Well the CB and I are on the road again. But only just. We’ve had a somewhat chequered history with the travel company organising this tour. In 2020 we tried to spend a month in South America with them, then covid struck and it was adios amigos. Last October 2022 we had a three week trip round Japan and Korea lined up but the Japanese still weren’t on board with the various covid conspiracy theories doing the rounds on twitter. They still thought that mask mandates worked and vaccines prevented catching and passing-on the nasty, spiky little virus. So for longer than most, they retained a reluctance to allow people in without at least the minimum number of jabs. I forget how many that was and frankly, no longer care. So it was sayonara to that one. This trip was originally Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Israel’s been dropped for obvious reasons and I have to admit to a little trepidation regarding the other destinations at this stage as we taxi down the Brisbane Airport runway. This is not how you should feel when heading off on vacation. I used to feel this way occasionally when heading off on work trips. To Iran for example, which is somewhat topical at the moment and somewhere I’ve been five times.
Which brings us somewhat dubiously to The Dry Argument. I haven’t called this series of travel related streams of consciousness that because we don’t expect to get the odd, okay occasional, okay frequent bevvie. Heaven forbid, I’d rather go to Bali. No, the area is dominated by sand and the the regional arguments are legendary. Hence….. Maybe I should have called this The Dry Merciless or something similar after the atrocious events of recent days.
I have experienced the (very) occasional Dry Argument I have to say if you don’t count the Monday to Wednesday AFD’s – that’d be “alcohol free days” to the drunks reading this. The last and longest was 16 days and the circumstances of the Great London Dry of April’23 are outlined in the essay immediately below this one.
The five trips to Iran were dryish…hat tip Australian Embassy. I’m confident that statement won’t cause the sort of diplomatic incident moving a container load of booze out of the embassy yard to various high-fenced homes caused many years back. Besides, it was sometime last century and there’s surely a statute of limitations on such things.
Pakistan could be a bit that way as well but there was always the old “medicinal purposes” argument that used to cover duty-free back in the day and got one of your bottles of scotch through customs. Or you could temporarily swap your passport for a (“Murrie” I think it was called) beer at the hotel. They already either had your passport or a copy of it at the hotel reception, so it depended on how thirsty you were, whether you complied.
The state of Andhra Pradesh in India once mind-bogglingly elected a prohibition supporting government just prior to one of my many visits to their largest steel plant. This, I’m reasonably sure, was coincidental and not because I was going there. Apparently all of the women voted for it. Had we lived there at the time I know of at least one female vote they wouldn’t have got.
The stories I could tell….over a few beers.
Trepidation notwithstanding, we are on our way. We are on an organised tour so there are at least some locals checking things out prior to our arrival. Locals tend to blend in a lot more than us pasty Australians so if the shit hits the fan we may be on our own anyway, like I was most of the time when I travelled for a living. At least back then the company had kidnapping insurance which is a bit after-the-fact, I know, but while you were fearing for your life there was a glimmer of hope that some ex-SAS types were tracking you down. Not sure how much we can rely on prime minister Albo if those circumstances arise in the next few weeks. They’ll probably have to vet our social media first so I’m f….d.
While we’re on the “dry argument” subject, we’re at Melbourne airport and I just bought a beer and a chardy, big ones admittedly – $36. Bloody Nora! It’s almost worth buying a business class seat just to get into the lounge and access the free booze. I’ll max out the credit card before we leave Melbourne at this rate.
This is the third time I’ve attempted to finish this intro but we’ve just passed through Dubai airport and there are things here you just have to talk about. For the uninitiated, it’s the world’s longest shopping mall. Thank God we weren’t in a similar hurry to our dash through Heathrow six months ago (see below) because we had to get from one end of the airport to almost the other. Instead of a stroke I just tweaked a calf – the old-man’s injury. With hours to spare we passed through at the speed of a goat through an anaconda so the step-count was up but the blood pressure was kept manageable.
Five minutes after getting off the Dubai flight from Aus I was mightily pissed off at the 6 and 8 seater golf-type buggies chirping their way in and out of numerous traffic snarls. Half an hour into our treck to the next Emirate (flight or country, take your pick), I understood why they were there.