so much that she eats one daily without fail, has 2 most days and even has them 3 times a day sometimes. Oh the natural goodness.

Then came flood defences. Yank was from Mississippi. Her house built on a flood plain, apparently parts of New Orleans city are still neck deep in water, she was there to party in Spring Break or something. Strange that I didn’t see that when I went on Halloween. English chirped in “We have places in England that are like that. Not as bad but, I don’t know why they don’t just fix it, divert the river or something, put something in place.” I really didn’t want to get involved but I thought it my duty to at least give them some semblance of a rational thought.

“It isn’t exactly that simple you know, these measure have other effects and it’s a bit more complicated”

“No they can do something, of course they can if they just do something in a five year plan, it’s easy, they can fix it in 5 years.”

What the actual fuck did I just hear? It was that same fucking tone of dismissal that got my piss boiling earlier. No actual thought to her statement. Just a statement of hopeful opinion, marketed and expressed as fact, in a tone that hurt my brain and heart in equal measure. I wasn’t going to quiz her on this for fear of murder, but I got the impression she didn’t realise that you can’t just divert the flow around shops and houses. Overflow will affect other peoples land that it wouldn’t have before, perhaps a farmer for example. What says that he should have his livelihood ruined because someone chose to build in a stupid spot? Oblivious that the anti flood measures will likely affect the ecosystems of the river. Or that the altering the river at one point has huge connotations for the entire river system all the way down stream. I felt like breaking the girl’s nose. But that would have been rude. She was already fuck ugly (sorry, I’m being catty aren’t I…I just can’t help it). When we changed bus to pickup in Laos, I went to get some local currency. There was a sign saying ATM 200 metres down the road, so, given the ATM at the border hadn’t worked, I asked if I had time to the travel organisers. They said yes, so off I went. Apparently, the second I left Yank started bitching “Who goes to another country without cash?”

“I’m not going to miss my boat because he’s an idiot”

“Can we go without him?”

“Someone even said she tried to call a vote. I got back and we loaded in the pickup. She had opted for the back and not the cab. As the heavens opened I felt avenged.

I can’t be bothered with the specifics of the conversation any further and I am sure you are tired with my complaining about these two lowly horrors, but I attest that the whole thing was littered with that thing that often comes with new university graduates. Their ability to recite stuff they have been told, without actually having a grain of comprehension on the matter. The absurd position of within one sentence supposing something to be the case at the start, that by the end of the sentence is clear pointed fact. The mind boggles every time I hear it. It is not just these two I have heard talking like this either, again not all young university graduates are like this. I certainly can’t claim to know them all and I can’t even claim that most are, just that I have encountered exactly too many.

Turns out that these vans are a prime place to find these kinds of cocksausages.

A few days prior we had been on the bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai. An American chap got on with his partner. They had been travelling for some time. At a food stop he listed off an impressive tally of countries in which he or they had spent a good amount of time. But Holy Jesus, the whole way there he had talked about people as groups with such disdain. The fucking Chinese buying everything and ruining it. The fucking rude Australians. The dirty Asians. When I challenged him, that it isn’t really fair to colour everybody with such broad strokes, no but it’s a short cut.

He spoke of how the service in Australia wasn’t up to his standard as he was paying money, it should be what he wants. Another piss boiler of a statement. I often got that attitude during my many years in service, and more often than not it was an attitude from Americans. As much as you think that is a generalisation, you may be correct, but it is also an observed one that comes from a systematically very different approach to their consumerism and their service industry. Mostly I would tell them to fuck off.

This one had got on the bus and said “We all going over the border and getting the slow boat” when I told him that was our eventual plan, but I don’t think the slow boat works from Chiang Rai, he was flummoxed. Worse still another young traveller decided she would jump in and not only express herself, but elevate herself above the rest.

“No, we have chosen a different experience”

Who the fuck says that? What a ridiculously loaded statement! I’m paraphrasing here but all I heard was “No, we aren’t your usual tourists who do the usual tourist thing, we are doing this our own way…but really, the bus is cheaper”. I get it OK, nobody wants to be as mundane as everybody else. In saying that I am not like these whingy and superior folk I may come across as whingy and superior, but to be honest, you’d be right in your assumption. The thing is, I know that I am a tourist, I know that I am a grumpy fuck that doesn’t want to be bothered by 20 year olds being dicks. I know that what I am doing is not breaking any moulds. I know that I am not going to appreciate anything but tourist Thailand or wherever else because that is what is accessible to us.

I try to appreciate the differences and the things that I see are unusual to me, and I try not to assume that because something is one way at home it doesn’t mean it should be that way here. But I am flawed. I fall in to that trap the same as everyone else, I don’t like the amount of litter I see here, but you can see plain as day there is a very different societal approach to that here and also a waste system to match.

There was one guy on the slowboat from the Laos/Thai border who was undoubtedly the king of the bullshitters. Another American, sorry, it’s a true thing. I first became aware of his wankiness as he was chatting to some Canadian folk across the way. Most of the young fucks were up the front getting pissed up, at 10 am. These three were sat discussing stuff but BK (Bullshit King) was harping on about how he has the perfect financial system, that he just needs to put x amount of his monies into y investment and he is set. Infallible. He talks of how the finance people have it all wrong. How he knows better and its down to his own foolproof system. I would like to see him attempt that with my former employer, a multi-billionaire businessman with more than a little business savvy about him. Little BK would have shat his little BK pants at the destruction wrought upon him. He then went on to talk about his studies. How he aced all his classes. That his marks were amazing, he claimed to have genuinely slept for some of them, even though he simultaneously claimed he was sat at the front and always quizzing the lecturers which is why he was so good, but back to the sleeping, he claimed he had learned them while asleep. I mentioned to Conny that that is called by osmosis, he probably would have known that if he was so bright. The worse was yet to come, after masses of shit talk where yet again assumptions were claimed as fact or opinions as truths or just flat out inaccuracies as accurate, it was delivered with such smug “surety”(thanks Donald) to be convincing, at least to the Canucks. To be fair, they were a bit wet behind the ears. Daddy was paying the trip, more college fresh folk “same same but different” as they say over here, at no point did they question this guys bullshittery. His scifi novel epic trilogy in the works, that he hasn’t written any of. But then…this…Moon Base.

This fuckstart has decided he wants a moonbase. Although it won’t be governed by laws of any other nations, and they won’t be beholden to any corporations. Note at this point it had gone from wouldn’t be to won’t be. No hypothetical here. He marvels them with his “credit system” instead of money, straight from every scifi film ever, but the Canucks marvel at his originality. The credits will be earned as to the societal importance of ones role. Strangely he uses a cleaner as his example of what is a low value job, “definitely not worth extra credit unless she is a very inspiring cleaner who gets others cleaning real well”. Personally I think cleaners would be quite important. But then he says we will only have the right people, we won’t accept anyone with any prejudices of any kind. Skin colour, gender, sexuality all of these things. They will be deselected from the gene pool before they get there, so there won’t be any of these kinds of problems. The thinkers, the architects, engineers. They will get the best, who will work for those extra credits because, you know, man need incentive and this is their incentive. It will be a completely new and innovative structure to an economy. Nobody would have any power over us. We’d have masses of missiles and we would only use them when attacked.

My mind was raging. Why oh why does this guy think he is owed his Moon base. How does he intend to stake a claim. How the fuck is he in space in the first place without being beholden to corporations? Is someone going to get him there and fund his building of a base, for nothing? Maybe his flawless investment scheme will pay for it. How does that compute with his “Humans need to be incentivised”? Who the fuck is going to let him colonise the Moon and go “oh crumbs, he beat us there, it’s his now”? The guy is straight up delusional. I wanted to destroy him but politeness just meant I quietly raged under my breath at Conny. I swear the last thing I heard him say was “I do hope I get my Moon Base, I think I should run it, I’ll be good at it, I got all these ideas…”

I am hearing everywhere people talk of Thailand as this magical place, lovely people, great food and very cheap with beautiful scenery. Which indeed it is. But is it the goal for the world’s metropolae to replicate what’s here? Fuck no. It is still a third world country. It is flawed, it is something to experience and savour, but it won’t shape my life in any inextricable way. More importantly, the majority of these young traveller types are intent on “experiencing” Asia, but if you hear their tales, they all involve getting off their faces in tourist bars, or on boats, or in hostels. This talk of learning culture and broadening horizons is pure bullshit fantasy. I wish they would call it what it is. They are here because they heard it was cool, and they could tell their mates how sophisticated they are. They will have their ridiculous Asian elephant print MC hammer trousers to complete it. What the fuck is with those by the way? The young folk lap them up. “Oh but they are traditional and sooooooooo comfortable”

Erm no. They aren’t. Open your fuckeyes fuckwit. The only people wearing them are fuckwits like yourself (admittedly one German guy “got” the irony). I should state here that this is a problem for westerners of all ages in these parts. The elephant pant is as much an issue for the middle aged traveller as it is the young cunt, but as a middle aged person one generally can be forgiven such sins due to deteriorating eyesight, an innate desire to feel young once more and copy the young folk, or indeed dimensia’s early onset. I am quite sure that tis could soon become an “early indicator” or a warning sign for the onset of Alzheimer’s and the like.

I suppose the biggest thing that fucks me off is that the young cunts come to a place seemingly to open ones mind. But all I can see is that they are closed further. Little to no appreciation of anything other than cheap piss to throw down their gullets and cheap rooms to sleep in. Worse still they expect this all to be done to western standards and when it isn’t they feel that they are entitled to be rude and disrespectful to people, the places, the traditions the ideas that exist in the places that these folk have come to.

I think I have at this point come to the end of what is an acceptable amount of rant, I surely have more, but alas I feel it is time to abate.

I must add once more that I am by no means perfect and everybody does everything for different reasons. I understand this and that is just fine by me. Perhaps I am indeed just old, but I just wish I saw a little more decency and respect.