advice - BobCarriesOn

February 22, 2013March 22, 2016

Hotel guest finds paper-thin walls ideal for making confession to priest in next room

“Where’s a priest when you need one?” is a question frequent traveler Bob Payne has never had to ask.

Payne is one of a growing number of travelers who choose their accommodation by scanning hotel review sites in search of hotels with partitions thin enough to hear conversation and activity without having to resort to the traditional method of holding a glass to the wall.

“With the priests, it’s the convenience factor, mostly,” says Payne, who admits that having lived and traveled long, his tally of experiences is not without moral blemish.

“There was that time in Bangkok with the two elephants, and I can tell you that while finding a priest at a place of worship at 3 a.m., especially one that admits elephants, is just about impossible, there was a priest in both of the rooms on either side of me.”

The added benefit of making a confession through a hotel’s paper-thin walls, Payne said, is that once you give even the politest of knocks from your side you know you will have the priest’s complete attention. “It’s not like in a regular confessional, which is traditionally seen as an opportunity for priests to finish the crossword or work on a Sudoku puzzle,” Payne said.

“Of course it is not all about religion,” said Payne, who currently travels the world selling Old Testament apps for the iPhone. “There is also a good deal of natural selection taking place.”

In that regard, Payne said most of his experiences have been positive. “I seldom call down to the desk to complain until the selection process has been completed.”

Like many travelers who look for hotels with paper thin walls, Payne confesses that listening to procreative activities of guests in the adjoining room can be “interesting.”

“The only exception is if the room is occupied by your parents, especially if you know your father is down in the hotel snack bar,” Payne said.

Plenty of other factors make paper-thin walls desirable, Payne said. “Let’s say you want to charter a fishing boat for the day, but don’t have your credit card number handy, and a guy in the next room reads off his while ordering a pizza. Voila! The fish are as good as in the boat.”

Still, the most satisfying aspect of thin-walled hotel rooms, Payne said, is not the practical but the spiritual, as anyone knows who has listened to a night of: “Oh God, ohhh God!, ohhhhhh God!!”

When travel humor writer Bob Payne is not selling Biblical apps for the iPhone he is the Religion Editor for BobCarriesOn.com, your online source for travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.

BigStock photo.

May 9, 2012October 13, 2012

TSA secrets the flying public doesn’t want you to know

Not since the days when the postal service mattered to anybody has a group of federal workers (Congress excepted) taken so much abuse as the agents of the TSA.

That the TSA performs a necessary function is clear. Their vigilance, study after study has shown, has resulted in airline passengers bringing aboard far fewer knives, handguns, and explosive devices than they used to.

Yet the abuse of TSA agents has become so pervasive it has been estimated that comedians such as Jay Leno (“Have you heard the TSA’s new slogan? ‘We handle more junk than eBay.'”) David Letterman (“TSA says they are going to crack down on the invasive pat-downs. In fact, one agent was transferred to another parish.”) and Conan O’Brien (“ I don’t mind being patted down by airport security, but I don’t like it when the guy says, ‘Now you do me.'”) would be hard pressed to get through their monologues without some reference to the alleged humiliation faced daily by the flying public.

Of course some of the abuse is well-deserved. There’s no evidence to show that grandmothers in wheelchairs are more likely to commit terrorist acts than any other group. And what kind of person takes a stuffed animal away from a four-year-old boy, even if the animal does turn out to contain gun parts?

But try putting yourself in the shoes of a TSA agent. (Admittedly, not as easily done, at most security checkpoints, as TSA agents putting themselves in yours.) The fact is that the two things the flying public finds most outrageous about the airport security experience – pat downs and body scans – are the two things that make it most difficult for TSA agents to come to work each day (that and most of them don’t earn enough to own a car).

“Everybody says airport security is a system built on fear,” TSA spokesperson Daniel Butts said, “But what they don’t say is that the biggest fears are those faced by the TSA agents themselves. To understand why, you just need to look at most people making their way through an airport terminal, picture them naked, and then imagine having to run your hand up the inside of their thighs. It’s not exactly a Ken and Barbie world out there.”

Considering the stress that results, it is a wonder, Butts said, that the TSA team holds up as well as they have. “Sure, there have been cases of verbal abuse, theft, drug trafficking, and dealing in child pornography, but at least nobody’s gone postal.”

May 9, 2012October 13, 2012

When can you say you’ve been to a country?

One of the more difficult questions for a traveler to answer can be whether they have been to a country. Can they count it if they pass through on a train or visit on a cruise ship without ever disembarking? Must they go through the entry formalities, such as having their passport stamped, or at least, in the case of arriving by air, leave the security area? Do they have to have been there a certain length of time, overnight, say, or, more commonly, as long as whoever is asking the question?

Have I, for instance, been to Yap, a Micronesian island group in the far western Pacific where my plane touched down just long enough for me to stretch my legs on the tarmac while I waited to continue a flight from Guam to Palau?

I would argue that I have, though I was not there long enough even to see examples of the one thing Yap is known for — the coin-shaped stone money, some of it as big around as truck tires, that has prevented the Yapanese from developing the concept of pocket change.

I base my claim on the interaction I had with an old Yapanese woman who sat next to me on the flight from Guam. She was not friendly at first, fearing, I suspect, that I might be offended by the overflowing baggy in which she spat the betel nut juice that was dripping blood red, vampire style, from the corners of her mouth. But when I offered her the airsick bag from the back of my seat, her bag having gone missing, possibly as a result of use by a betel nut chewer on an earlier leg of the flight, the practice being fairly common in that part of the Pacific, she warmed considerably, and we passed the flight in pleasant conversation, despite her dribbling. And by the end of the flight I had an invitation to her daughter’s wedding, an invitation I had to decline because the airlines are so unreasonable about letting you change your mind about itineraries in mid journey.

Her daughter, who had seen much of the world, having traveled even as far afield as Hawaii, was back home in Yap now, making final preparations for the wedding. But there was a problem, the woman told me. All the daughter’s traveling had put the notion in her head that she should not have a traditional wedding. And the woman, as mothers often are in these situations, was upset about it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her, waving off an offer to try some of the betel nut myself.

The sticking point, it seemed, was that in a traditional wedding on Yap the bride would be topless, as the woman is in the photo accompanying this story, which also features, you may have noticed, the stone money. That the photo is an authentic depiction of traditional life on Yap can be assumed from the fact that it is a closeup of an official Yap postage stamp. The bride-to-be, however, wanted no part of tradition.

I was disappointed that I would miss the wedding, especially after, as we deplaned, the old woman pointed out her daughter to me, a lovely-looking girl waving to us from the other side of a chain-link fence at the edge of the tarmac. The experience did help define for me, however, when you can say you have visited a country.

You have been to a country when you were there long enough to come back with a story.