It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.

Trouble with a long journey like this,' continued the Captain, 'is that you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you’re going to say next.

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.

When we told our guide that we didn't want to go to all the tourist places he took us instead to the places where they take tourists who say that they don't want to go to tourist places. These places are, of course, full of tourists.