What your vacation says about you
Man-cation
For men, with other men, doing a manly activity like golf or fishing. What could be more manly than hanging out with other men? How heterosexual is that? Particularly if there is some naked lake swimming involved. And play-fighting. And much meat.
Exfoli-cation
Fly somewhere like Turkey to be totally cleansed inside and out. Stripped of all the bad juju, exfoliated to hell and back, starved and pummelled and lectured. Wall-to-wall enemas. Back-to-back hikes. So slim and serene. Have some Pringles and one glass of wine on the Easyjet flight back home and try to start a fight.
No-cation
If you can see a child or hear a child, let alone have to speak to a child, it’s a no-cation.
Make-or-break-cation
It’s been so long since you’ve had sex that you can’t remember your pet name for his penis. Perhaps that pet name is the problem. You wax, he trims. You floss, he shaves. This is all a bit embarrassing. Best get drunk.
YOLO*-cation
See you at the Grand Canyon/Angkor Wat/the Inca Trail. Or maybe Burning Man. You are not a tourist. Oh no, you are a traveller. You might even be an explorer. You are broadening your horizons and flirting (very, very, very lightly) with death. You camp in rainforest villages/mountain villages/rural villages and eat strange local stews. You take coloured pencils for the children. You are a citizen of the world. You spend the last three nights in the best hotel you can afford, wondering if you’ve got that tick that swims up your pee-stream into your bits. (*YOLO = You Only Live Once.)
Solo-cation
Who are you? Who knows? Maybe a weekend alone up a mountain will help. No one can hear you scream.
School-cation
Flashback: you go to Paris for a history of art tour, but the whole thing descends into a St Trinian’s-esque storm, nearly giving your already-on-edge teacher a heart attack. Every night you all get wildly drunk, chain-smoke, try (and largely fail) to pick up local boys and get locked out of the hotel at 1am. Your teacher wakes up for weeks after the trip, shouting, ‘Where are they? Where are they?’
Sleep-cation
Extraordinarily tired? How about putting yourself in a controlled coma for the weekend. Dignitas-lite.
Sex-cation
The first holiday with a new boyfriend. Sex, sex, then more sex. Not leaving the hotel until you’ve had sex about four times before lunch. Not really seeing or doing anything else. Both feeling sick because you’ve had too much sex. Is he annoying? Better have sex to find out.
Cry-cation
When you howl at the moon, throw yourself against the wall, rend your garments and then propose to yourself on the beach. It happens.
Edu-cation
Involving guidebooks, comfortable shoes and even a journal. Possibly a backpack. You’ll be lighting a lot of candles and praying to the mummified holy foreskin of St Moritz in Prague.
Girl-cation
You’ll pile into someone’s mother’s house somewhere in Italy and it’s going to be so amazing and, ‘I’m packing really light, are you?’ No one can lift their case. Two of you fancy the same man next door so you keep pretending to go to bed early and then bump into each other – fully made-up – peering over the fence. One girl catches everyone bitching about her and cries for two days. But the biggest tragedy is when it’s cloudy for half an hour, during which time you all pluck all your eyebrows off.
