The Worst Holiday Ever
Going away on holidays as a family used to be such an ordeal, with 5 screaming kids and a mum and a dad that really didn’t get along, it is a wonder we didn’t have more hellish holidays like this one.
It was the summer of 87, I was a cheeky 9-year-old boy with oodles of energy, and my father had won a family holiday to a beachside resort about two hours up the coast from Sydney. We were all excited about the idea of spending some time in the sun, and the best part about it was that it was all for free, which meant my father would be a little less tight with his money on this holiday.
The drive should have taken us about two hours to complete, but we had to make a few unscheduled stops along the way. I used to get car sick back then and against my parents’ advice, I had a chocolate bar and a can of Coke for breakfast, and I felt sick a total of three times on the way there. I couldn’t control the first bout, so I vomited all over the back seat of my father’s new car. Needless to say, the stench for the remainder of the trip permeated the entire minivan, much to the disgust of my father and my siblings, who cursed me as we drove. My mother said nothing, only giving me some kind words of reassurance that this too would pass.
We finally arrived at the resort town four and a half hours later, and as soon as we arrived, it began to rain, and the palm trees swayed in the gale-force winds. We drove around the water-drenched streets looking for the resort, and when we finally found it, the name matched the brochure exactly, but the reality was nothing like the pictures. Inside, the rooms were filthy, with cockroaches the size of my father’s big toe, and they were crawling all over the floor.
The final straw was the dead rat my mother found in the kitchenette. My father went to the manager to complain, but he seemed to be on another planet and reeked of whisky. Angrily, my father told us all to get back into the minivan, but as soon as we did, it dawned on us that we were not going anywhere – the roads were flooded, to the point that it would have been dangerous to drive. We would be stuck there for the next 4 days until the rain finally subsided.
