Tourists, and Other Forms of Entertainment

	As many of you do not know, I have been on vacation.  But enough of
	that.  I know none of you want to hear about my vacation but seeing 
	as how I really don't care what you think I'll tell you all about it.  
	Vacationing is a very popular pastime.  Way up there with weasel hunting 
	on elephant shaped sharks.  When people are on vacation there are
	several things they can do.

	  1. Rest on the beach
	  2. Walk around in funny hats, loud shirts and camera's the size of
		minor third world countries.
	  3. Stay locked in the hotel, live off room service, drink bottled
		spring water which is actually tap water sold in bottles, which as 
		soon a you take the slightest sip of it, and swish it in your mouth 
		you will feel strikingly refreshed and one point three seven 
		seconds later you will be breaking world records in the 12 metre 
		sprint as you try to reach the bathroom on time.  After remaining 	
		in the bathroom for a long time (three months) you will get up and 
		leave the hotel and get as far away from civilization as possible.  
		It is then that your face will expand twenty times its normal size 
		and turn a nice bright shade of red as you try and hold in the 
		second coming of the trots, twenty times more fierce than the first 
		and only found when you are not in running distance of a toilet.  
		Three and two thirds of a second later, mere miliseconds before the 
		big blast, you will be abducted by aliens.
	  4. Go home.

	I vehemently wanted to rest on the beach, taking only short breaks for
	nap-time, but the people I was with, being a bunch of goober-heads,
	decided to go on a tour.  Seeing as I didn't want to be left out, I decided 
	to try and fit in, by A) Wearing a funny hat and B) Refusing to speak any
	language other than Esperanto piglatin with a lisp.  My reasoning is that 
	most tourists only speak English (even if they come from Paraguay) no matter
	where they are on this great planet of ours.  (Which is kind of amazing
	seeing as how as soon as they come home, if they live in New York and
	happen to drive a cab, they seem to forget any form of language they have 
	ever known.)  What these tourists don't realize is that local people in the
	country you are visiting do not speak English.  It is a known fact. Here is
	a typical conversation, from a tourists point of view and a local
	persons point of view.
	
	Tourists Point Of View
	
	Tourist:  Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the central bus
	station.

	Local Person:  Dis Icht Von Big Booger ovv der touristo.
	
	Local Persons Point Of View
	
	Tourist:  Eqsqueze Miii, kin yu taal mi chow chew gchet tzo ze central
	bus station (Literal translation in local language of choice:  I need to
	squat pit chicken flannel republicans on the central bus station.)
	
	Local Person:  This is one big booger of a tourist.
	
	My point being that if the tourist refuses to speak the local language of
	choice (Prussian) he will not be understood, and he might as well be
	speaking Esperanto piglatin with a lisp, and so, I did.
	
	My group of tourists and I got on a tour bus that says in nice big green
	letters this is a tourist bus.  I believe this was meant to give shop
	owners ample time to jack up the price of every useless little souvenir 
	trinket in the useless little trinket souvenir shop.  There are several 
	ways to jack up the price so even a veteran tourist will not realize the 
	prices are even more outrageously overpriced than usual.
	
	They are:

	  1. 	The sticker change.
	
	     	This is done buy simply changing those little price stickers of
		each of the trinkets.  Of course this is very time costly and 
		turnips never grow well when planted to late in the spring.
	
	  2.	The Currency conundrum.
	
	     	(I may or may not have used conundrum improperly, so what, I'm
		using big words so that I sound all sophisticated.)  The way this 
		works is that all prices will be marked in numbers but it will not 
		be marked in which currency the price is.  Then the shop keeper 
		tells tourists the price is not in dollars, but in local currency 
		of choice for local people.
	
	     	This works something like this:
	
	     	Local Person:  How much is this oversized gold plated platinum
			diamond encrustedrubby covered trinket with two year warranty?
	
	     	Shop keeper:  150 million quedjitsasolas (250 billion
			quedjitsasolas to the American penny)
	
	     	Local person:  Wow, you raised your prices from last week.
	
	     	Tourist:  How much for this stick of gum?
	
	     	Shop keeper:  Twenty thousand American dollars please.
	
     		Tourist:  O.K., I'll take two.

	  3. 	The speak in foreign languages trick.  
	
		It just so happens that this happened to me.  I was at a flea market 
		in a foreign language speaking country, a foreign language of which 
		I happened to understand and speak fluently, well I could understand
	 	pretty good at least.  As I was walking through the market a person 
		called out the price of the stuff that he was selling.
	
	     	(Warning!  The following section requires an understanding of
		foreign languages.)
	
	     	(Achtung!  Le following section requit le understanding dune cheval
		qui mange un chat.)
	
	     	Person in market:  le pied de Elvis!  le pied du Elvis Cinquant
			pieces!
	     	(Translation:  The foot of Elvis!  The foot of Elvis, fifty
			dollars)
	
	     	English speaking tourist:  How Much does Elvis' foot cost?

	     	Person in market:  Only one hundred dollars.
	
	     	English speaking tourist:  It looks as though it is not so fresh.
			I'll give you ninety five dollars for it.
	
	     	Person in market:  I tell you what.  Give me Two hundred five
			dollars and I'll give you both feet.
	
	     	English speaking tourist:  You got yourself a deal.
	
	After a tour of every overpriced boutique in business, my touring group
	(pronounced groop) actually went to tour some real overpriced tourist
	attractions in the form of rocks.  "Now if you look at this rock carefully 
	with your eyes crossed a 3D image will magically appear" is the type of 
	thing the tour guide would say as we tried inhaling fumes from every 
	semi-narcotic plant we could find.  Other tourist attractions included, in 
	no particular order, buildings with people still living in them, buildings 
	with no people living in them, the zoo and the bathroom.
	
	Tourist 1:  Look Honey, look at the great view.  Lets take a picture!
	
	Tourist 2 (her name is not really Honey):  That is the bathroom.
	
	Tourist 1:  And Look at the great architecture.  The tiles placed with
		such exact accuracy.  I wonder which empire built it.
	
	This is another problem with tourists.  They Have to take a picture of
	every little thing they see.  "Oh!- My!!  I absolutely must take a picture 
	of that strange green and brown formation," Is something you hear quite 
	often coming from the mouths of tourists.  This is usually followed by the
	reply "That is my toe fungus you dolt."

	Thousands of years ago, when mankind first started to inhabit caves,
	entertainment was scarce, but every day, all the cavemen would gather in
	circles and stare at all of the people wearing those ridiculous looking
	mammoth skin clothes.  A giggle would start, followed eventually by
	uncontrollable laughter.  "Those stupid tourist will wear anything" is the 
	type of thing the average local cavemen would say through his laughter,
	while slapping his Armani suit pantleg.

	Mankind has come a long way since then.  Tourists no longer wear mammoth
	skin clothes to try and fit in with the locals, most probably because they
	have found much more ridiculous things to wear, to try and fit in with the
	locals.  Here in Israel, there is a standard garb that all tourists must
	wear.  In the form of a funny looking hat.  The locals call this garment, 
	in their language of choice (Hebrew), A "KOVAH TEMBEL", which when 
	translated to English, this is really true, means dunce cap.  This of 
	course does not stop the tourists from thinking they are dressing exactly 
	like the locals, that they are fitting in.  To understand we must know what 
	is on the tourists mind at all times.  A tourists brain is thinking 
	something like this.
	
	Tourists brain:  Do di do di do, tum de dum de dum, la de da de da.
	oooooga boooga, ojo-bojo. Broooooooooooosky!
	
	As you can see, the tourists brain is obviously a very complicated
	place, and it is therefore very difficult to understand why he would think 
	that wearing a duce cap would make him fit right in with the locals.  This
	also helps to explain why many tourist feel the need to wear a shirt that
	looks as though someone has just lost their lunch all over it, when 
	visiting warmer places, such as Hawaii and hell.  What this does not explain 
	is how tourists, in their right minds (as opposed to their wrong minds) can
	spend up to 50 billion times the gross national product of their country 
	of origin when on vacation (usually in under fifteen minutes).  A normal
	person, on a normal budget can turn into a dollar spouting spendaholic just 
	by going on vacation.  It happens very quickly, as the case below shows 
	quite clearly.
	
	Person:  Golly gosh, these prices sure are expensive here in my country
		of origin, seeing as I am not a tourist.
	
	Person steps on plane:  gimme gimme gimme, I'll pay anything, argggghhhh,
		ahhhhhhh unghh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Please gimme gimme
	
	Stewardess:  I'm sorry sir, the bathroom door (with that cute little
		occupied/vacant switch) is not for sale at the moment (Thursday; 
		1:15 PM. Year of the Mouse).  Trying to wrench it free will only 
		cause us to skip you when we hand out the complimentary hot towels.
	
	It seems as though this amazing phenomenon will remain a mystery for the
	time being.
	
	After a hard day of touring, the tour group I was with decided, because
	they wanted to relax, to go tour some more, with the occasional stop to 
	light some money on fire.  They decided that the easiest way to do this was 
	to take a taxi.  They forgot, however, to take several things in to account.
	They are,
	
	   * A) The place they wanted to tour was across the street from the
		hotel where they were at the moment.
	
	When the taxi driver was told the destination, he was a good sport and did
	not want to embarrass anybody and so he took us on a ten minute drive and
	charged us accordingly.  When we finally arrived, everyone noticed that we
	were across the street from where we began.  This did not surprise me, 
	what did was that after we were done touring, they insisted on taking the 
	cab back to the hotel.
	
	Alrighty then!