Laganas is a sun-kissed village on the Greek island of Zante. It's also the kind of place where it takes ten minutes to get drunk, another ten to reach orgasm and an eternity to get over all the horrible things you've done to both your body and your soul in the space of just a few days. Which I guess is why it's become a Mecca for sexually depraved English tourists.It’s 4AM and I'm wide-awake in Laganas, lying sober on a shoddy bed in a shoddier hotel room. My bed is the kind that comes covered in hairs, courtesy of the previous tenant and their guests. If you’re lucky, the hairs are long; if not, the short and curly debris of clumsy oral sex.
Annons
The night I've had is one of those where you find yourself wishing your holidays were already done. Of course, if you were Greek you would never dare express this; the sea and the sun hold a near-religious significance to modern Greeks and to even suggest that you're not enjoying yourself while on holiday is tantamount to sin.However, in truth, all I want to do is go back to my clean house, slather Greek yoghurt on my charred back and throw up all the luminous petrol I've been served over the last few days.
On my first day here, I optimistically perceived public sex on the streets and sidewalks as a sign of sexual liberation. 'Maybe us Greeks did still need Westerners to show us what modernity is,' I thought to myself.By the second day, those thoughts had pretty much vanished. That night, I saw a girl sitting legs akimbo on top of a bar while others jostled to get within groping distance. It was like they were playing slapsies to win their fingers a place inside her vagina. By my third night in Laganas, I felt like I was in a village full of sperm that were too drunk and too sunstroked to figure out which egg they should head for.Tonight, thank god, someone vomited on my shoes so I'm here, at five in the morning, being kept awake by the sex moans of the Geordie next door for the fourth night in a row.
I do understand that if I were still a teenager all of this libido and chaos would probably turn me on. Maybe I've just grown up and turned into a stuck-up asshole. Or maybe, just maybe, I've chosen to take a holiday in a really annoying place with people who don't yet and may never understand the concept of limits.
Annons
Every summer, young people from Sweden, Britain, Germany, Australia and Italy board EasyJet and Ryanair flights to some Greek island with a mission to spend a few days crawling around half-naked on its streets. Because we've been told our economy needs the tourism, for years locals have managed to turn a blind eye to the foreign debauchery by largely staying away from places like Laganas, Faliraki in Rhodes or Malia in Crete. But in the age of social media, that has become impossible.I've put together this collection of the best/worst things I've seen posted by tourists holidaying in Greece. For what is not done in public is not done at all.
