Hardcore tourists

I love airport bars. Perfectly respectable well-dressed people can get a drink or four without being judged at any time of day. Beer for breakfast, no problem. Bar staff at airports assume you just arrived from a different time zone or you’re afraid of flying and need a little liquid aid . The other week I was at Cairo airport at 9am. Beer was the last thing I felt like that morning. I was propped up at the bar inhaling double shots of espresso. Now if a bunch of English soccer fans has walked in I wouldn’t have given it a second thought but instead, up rock two cheery middle aged South Korean couples who scanned the menu and ordered a round of Heinekens. Their hardcore efforts were offset slightly by the fact that they ordered straws for their beer but it kind of added to their, ‘Watch out. We’re jet lagged, South Korean tourists and we’re getting drunk’ aura they had about them. Now every Korean tourist I’ve ever seen has a camera strapped to his or her hand. I think they are handed out by customs when they leave the Seoul airport. But these Koreans didn’t waste valuable drinking time by taking photos. You can guarantee the pommy soccer fans would have ‘Yeah mate, this is us on the piss at Cairo Airport. Guess what time it was? Go one you’ll never guess. Guess. Go on. Go on.’ Maybe the happy Heineken holidayers had so many photos of them sinking a few early morning brews that they had just stopped keeping records of the occasion. I had my camera so I snapped of a sneaky shot. If I had been busted I would have pretended I was taking a photo of the stunning knitted cap so I could get my grandma to make me one.