Travelling to Irony

In an effort to change the hackery apartment from something that looks like that man's flat in Se7en, too many books and cuttings, so I'm on a big feng-shuing of my flat and it will end up looking like that man's flat in the lager ad; empty except for an armchair, a large TV and a small glass-doored fridge for my lager. So trawling through the hackery archives I found this from January from the Guardian's travel section. I think it sums up my ideas about our obsession with travel. It pretty much tallies with the hobbit on R4's travel programme talking about a market somewhere in somewhere, "It's fantastic, it's so untouristy." So you're on holiday there and you don't want other holiday-makers there? What does that make you? An effete snob? Does that make you a traveller rather than a tourist? Travel generally narrows the mind it seems.

But back to the Guardian travel section. What is a travel section, by the way? Is it honest journalism or a touting of holidays provided as freebies for journalists?? How independent are these reports? Anyone seen a report saying, "This is a crap place, don't go you'll regret it." Anyway back to the travel section.

Front page a big picture of a gorilla gazing magbificently at at its much more intelligent cousins and underneath it the caption,

The gorillas that have never seen a human
Gabon, untamed Africa

So how is this supposed to work? You tell everybody about the gorillas, they go there because it's so unspoilt, no tourists, to see the gorillas, who will then become habituated to tourists. it doesn't matter whther you're the first fucking person there, you're still the first fucking tourist.
Welcome to Irony.

It might go against the grain but if you find somewhere lovely, then don't write about it. Let the people with imagination, ingenuity and some sort of desire go there. on their own and keep it secret.

PS You can go to the link but you won't see the picture. If you want to see it you'll have to bring around a bottle of Black Tower to the hackery.