Death of the T-Shirt Trade

I have mixed views about tourism. It has undoubtedly fucked up the world big time and yet I would be hypocrite if, as a seasoned traveller, I denied but I am not in any way to blame.

On my recent trip around the Pacific, I have seen first-hand the way that tourism can completely ruin some of the most beautiful and exotic locations. But the damage appears to me not just be due to the almost total economic dependence on tourism, but - especiallly in the post credit crunch era - it is due to what happens when the tourists stopped coming.

Eventually it was bound to happen anyway as over commercialism took away the very features that attracted the visitors in the first place. But when you combine that with worldwide austerity, the process is disastrously accelerated.

Bora Bora conjures up the immediate image of the perfect romantic location. Like most of Polynesia, it has become hugely dependent on tourists. When they stop coming, the economic decline is immediate - hotels close, unemployment rises rapidly, shops have no customers.

The double whammy is of course that there are no other local industries to take the place of tourism because all has all been set aside in pursuit of the quick and easy buck.

If these places are to survive then, ironically, they need to return to the very images of life in paradise that they are trying to peddle, otherwise they have no future.

And, if I'm honest, it is largely their own fault...

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93 Men in a Boat (7) : The Front Seaters

Do you remember the good old days when you could never get a sun bed because the Germans had covered them all with towels?

Well, this practice is alive and well - only these days it's not Germans or sun beds we need to worry about!

There's always one, and of course this trip was no exception. So in my final piece on stereotypical tourists, I shall concentrate on the Front Seater.

In the interests of fairness, we always disembarked by deck number and these were rotated so everybody got a fair shake. But this system does not, of course, apply to the front seater. No matter who was called first, he was always at the front of the queue.

Whenever there was a show ashore, he was always there in the middle of the front row, standing up in front of your camera whenever you tried to take a photo so he could get his first.

Every meal time, there he was with his face pressed to the door waiting for dinner to be called so he could be the first in the dining room and get his favourite table.

Even when we flew home, there he was first on the plane and, of course, first off the other end.

But his finest hour came whenever there was a presentation in the ship's lounge. Then he would send his wife down half an hour before the talk to save him his centre front row seat.

And she was bloody daft enough to do it - what a mug!...

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