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Sex, drugs and no reggae - 5 reasons why I hate Jamaica
Blog: 99 + 1 countries - 21 August 2009
By: merja
Usain Bolt might be the world's favorite athlete at the moment but that does not stop me from hating Jamaica. Out of the 55 countries I've been to, Jamaica is the only one where I would not go back unless I got payed to go. (Folks, if you think I'm bragging, I would like to point out that this whole blog is about me trying to travel to a hundred countries. Now that's pretentious.) These are the five reasons to why I hate Jamaica.
1. It started the minute I arrived to my hotel in the God forsaken tourist trap of Montego Bay.
"You smoke?" The receptionist of the three star hotel asked me.
"Yeah, I smoke", I replied puffing a Canadian duMaurier and thinking that my life would be a hell of a lot easier if my mother was as dumb as this guy.
"We give you good price", the receptionist ventured.
"Uhm", I said, startled, grabbed the key and walked into the above-my-standard room.
The phone rang.
"We give you good price. Buy now", said the receptionist.
"Uhm, no thanks."
I admit, I was the dumb one. I was in Jamaica after all. I should have guessed what the receptionist meant with "you smoke?".
From then on the drug dealing began every time I walked in or out of my room. The receptionist kept calling in the mornings and in the evenings. "Good price, good price." After a few days, in order to stop the dude calling my room constantly, I told him that I had bought my **************** from the street ("good price, good price") and did not need his services. After that, there was very little service to be had from this three star hotel.
2. About an hour after leaving my hotel for the first time, I got assaulted. The incident has been described earlier here.
3. Walking back to the hotel from downtown a few hours after the assault a group of men sitting idle started oohing and aahing at me. I tried to pass by as quickly as possible but that was to no avail. Two of them approached.
"You look very beautiful. Come and sit with us."
"Uhm, no thanks. I need to get back to my hotel. And my boyfriend wouldn't like it."
"You are a racist."
I thought I'd do better if I just walked away, so I kept moving.
"Racist! You ****************ing racist! You white slut." the wonder boys of logics yelled, making sure that everyone else on the street knew what they thought of me.
4. Going out for an exorbitantly priced beer in one the beach side bars later on I was relieved that finally I was left alone. In fact young men stralling around the bar took no notice of me, the poor student, whatsoever - they seemed to be into much older women. That's when I realized how many couples, middle-aged Western women and young Jamaican men, there were around me. It dawned on me that I had landed in one of the premier spots for women's sex tourism and to be frank, the sight was so ugly that I decided to buy myself a gigantic dildo for my 40th birthday.
5. After my first day I was too freaked out to talk to anyone. It seemed that they either wanted to sell me drugs or sex and as I was not interested in purchasing any of the two, it was better to keep all communication to minimum. For the rest of the time I felt like a zombie.
To be fair, it was not all bad. I liked Kingston, where there were no tourists and thus no people trying to sell me the aforementioned goods. There was not much to see there either - where the hell are all the cool record shops selling reggae vinyls? - but the city itself was alright. The Jamaican beaches are of course superb, if only you didn't have to pay a hefty entrance fee to some 5* hotel who owns the strip. And I liked the beef patties.
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