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When dream trips go bad

KIRA VERMOND

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 8:52 AM EST 24/07/08

People invest a great deal - emotionally and financially - in that once-in-a-lifetime vacation. But life has a way of hijacking you even far from home ...Read the full article

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  1. The Human Body Is Amazing from tecumseh, Canada writes: Very moving article.
    You wonder sometimes if life in itself isn't the dream vacation and we just don't realize it until it is perilously close to being lost.
    Good read.
  2. R C from Edmonton, Canada writes: Good article. The first comment is unduly harsh- she did come home, you know.

    As an aside, for phone calls from abroad, use a calling card or Canada Direct. I used a payphone and a credit card from Guatemala on three occasions for fairly brief phone calls home and was charged about $40 each.
  3. Gogh Forit from Canada writes: Pamphleteer: Seriously dude.........grow up!
  4. Darcy McGee from United States writes: Wonderful article Kira. Truly sorry for your loss.
  5. Michael Leblanc from Toronto, Canada writes: I agree with the essence of the first comment.
    - An article about my Mother's death would be just that; I would not incorporate it into some greed-feeding whining lament about affected vacations gone wrong. Anybody I know would fly back immediately if a parent became terminally ill - a few, including myself, have done just that. I think it was in extremely poor taste for the writer to quote dollar figures and long distance charges in the context of her Mother's death. It seemed like she flew back less because she cared, and more because she could not properly enjoy her vacation.
  6. Alex Peterson from Canada writes: Something I wouldn't expect from GM, well written but way too artistic for a news paper.
  7. Audible minority from Canada from from Canada, Canada writes: First poster: Maybe I would not come back home to sob in front of a loved one's bed in a case like that, elbowing along with the balance of the family, whose some members couldn't care less about the dying person before she got sick. Hypocrisy at its best. Most of the time, the person who is dying would prefer to be alone anyway or at least get some room, but they just dare not asking because they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. You're too conformist and judgmental. Dude.
  8. A. Ghast from Canada writes: Kira - very well written. It brought back memories of my father-in-law dying from cancer during our annual summer visit, sort of the opposite problem you faced but not without its similarities. Your point of view vis-a-vis the vacation angle was interesting and relevant, and doesn't deserve the two acerbic, judgemental, self-righteous smear jobs above.
  9. Wandering Willy from Kelowna, Canada writes: I hope your mom lived a full life and died fullfilled. Now for your next trip, leave the kids at home and go visit one of the Club Hedonism in Jamaica.....you will leave with many lasting memories.
  10. Piltdown Man from Canada writes: These days, "once in a lifetime" trips seem like an oddity - basically you can fly anywhere, anytime at a reasonable cost - why wait? Do it now!
  11. M V from Toronto, writes: I agree with G.Dude and Pamphlet - this is amatuer writing by a person who thinks eating BBQ in North Carolina qualifies as exotic.
    As well, there's stretching the truth and then there's claiming your one-year old daughter ordered a Shirley Temple as if she were a new-millenium Sex In The City starlet.

    What's the focus of this article? The title claims to be about dream trips going bad but it seems to be more about the author's guilt, the pleasures of her children and the inconvenience of terminally ill relatives.

    I'd rather visit Baghdad than a Club Med so hopefully I'll never cross paths with a traveller as bland as Kira.
  12. Sam Salmon from Vancouver-by-the-Sea, Canada writes: Very much agree with the previous comments on the shallowness and inexperience of the author.

    Club Med is a bargain basement vacation in a mass market destination-there is nothing 'exotic' about Ixtapa at all-it's a few hour flight from TO to another part of North America that's all.
  13. Darcy McGee from United States writes: People here should RTFA. Kira explains why Club Med was her "dream" vacation and acknowledges that it's not truly a dream anymore: her motivations come from her younger years.

    The article doesn't suggest that Kira's mother fell ill AFTER she left, necessitating a rush home. The article suggests a long, steady illness. One can't put one's own life on 100% hold due to a dying relative. You carry on, you live life, you make plans, you hope for the best, and yet you carry around the weight of the dying relative like a brick in your pocket. A heavy burden.

    You people are just mean, dammit, mean for the sake of being mean.
  14. Ghetto Dude from Istanbul, Turkey writes: Darcy McGee, if this was a backyard discussion among neighbours nobody would be mean but once you are a columnist in G&M, standards must apply. A Club Med setting cannot be tolerated here and neither Kira nor G&M should have expected to get away with this. After following for a year, I get the impression that cronies are providing opportunities to each other in this paper's less popular areas. Although the professionally written articles outnumber these high-school diaries by a huge margin, nobody will approach very understandingly when such garbage appears. Would you congratulate the director if he inserted one painting of his own in the Metropolitan Museum?

    As for Club Meds and the like, those infamous copulating and mating scenes of university graduate 60-year-old retired western ladies with 20-year-old elementary school drop-out good-looking local animators, have never been cultural attractions. There is nothing new today. If you knew the amount of marriages among such couples in Turkey alone and started to regard consequent murder or robbery stories -I mean the headlines such as the waiter (22) killing the architect (63) after borrowing 40.000 dollars - as business as usual, you would not be very positively approaching the matter either.

    But wait, this is not the first diary I saw here. I read only 2 travel stories here until now, and the preceding one was a 1-week long trip of 4 Canadian brothers and sisters to Paris! It simply was a pathetic juxtaposition of words. The "unacceptable" prices of consumer items was the essence of the article, one long paragraph portrayed a siphon that did not work for one night, the writer(!) was boasting for being able to say qu'est-ce que c'est level of sentences while excitingly discovering landmarks of Paris at the age of 50 something for the first time.

    I just suggest the editors of this section read a publication called "Lonely Planet" at least for once or the upper management hire editors who travel.

  15. Pamphleteer . from Canada writes: Darcy McGee from United States writes: People here should RTFA. Kira explains why Club Med was her "dream" vacation and acknowledges that it's not truly a dream anymore: her motivations come from her younger years. The article doesn't suggest that Kira's mother fell ill AFTER she left, necessitating a rush home. The article suggests a long, steady illness. One can't put one's own life on 100% hold due to a dying relative. You carry on, you live life, you make plans, you hope for the best, and yet you carry around the weight of the dying relative like a brick in your pocket. A heavy burden. You people are just mean, dammit, mean for the sake of being mean. - The fact that her mother was sick before she left reflects even more poorly on the author. Clearly the parent was in a near death state before she jetted off to MExico (since these Club Med vacations are never longer than a week or two), so the author knew damn well how bad things were before she boarded the plane. Any reasonable person would have given it no second thought to postpone the trip and be beside a dying parent rather than f-- off to sun and fun. This wasn't a "relative" -- it was her MOTHER. Besides that unsettling fact, the article was just lousy, boring travel writing. There's nothing to indicate Club Med wasn't a dream of the author anymroe -- the gist of the article seems to be if her mom just wouldn't have been dying maybe she could have enjoyed herself more. Sick. Instead of this tripe, the Globe should be publishing real travel stories of independent travellers who don't think an exotic vacation is dining with hillbillies in south carolina and having their children drink shirley temples at an upscale resort.
  16. Pamela Achurch from Peterborough, On, Canada writes: This is a busy article......However, it does catch the varied meaning of travel to people. Some of us value security and stay close to home with our "dream" vacation on the back burner for years. Others value life experience over security heading out into the world in our early years. This lady has had a double whammy with her "dream" trip........time and guilt. I read two messages . Travel early, travel often or finally go and feel guilty about doing it. The author doesn't identify any changes in her from the travel experience. It seems that she changed location briefly but never really left home.
  17. Doug Consul from Ajijic, Mx, writes: You can run, but you can't hide....
  18. Titus Andronicus from Canada writes: .
    I hate the "Life" section.
  19. Titus Andronicus from Canada writes: Ghetto Dude at 4:51 AM EDT -- I agree 100% with your comments. The Globe is stuffed full of badly written, irrelevent, self-reflective tripe that seems to reach the public solely because the writer is someone's neice.
  20. jimmie rabbit from toronto, Canada writes: Titus Andronicus from Canada writes...The Globe is stuffed full of badly written, irrelevent, self-reflective tripe that seems to reach the public solely because the writer is someone's neice

    >>does this account for margaret wente?
  21. Ghetto Dude from Istanbul, Turkey writes: Titus Andronicus, if you happen to check here once again, you will be shocked by the amount of removed negative postings. Our messages seem to be well-understood. Perhaps they might want to hire positive comment posters for 50 cents a posting instead of professional writers. This alternative might be a more cost-effective solution. And deleting mean postings of mean people such as us, costs nothing.
    Keep up with this wonderful methodology which I am very familiar with in Turkey G&M.

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