28.11.09 Cancun, Mexico

Trade: di-methyl-hydroxy-loperamide. Street: Imodium. These pills are valued at two quid, and amazingly - against all intestinal logic - they work even if you've "got one in the chamber", acting like a rectal Super Slurper and turning a difficult, "can we go yet / dare I even check out of my room?" morning into a breeze. Hoozah for Big Pharma!
---

18.12.09 Campeche

Two weeks in Cancun with Naz have slipped by, and I feel the urge to pass on some tips if you're headed that way.

1) Book the Grand Royal Lagoon Hotel in advance on the interplop for $27 a night, with every third night free. Balcony, room service, big room with triple bed, air-con, fridge, super-efficient cleaners, pool and Cancun's cheapest lager (15 pesos in the GRL bar; 54 pesos in a stupid Spring Break horror-disco up the road).

2) Just across the road you'll find the Intercontinental. Swan in like you own the place, and you can use their much bigger pool, sun loungers, beach and internet cafe for no money.

3) Fancy a spot of booze? Take a ride down the main drag to the Bel Air Collection hotel. There's a jacuzzi bar in the pool, where, if you play your hand subtly, you can arrive at midday and pay $20 to suck down as many cocktails as you can stomach before the pool bar shuts at 6pm. For my money, the stand-out snifters from the fairly extensive drinks menu are the Flamenco (it's pink - get over it) and the Sombrero (like coffee ice-cream with booze in it).

-

4)... I have to interrupt myself - I'm overcome with emotion as Campeche's Christmas Parade passes below my terrace-bar table.

The Nativity float has, frankly, finished me off. All the beloved characters are there - the, ah, Virgin, Mary; poor old Joseph; the porky little Christ-Child himself; the Three "Wise" Men; an elephant (?); Ronald McDonald; and somebody dressed as a 500ml plastic bottle of Coke. *cries*... Anyway:

4) Go to Isla Mujeres - fantastic beaches and everything's half the price. DO NOT hire a sun-lounger from the spiv on Playa Norte. He'll want 10 quid for an hour, and, as we've established, if you can convincingly pretend to be a paying guest at the Intercontinental, they're free.
...I must butt in on myself* again - the toilet in this bar has a sign over the sink suggesting you should wash your hands before, as well as after going to the lavatory.

Eh? I suppose if you'd just come in from making sculptures out of dog muck you'd want to wash your hands before, but under normal circs, what? I mean, why?

5) If you book a rental car to drive the 110 amazingly flat, straight miles to Chichen Itza and back, and the people at Budget "upgrade" you to a Nissan X-Trail, you should probably be aware that it does 100mph really rather easily, enabling you to get there in record time; but that on the way back, various dispirited Mexicans will attempt to throw themselves into its path; also that the headlight on-off switch operates on a hair-trigger principle, and that it's positioned on the end of the indicator stalk. Oh Christ.

-

-

-

Also that the name "X-Trail" does not, under Mexican law, imply any ability to negotiate a speed-bump above walking-pace without breaking it. It is, on balance, WAY more dangerous to drive an X-Trail sober, in Mexico, in the dark, than it is to ride an Africa Twin under similar conditions after a cocktail or "two". Not that I'm condoning anything blah blah etc.

Naz enjoys a pint of lager.

So - thanks for coming Naz! Well done us for still being alive, and Christ Damn You to Hell for beating me twice on the poker table.

---

I cannot believe it's nearly Christmas - again. Last back-end, as we say in Kent, I had garage pies and hot dogs for Xmas dinner. If I have to stab it myself, and cook it with a fucking cigarette lighter, I WILL HAVE TURKEY THIS YEAR.
---

How about that Tiger WooYAAAAAAAWWWWN! Really - does anyone (other than his wife) give a toad's pube?
---

19.12.09 Campeche.

You know when you really, really want a T-bone steak, and it's on the menu, which you saw 3 hours ago but weren't hungry then, and after 7 Coronas you ask to see the menu again, just to be polite, and, following 2 minutes of pretend-chin-stroking you beckon the waiter over and order the longed-for T-bone, and he says "Sorry sir - only New York steak", and you remember that the only other New York steak you've had in Mexico smelt like a dog's nappy, but you ate it anyway because you were literally starving to death, even though you'd been to the lavatory 16 times in 24 hours? That's why I'm going to Burger King in a minute.
And now the classified football results, read by Charles Hawtrey:
Fulham 3, Manchester United nil.
Arsenal 3, Hull City nil.
Hup-la!

---
*illegal in Alabama