Illustration by Dan Evans
This article originally appeared on VICE UK
I don’t tend to go on many holidays, and with Brexit looming ever closer, that won’t be changing any time soon. But at least when I do, they are often fuelled by a pure faith in hedonism. So pure that I never get the chance to indulge in things like showering, eating, or really even talking coherently, and this has inevitably led to a reluctance in the opposite sex to engage with me in any way while I am abroad.
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This did change recently, though. We met on a rooftop, we rode a moped through the countryside and we enjoyed being lost together. Yes, holy shit, it was set-piece, so fucking set-piece that the author of Twilight would think it was too much, but goddamnit, it felt nice.
Mine may have played out like a more saccharine version of The Only Way Is Essex Does Magaluf, but it made me wonder about all those other sweaty holiday romances out there. So I asked a load of people to tell me what happened when they hooked up abroad.
HANNAH-ROSE, 30: ‘I SUDDENLY SAID, I’M GOING TO SHIT MYSELF’
I was 24 at the time. We met at Eden nightclub in Ibiza on the urban night. I had snuck in with a stag party. I was on my own for some chillout time, and not knowing when I was gonna return back to the UK. He was the best man and on his last night out with no money, which was a blessing really, because he had already spent a stupid amount. He was the kind of guy who liked carrying a champagne bottle, which I personally hate. He was surrounded by three hot Spanish babes and I spotted him as the only one really dancing in the crowd.
I was talking to a big guy from Texas who was also on a stag do, when Delroy made his way over, thinking I was foreign and might be an easy lay. He had just split up with his girlfriend of three years and had slimmed down by half. I had just split up with an overbearing mental case, so I guess we both weren’t interested in meeting anyone.
He came over and said “Hi, I used to be 22 stone” and I was like “I don’t believe you.” I took his hat off to check his head wasn’t a funny shape and then called him Professor Klump. We danced about and some girl threw her drink at me while Oasis’ “Wonderwall” came on, and we left the club singing along and holding hands. As we walked I started questioning him on our way to the shop in the main town.
I asked things like:
“What’s your name?” Delroy, he said. I called him Delboy for about a month.
“How many kids you got?” “Three,” he told me, and I wasn’t shocked.
“What car do you drive?” “Audi s3,” he smiled, which made me want to vomit.
“Are you a drug dealer?” “No!” he cried.
The ice cubes were having a dodgy effect on my belly. As we sat and talked, I suddenly said, “I think I’m going to shit myself.” He still held my hand while we walked to an apartment that I shared with a 50-year-old Buddha-shaped security guard. He slept naked in a bed next to me with a little towel to cover his lower regions.
Anyway, I did a massive poo and it was so shameful. Afterwards I went to Delroy’s hotel. He came flying out to meet me near the swimming pool in a grey tracksuit, and I knew that he didn’t care about my embarrassment, and I was in love.
When he got back to the UK we spoke for three weeks on Skype, so by the time I came back we were ready to start seeing each other properly. Long story short, we got married two years ago, have a three-year-old Staffy and a one-year-old son, and as much as we hate each other, we do everything together.
JOSH, 23: ‘WE WANT HOLIDAY ROMANCES TO REMIND US OF BEING ABROAD’
I went on Grindr the moment I arrived at Hong Kong airport, and he was flying to Australia, so we messaged as we were both Australian. He then flew back to Aus so we didn’t message for like a month and a bit, but I favourited him and then one day I randomly messaged him. He said that he was working every night so he couldn’t come to Hong Kong as he was now living in Macau, but he said I could come to Macau and watch a performance that he was working on and then meet me after.
So after class one day I took the train to the ferry terminal and cleared immigration customs and took ferry to Macau. Then I took a bus to a casino, he met me and took me backstage and we watched the show together which was this insane water spectacular thing.
It was a bit awkward at first, but after we had a few drinks, it became more relaxed. We climbed an old abandoned Portuguese cinema and looked across Taipa City with some beers from a corner shop and made out and it was really nice. He actually went up the same cinema a month later and fell through the roof nine metres, breaking his leg. I came to visit him after he got out of hospital. He still needed to have surgery so he couldn’t be too ‘active’, but we still visited each other every week. I would go to Macau, or he would go to Hong Kong. I lived in a two-person dorm so he would always get a hotel when he visited me and we had an awesome few months together. It was about the most significant emotional encounter I’ve had, but he was never my boyfriend and there was never any discussion of things being anything after I left. He had so much other shit going on that me leaving seemed a bit insignificant for him.
I’m quite an intense lover I guess. I fall in love really easy so I decide quickly if I like someone. I could see myself with him for sure but the reality is we live on different continents and he has done long-distance before and doesn’t want to again. I guess we all have these holiday romances because we want a reminder of our time spent abroad. I know that I’ll always have thoughts of Nathan when I think back to my time in Hong Kong.
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CHRIS, 27: ‘IT TURNED INTO THE KIND OF EXPERIENCE YOU SEE IN AN ANTI-DRUGS VIDEO’
I was in this garbage club in Laos with a friend and this Israeli guy we met on the way. This club had a decent traveller-to-local ratio, but the travellers were the worst. This place only seemed to sell bottles of Johnny Walker so we were fairly well imbibed. The Israeli bloke introduces us to two Laos ladies, but the Johnny Walker wasn’t doing much for my chat and I start spewing the worst game, horribly basic stuff.
Luckily the Israeli guy must have overheard me flapping. He just told me, “less is more,” and to see if the girl I was talking to wanted to leave, and surprisingly she did. We went to a friend of her’s and attempted to do the deed. The booze wasn’t letting my dick say anything of much use either, so we stopped while I tried to compose myself.
Then we just chilled for a bit and the chat got a lot better, I’d sobered up a bit and relaxed a bit more, laughing and joking, she was pretty cool. She pulls out this little red pill and starts making a bong out of a bottle of water and cigarette carton paper, lights up it up and smokes a bit. I ask what it is and she gets a bit shady, but I push it a bit thinking I can handle my shit, clearly not remembering how bad my chat was earlier. I take a couple of pulls and it instantly turns into the kind of experience you see on an anti-drugs video in PHSE at school – head spinning, weird paranoia, and she’s cackling like a witch for a good couple of minutes and it’s echoing.
I later found out it’s a horrible drug called yaba which means “crazy medicine” in Thai and is methamphetamine, which was not what I was expecting. So I’m pranging out but she wants to get down again. I could only think about my mum telling me to use condoms because of HIV. I was pranging out about my mum and getting HIV while trying to keep an erection and put on a condom, which as you can imagine, is a bad combo. She was getting bored, and the paranoia really set in after a two-minute floppy session. I get up and say “NO!”, which was a bit of an overreaction, and apologise and say I have to leave. She insists on driving me back. I’m pretty embarrassed, but she insists, so I agree reluctantly.
As we’re heading for her motorbike, she’s on the phone sounding pissed off in her language and I assume that she’s setting me up to be mugged. I can’t speak a word but I just had a feeling that she was telling someone a location. I get on the bike and carry on being friendly though but start thinking the nerdiest thing: “What would James Bond do here?” So I start asking her about the bike and how to change the gears and she answers politely, all the while I’m wondering if I’m going to have to boost her off the bike and ride away when her henchmen turn up. In the end, she dropped me right outside my guest house. Holiday romances are good fun and all, just make sure your body functions properly.
CAROLINE, 29: ‘HE WALKED ME HOME AND EXPLAINED DUTCH CULTURAL BLACKFACE’
I was 21 and had just come off the back of a properly horrible relationship. It was one of those things where you know your partner is a terrible, terrible person, but also they are markedly more attractive than you rightfully deserve, so you sort of put up with it for a while. Imagine a young Daniel Craig, but if Daniel Craig vehemently denied the Holocaust. So, I went to Amsterdam for a long weekend with some friends. Here, I met Jaap.
We met in a club, chatted a little, kissed and stuff. Danced a lot, sang a lot, things like that. When the club closed, he asked me if I wanted to come back to his house, and I said yes. He gave me a backy on his bike, literally a cycling tour of Amsterdam as the sun came up. It was one of those “Oh, I am definitely going to remember this when I’m old and my eggs are falling out in clumps” moments.
We went back to his, danced naked, and, I think, fell in love a little. The next morning it was Dutch Christmas, or, that day in November where Santa comes to town and the children are inexplicably in blackface, because Dutch Santa has slaves for some reason. So I have a second tour of Amsterdam, and because all the roads are blocked off, and we have to walk for two hours to get back to my hostel. And there are hundreds, HUNDREDS of kids in blackface everywhere. He walks me home, and explains Dutch cultural blackface, and that’s it. It was lovely, and it reminded me that bully boyfriends who deny the Holocaust are not the be all and end all of relationships. I’ve never had a one night stand since, because I know nothing will compare.
I thought for a good few years that we might meet up and get married, but I’m obviously over that now, I’m 26 and very much in love with someone else. We did chat again though, months later, I got a message from him because he said he suddenly remembered my last name while shopping. And to be honest, the magic kind of disappeared. We exchanged a few Facebook messages, but the broken English and “How are your studies?” questions didn’t really fit the thing I had built in my mind.
I think the thing about holiday romances is that you get a little high on the serendipity of the whole thing. It’s not the same as meeting someone you fancy in your local club. It feels a little like divine intervention: here we are, two strangers with nothing in common, we don’t speak the same language, and yet we have this connection.
DUNCAN, 27: ‘HER MATES SHOUTED “BE SAFE” AND SHE LED ME DOWN TO THE BEACH’
I was on holiday in Crete, an all-inclusive resort, with my mum and brother when I was 16. I got friendly with a group of kids all around my age, mostly Spanish, Italian and Dutch. On their last night we went to the hotel “disco” and one of the girls who I hadn’t spoken to at all singled me out, ground up on me, winding and such, then after a while led me outside. One of her mates got a condom out of her bag and yelled “be safe!” at us, after which she led me down to the beach, which I assumed meant she realised we couldn’t go to the room I was sharing with the rest of my family. I had to assume because she wasn’t really saying… anything.
After an hour or so of sex (for the record, sex on the beach is fine on Greek sand and not fine at all on a pebble beach in Worthing), during which at least one security patrol totally failed to see us, we vaguely mumbled a goodnight, and went our separate ways.
Next morning, I met up with that same group again, and went to sit down next to this girl, asked her how she was. And that was when I realised she didn’t speak English. I was then pretty much duty-bound to hang out with them til they checked out several hours later, feebly trying to work out enough mutually understood words to strike up a conversation. It didn’t work out.
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