I Need Another Vacation

[Aside: Surviving Myself put on a writing contest, which I entered yesterday. Check it out here - he announces the winner tomorrow. The criteria was that it was supposed to be humorous and start with the sentence "He was confused." Great idea - check it out!]

I hate traveling to places that I know nothing about. I watch the Amazing Race, I know what those people look like. I don't want to be one of them. "Why isn't anyone speaking English??" Well you fucktard, you are in China. There's your first clue.

Anyway, to prevent this from happening, I always like to do a bit of research. I went to Cuba with ten girls, so before we left I read up on the history of the last one hundred years. Che Guevera? Check. Fidel Castro and his little band of governement-over-throwing militants hiding out in the mountain ranges? Check. Cuban Trade Embargo? Check. I was an expert on the topic (Side note: did you know that JFK was going to end the embargo, but the week before he was to sit down with Castro, he was shot? Um...Conspiracy?)

What else I learnt was to bring shampoo, soap, toys, crayons, clothes you never wear, spices, first aid supplies, cream, toothpaste, gum etc. They have none of this stuff, or what they have is really poor quality. We left gifts on the pillows in the morning and in return we got little animals shaped out of our towels.

The first night we were there, we all decided to go party in Veradero. At one peso per beer how could you go wrong? Well in this outdoor/indoor bar - walls but no roof? Check. Bathrooms but no toilets? Check. Trees growing out of the dance floor? Check. We all drank copious amounts of alcohol and by the time we decided to leave, we were all stumbly, hooker-drunk losers. I grabbed one of the girls and we headed back to the resort.

In the condition I was in, I never should have tried to speak to the cab driver in Spanish but I did. I was trying to say "¡Es tan oscuro aquí! La noche es tan negra" (It's so dark here! The night is so black) because it is literally BLACK out. You can't see ten feet in front of you. I ended up saying something along the lines of: "¡La noche es tan oscura como un asno del negro!". I still go red thinking about it.

Not sure where I came up with that, but I didn't realize what I'd said until I told my dad about the cab driver giving me a very strange look. After I told him the sentence, he laughed for about five minutes before letting me in on what it meant. The night is as dark as a black man's ass. Nice one Alice. Way to not be an ignorant tourist.