Best country to go on holiday to: the first debate; what's missing?

[San Bernardhinault]

I'll write a little in defence of St Vincent here. I didn't vote for it because Rwanda has fascinating mountains and gorillas, Portugal is great and ad hoc's posts have sold me on Romania.

But St Vincent's got it's own recently active volcano that's got stunning views, it's super friendly, the main island doesn't have golden sand beaches - it's volcanic black sand - which keeps most of the worst of the cruise-line tourists away. The Arnos Vale cricket stadium is one I most want to go to, with it's views south.

And then you have the Grenadines for all your tiny island-hopping needs. These might be a bit flush with millionaire arseholes on yachts, but I kind of like the idea of popping from small island to small island for a short while.

[Sporting]

Results:

Group O:


Portugal 13
Russian Federation 12
Romania 9
Samoa 4
Saint Lucia 3
Rwanda 3
San Marino 2
Saint Kitts and Nevis 1
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1
Qatar 0

Group P:

Slovenia 11
Seychelles 8
Slovakia 8
Senegal 6
Serbia 6
Singapore 4
Sierra Leone 3
Sao Tome and Principe 2
Saudi Arabia 0

(Seychelles qualify because I picked Slovakia)

[Sporting]

Group Q:

Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland/Eswatini
Sweden




Group R:

Switzerland
Syrian Arab Republic
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tibet
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga

[Nefertiti2]

When this poll is completed we can start a version of OTF Love Island.

We vote which 4 members get to spend a week together in the Transylvanian Love Cabin.

[Sporting]

When this poll is completed we can start a version of OTF Love Island.

We vote which 4 members get to spend a week together in the Transylvanian Love Cabin.

treibeis is used to huts so must be a candidate.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Group Q

Two easy ones here, South Africa and Sri Lanka. I want to go up to one of those national parks to see the big five, then go and see Cape Town and run into G-Man. Sri Lanka I've always wanted to visit. Of the others, I haven't really seen enough of Spain - only been to Barcelona and the islands. We were meant to be on a cruise in September that would have taken us to Valencia, and I want to go and see southern (Moorish) Spain.

Group R

Thailand straight away, I want to find out for myself if it's as tawdry as everyone says. Tonga as well, on my Pacific cruise. Switzerland I've seen a bit of, and I have a feeling Tibet will be full of gap year trustafarian wankers who think they're being spiritual. So just because I think Tanzania. Zanzibar's one of those places you read stories about in kids pirate stories.

[Nefertiti2]

There is only one room really. It's all open plan. That window at the top is just the one window in the area where there are beds. (when we tell people it sleeps 4 it would have to be a family of 4 or 4 adults who are pretty close)

An ad hoc arrangement in fact

[Balderdasha]

Group Q.

South Africa. Daughter regularly asks to go on holiday here. Mostly because she like the gojetters episode about Table Mountain, but also for the nature possibilities. I'd like to indulge her one day.

Sudan / South Sudan. A friend from school was originally from South Sudan (just Sudan at the time). Her father was a journalist who had fled for his life after criticising the government. She had a passport which specifically stated she was not allowed to enter Sudan. Simply on the basis of how lovely she and her family were I'd be curious to visit, but I feel the may not be the safest destinations. Another university friend was posted to South Sudan with her DifD job. She and her partner were supposed to stay there for three years but their luggage hadn't even arrived before there was some sort of parliamentary crisis and they were evacuated.

Spain. Had some fantastic times here. Hitchhiking on the way from Cambridge to Morocco was fascinating and included a night sleeping at a truck stop in the Pyrenees. Loved travelling around the South sightseeing and eating tapas (Seville, Cordoba, Grenada). I like Madrid and Barcelona. Family holiday in Majorca was lovely. I'd love to hike the Santiago Dr Compostela trail. The year I came out of the mother and baby unit we hired a wonderful warm and friendly nanny to help in the mornings when I was too sedated to get the kids up and ready for school in time. She was from Valencia and we now have an open invitation to visit her family there. Being able to speak a little Spanish (though with a South American accent) makes trips even more rewarding.

Sri Lanka. Despite the previously described street harassment, I had a great trip here in 2006. Enjoyed Colombo, Kandy, travelling on the rickety trains, the tea plantations and Sigiriya. We were due to visit the southern beaches, but I then successfully got a job with the British Council and had to leave early to start it. I'd like to go back and rectify that. Fantastic food, though very spicy and my travel companion couldn't handle spice so we kept having to find tourist caf?s that made spaghetti carbonara for her.

Sweden. Had a great trip to Sweden with a friend age 17. We discovered that our provisional driving licences, which clearly stated our birth dates, were accepted as ID, even for the 25+ entry nightclubs. Enjoyed looking round the palaces and the Astrid Lindgren children's museum, and visiting some of the little islands. Would love to see more of the country.

Tough to pick a top three. Going with my gut for South Africa, Spain and Sri Lanka.

[Balderdasha]

Group R.

Switzerland. First went to Zurich with a sixth form friend whose grandfather lived in the hills nearby and spoke a strange Swiss/German dialect. He was completely incomprehensible when we visited but it was still obvious that he assumed we were a couple (we weren't). Enjoyed pretzels and live music complete with goat horns and yodelling. Went to a great water park and enjoyed the sensation of switching from German to French within the same country. Would like to explore further.

Thailand. I got engaged here and discovered I was pregnant here, both in or near Chiang Mai, so the country will always hold a special place in my heart. We'd started in Bangkok and gone North, choosing mountains, historical sites, Buddhist palaces and elephants over beaches, because we'd had a beach holiday to Barbados earlier in the year. I'd love to show the kids the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep temple where we got engaged, and the Phuping Palace which we saw on the same day. I'd also like to go South and explore there.

Tanzania. Been watching the documentary about Jane Goodall's life and her chimpanzee studies in Gombe. Would love to visit.

Tibet. Visited here in 2007. The centre of Lhasa
and the Potala palace are truly wonders of the world, but the city has a generally down-trodden feel and is peppered with big, imposing, ugly Han Chinese structures that seem designed to dominate. Travelling around the region / country is tricky as the rules change all the time. When I visited, you were in theory only allowed out of Lhasa in a private vehicle with a Han Chinese tour guide driving you. We couldn't afford that, and didn't want to experience the country that way. Instead we discovered that you could buy tickets for the buses if you scrambled over a building site, went three stories up a non-descript building, went through the temple with the blue-painted gods and found the bunk bed dormitory behind it. A smoking man in a string vest who was lying on the bottom bunk did indeed sell us tickets. We had to go to the main square at 4am and board the bus with all the nuns and cover our faces with shawls until we were outside the city. Then it was just a matter of not going too closely to any police that we saw outside Lhasa. We visited more temples, climbed some mountains. The altitude sickness was tough in a few places. I'm not a huge fan of the food, heavy dumplings and yak butter tea. After one hot walk I took my silver rings off because my fingers had swollen and stupidly left them on a table in a communal area of my hostel and they were promptly stolen. Got shot in the bum by kids with BB guns near a temple, but only my pride was wounded.

Togo. I like the sound of "palm-lined beaches and hilltop villages".

Top three, Tanzania, Thailand and Togo.

[Sporting]

We were meant to be on a cruise in September that would have taken us to Valencia

Crulses. Hmm. I've only been on one; I was 15 and we visited Lisbon, Athens, Rhodes, Izmir and Palma de Mallorca. It was...okay. The problem is that we didn't have long enough at each stop to really appreciate them. Sort of for me like the tourism equivalent of a tasting menu. I prefer full dishes. How long would you have been in Valencia?

On the cruise I was on, I really fancied this Lancashire lass (she was 14) but the whole thing came to an end when I drunkenly vomited over her after imbibing too much hot wine in Mallorca. Her father was not best pleased.

[Sporting]

She was from Valencia and we now have an open invitation to visit her family there.

Same here. (No upmarket ad hoc cabin to offer, though.

Grenada

Granada...an understandable typo.

[Balderdasha]

Same here. (No upmarket ad hoc cabin to offer, though.



Granada...an understandable typo.

Thank you. And I think spell check "corrected" me.

[via vicaria]

Group Q

Spain: I really want to visit Granada. I love Moorish style and architecture, so it's an obvious trip. The caminito del rey is also one of those bucket list things. Looks like there's some great hiking to be had in the Picos de Europa as well.

Suriname: I don't think I've picked a south american country yet, and the dutch-speaking one would be pleasingly unusual

Sweden: my favourite of the nordic countries. Had some lovely times in Stockholm, and was planning on a long weekend there again this year, but that's probably a 2021 thing now.

Group R:

Switzerland: even though it's wildly expensive, I've liked the few places I've been in Switzerland, and there's an HR Giger museum I want to go and see one day in Gruyeres.

Thailand

Tibet

[Sporting]

Before I vote, may I indulge myself and no doubt bore the rest of you with a South Sudan (then not independent but to all intents and purposes already a different country) anecdote? No? You're getting it anyway so feel free to skip to the next post.

I went to find Martin Jumi.

[Martin Jumi, a wonderful man who suffered from a drinking problem (he too taught English) had been transferred to Juba after an altercation with the students (he loved insulting people when he was drunk; he didn't know what he was saying, and he was never violent...). Other teachers had changed as well. Jacob - religious, steady, pokerfaced Jacob - had been missing in the Yei area since February, though he was still on the payroll. All of this was perfectly normal in southern Sudan.]


It was a delight to see him. "Hey!" he roared when he saw me. He was still thin, but not as skeletal as before. He was enjoying his life; there were more members of his own tribe in Juba. "I can live my own way and nobody cares what I do."

But there was sadness too. On arrival in Juba he'd found that his family had been "completely dispersed". The rebels had come to where they'd lived and taken everything - clothing, bedding, cooking equipment - everything. "I had to help them as best as I could."

We went to drink tea together. We talked of our times in Maridi. "We used to have a good time there, didn't we?" he said, and he was of course referring to drinking. "Sometimes we do the same here in Juba. But after ten days of each month we're dead - the money's all gone. It's very expensive here."

Despite the problems, Jumi seemed happy and I made plans to visit him again. But it was not to be. Two months later, he contracted jaundice. He had remained in his hut and no-one suspected that anything was wrong. His thin frame had succumbed with tragic speed to the disease. The news shook everyone, though distance made it unreal. As the truth was confirmed, the loss began to filter home. Jumi, who annoyed and infuriated everyone, whose salary had to be hidden in case he spent it all at once on alcohol, who had abnegated his responsibilities at school, who broke many an evening's calm with his drunken rantings, but who could discuss life with the sensibility of a poet, had gone, and everyone would miss him.

Two years before in Maridi we had been robbed on five separate occasions by a young man called Khamis. He had stolen food three times while we were cooking on an outside fire, and twice some dried food from the larder. We had reported it to the police; the headmaster told us we had to defend our property and one teacher offered to lend us a bow and arrow, saying that, "Khamis is looking to commit suicide but wants someone to do it for him"...Eventually, he was cornered in a cupboard in an abandoned house (I was present during the police search) and taken away to the local prison, from where he escaped.

Khamis was the son of the ex-headmaster. The father's name was William Fodo, and he had since been defeated as parliamentary candidate for the Maridi area, losing to a man with more financial clout. I saw him after his defeat, walking slowly up the hill from the river, stick in hand, greeting and greeted by everyone, smiling with an inner sadness.

But how the fallen became mighty again! Because here was William Fodo holding the post of the executive Minister of Administration. I went to visit him in his office. Like Jumi, he'd been a thin man, but now he was robust, even a little chubby; there was a sheen to his face which I'd never seen before. He had acquired some of the habits of the lazy administrator: when he wanted water, which was in a cool water-bucket a pace or two away from his desk, he rang for his secretary, in an ante-room outside, to come and pour it for him. But despite this new-found tendency to delegate even the simplest task, William was as polite and gentlemanly as ever. I was pleased that he had found some success.

He told me about Khamis. After escaping from prison, he'd gone to Juba. Here he'd returned to his old habits, all revolving around crime. One night, in the district of the town known as "Rujjal maa fii" - "No Men" - (a souq intended for women only) Khamis was found murdered, with two nails driven through his neck. The suggestion was that he was found in the act of theft and that a crude, summary punishment had been carried out.

Much travel in southern Sudan was only possible by means of army-organised convoy. Back in Yei again, I had to wait nine days before permission was given. In the meantime, the merchants of Yei had an unwilling temporary population of hundreds forced to buy their wares. It seemed as if half the population of the town was on its way to Maridi or Yambio, Zandeland as it was commonly known. Impatience grew and people ran out of money. Everyone had heard rumours that tomorrow would be the day, no, the day after, no, the army had gone to check the road, we might be here another week. Speculation, half-truth and hope dominated thoughts and conversations, but only a handful ever knew what was really happening.

I nearly missed the convoy when permission was finally given and only caught up with it at the first police checkpoint. The convoy was headed by an armoured car and another army truck. Many of the vehicles were exclusively military and lots of rifle-carrying soldiers, many newly-arrived from northern Sudan, were dispersed among the others. They were going to the army barracks in Maridi. I was on one of these trucks, perched rather precariously on a bar at the back, but happy to be there at all.

Progress was slow. The armoured car and soldiers with handheld minesweepers were often sent on ahead to look for trouble. But he road was clear. Tore, the Ugandan refugee settlement, bore few visible scars except some burnt-out huts, but there'd been some obvious and heavy depopulation, and the atmosphere was glum.

Just after we had passed the village of Rasolo, travelling at about 15 miles an hour, the lorry I was on hit a bump on the road and lurched slightly. The bar over which my legs were carelessly dangling snapped. I had nothing to grip. I tried to clutch the broken metal; the road moved below me; I let go; I hit the gravel and rolled over; and from the lorry came shouts of "Khawadja waga!" - the foreigner's fallen...I tumbled again briefly, and came to a halt.

Mercifully, I was okay, receiving only a few superficial injuries. I can walk! I can walk! I thought to myself as I picked myself up and tottered back in the direction of the lorry, which had stopped. Rather dramatically, I raised a clenched fist to confirm my survival, and then tenderly reboarded the lorry, taking up a safer position nearer the front. From then on, I was some kind of a hero, a tough man...I had experienced a potentially dangerous fall, and survived.

Our arrival in Maridi was also memorable. Deprived of transport from Yei for two weeks, cheering people lined the streets to welcome us. The soldiers waved their rifles and whooped in return. Was it the army itself that the citizens of Maridi were cheering for - a salvation force to protect them from the SPLA? Were they showing their happiness that the road was once again passable? Or was it an excuse for some high-spirited fun? It was hard to say. But I did feel a little disappointed in myself that I had waved along with the soldiers. I felt I had pandered to the worst militaristic instincts, and that I had been wrong to indulge myself in such scenes.

[ad hoc]

Q
Sri Lanka - everything looks amazing. And I want to watch cricket here even more than I want to watch it in the West Indies. And the food....
South Africa - loads to see, great variety, and I have just always wanted to go
Spain - been so many times and have seen most of it I feel, but I have loved every place I've been. Very happy to go back again and again.

R
Tanzania - Loved Zanzibar and Arusha and everywhere else I was, and would really love to go to the Ngorongoro crater
Thailand - lived in Bangkok (no real desire to go back there), but the North and the North East were gorgeous and I could (and did already) spend weeks there. And some of the islands and beach-y places are amazing.
Tibet - I can imagine it;s depressing as well as amazing, but i still want to go

Would also love to visit Tajikistan and Timor Leste, but they sadly miss out in this tough group

[MsD]

Q

Spain - I love Catalunya and the Balearics and have spent many holidays there, should venture further south and west.

Sri Lanka - looks gorgeous and lush and I fancy a yoga retreat there.

South Africa - looks stunning.

R

Tanzania - have been to Kenya, loved it. Would like to get closer to Kilimanjaro.

Tonga - Formerly known as the Friendly Islands. Sold.

Switzerland - cuckoo clocks, lakes and mountains. There’s a hotel that looks like a Bond villain lair I like the look of. In summer, not skiing, thanks.

Top 3: Spain, Sri Lanka, Tonga.

[Sits]

Q
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden

R
Switzerland
Tanzania
Thailand

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Q

Tanzania - have been to Kenya, loved it. Would like to get closer to Kilimanjaro.

This was the view of Kili on my daily walk around Moshi golf club on Thursday:

[MsD]

Fabulous.

I’ve been looking for the Swiss hotel I was talking about. It’s not actually been used in a Bond film, it’s just quite dramatic - an ex was going to take me there and it didn’t happen, but it would be nicer without him anyway.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

treibeis is used to huts so must be a candidate.

Does ad hoc's cabin have a portaloo out the back for him to clean?

[Sporting]

Q



Switzerland - cuckoo clocks

"It is unknown who invented it and where the first one was made. It is thought that much of its development and evolution was made in the Black Forest area in southwestern Germany (state of Baden-Wurttemberg)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo..._cuckoo_clocks

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Is it true that everyone in Switzerland owns a gun they were given doing national service, even though (or maybe because) the closest they got to any war in 200 years was Steve McQueen trying to jump in on his motorbike?

[Sits]

This was the view of Kili on my daily walk around Moshi golf club on Thursday:

That’s marvellous.

[elguapo4]

Is it true that everyone in Switzerland owns a gun they were given doing national service, even though (or maybe because) the closest they got to any war in 200 years was Steve McQueen trying to jump in on his motorbike?

I was told that as well during a coach tour of Switzerland, of course it could be an urban legend.

[ursus arctos]

I will let Moonlight Shadow answer

MsD, are you thinking of the Belvedere on the Furka Pass?


I am afraid that it has closed