I'm usually too busy during the year to take a vacation, so I had to ask around to find out how a person's supposed to go about "planning" one of those things. One of the suits in my office recommended a travel agent who specialized in tours to southeast Asia. Normally, I'd have thanked him for the advice and then forgotten all about it, which is generally the best way to react when anyone whose job requires them to wear a jacket that matches their pants tells you anything.

... but I actually gave it some thought.

I picked up a couple of brochures from a travel agent and looked them over. The prospects in Southeast Asia looked like any other third-word "resort" locations: a dank concrete mound where the sanitation seems adequate only by European standards, and is only "luxurious" when compared to the sea of wattle and pitch on the other side of the electrified razor-wire fence. I wasn't really interested, but I was curious about an obscure phrase that seemed to be in all the literature: "reasonably priced private entertainment available on request." It was one of those things I had to ask about.

Mistake number two.

Turns out that, in addition to making the plastic crap that goes into cereal boxes and knitting sweaters for Kathy Lee Gifford, the southeast Asian economy is fueled by tourism - which, in countries where there's really nothing to tour except the ghettos, sweatshops, and squalor, can only mean one thing: brown-skinned teenaged boys biting pillows for coins from caucasian tourists in hopes of saving up enough cash to emigrate to the states

... and open a convenience store.

The Internet has introduced me to the absolute worst of humanity, and I'm well aware it's impossible to underestimate the depths of depravity to which the bourgeoisie will sink - so I can't say that I was terribly shocked by this discovery. Even so, there's one thing I can't quite figure out: One of these days, I plan to corner the exec who made that recommendation and ask him why he'd fly three thousand miles for the privilege of paying to do the exact same thing that fetches them a six-figure salary at home.