British tabloid kicks off Gap Year Season with pleas for parental panic
It’s Gap Year Season, that time when British kids take time off between college and “the real world.” You’ll find the drunken louts all over the place — wherever beer’s cheap, basically — but southeast Asia, in particular, gets clogged with them.
If your child is preparing to travel abroad, one London tabloid wants you to worry. And I mean, worry. The Daily Mail asks:
“As research shows a third of gap years end in disaster, will YOUR teenager survive?”
From the Mail online:
Now, as 250,000 eager gap year students prepare to take their first solo steps into the world this summer, new figures reveal that one in three gap breaks are marred by serious accident, illness, crime – or death…
Paul Martin, development manager at gap year company Gap Force, urges young travellers to prepare carefully before they travel, to choose a reputable company and to travel with others.
‘Many of the crimes we hear about are just opportunistic,’ he says. ‘There is an element of risk, but it’s all about managing that sensibly. Gap years are a learning curve, and most people come back from them as more rounded people.’
Vicky Beddow's leaking anus is national news.
The 2,500-word story is a litany of travel disasters: lethal kayaking in Laos, armed robbery in Rio de Janeiro, crackheads in Chile and…food poisoning in India?
According to Vicky Beddow of Devizes, Wiltshire (the crop circle capital of the world!), she fell victim to a conspiracy between local chefs and greedy doctors.
‘When my group arrived in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, we were warned to be careful about what we ate or drank. There was something going on in the area, which was known locally as the “Agra scandal”,’ she says.
‘It was never proved, but people believed some local chefs were poisoning the food so people were sent to hospital and the doctors made some money.
‘I don’t know if this was true, but the day after we got there I began feeling sick and passed out. Our Indian guide, who was looking after a group of about 12 of us, got a doctor to come and see me. He said I needed to go to the hospital and offered to take me, but the guide did not trust him.
‘Another doctor came and said the same thing, but my guide insisted on taking me to hospital himself, as something about the doctors made him uneasy. When we got there, it was a horrible place. The doctors simply stared at me.’
Though Beddow hedges her story, it’s clear she takes the “Agra Scandal” seriously. In which case, she’s the daftest twat in all of England. Indian hospitals are overburdened, understaffed and likely less sanitary than your local hot dog truck. Doctors can be brusque, impersonal and even arrogant — because their jobs are miserable. I don’t deny that rickshaw drivers might demand a kickback for bringing paying patients to a private doctor’s office, but to imagine they’d actively trap whinging British kids with poisoned food is sheer idiocy. I mean, really Ms. Beddow, how much did you pay? 100 rupees? 150 rupees? I once had x-rays done for 200 rupees — that’s about five bucks.
The young Beddow is embarrassed, and maybe even angry. She shouldn’t be — eating or drinking something that violently disagrees with you is hardly uncommon in India, for newcomers and veterans alike.
Lethal kayak? Disaster. Armed robbery in Rio? Disaster. One English girl’s ass-tastrophe? Not quite.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
Perhaps the article should have been filled with stories like that, just with a different angle. “If you get sick, or robbed, or generally messed with on your gap year, don’t worry, most people do.” Now all these poor kids think they are some kind of idiot, or worse, get all paranoidly self-righteous, like this moron.