The Beach

by Alex Garland

Maybe to have a memory, you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.

An overwhelming sensation washed over me, almost boredom, a strange listlessness. I was suddenly sick of how difficult this journey had become. There was too much effort, too many shocks and dilemmas to dissect. And this sickness had an effect. For a vital few seconds it liberated me from a fear of consequences. I’d had enough. I just wanted it over with.

“Richard, you must.” She had the American habit of frequently using one’s name. It had the strange effect of being both disarmingly familiar and unnaturally forced.

“Given up. You should try too, Richard. It’s easy to give up here.”

belittling. I had ambiguous feelings about the differences between tourists and travelers—the problem being that the more I traveled, the smaller the differences became. But the one difference I could still latch onto was that tourists went on holidays while travelers did something else. They traveled.

I once read that the most widely understood word in the whole world is “okay,” followed by “Coke,” as in cola.

Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I’d forgotten England even existed.

There’s this saying: In an all-blue world, color doesn’t exist. It makes a lot of sense to me. If something seems strange, you question it, but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison, then nothing seems strange.

It doesn’t matter why I found it so easy to assimilate myself into the beach life. The question is why the beach life found it so easy to assimilate me.

If you screwed it up, then there’d be loud tuts and exaggerated sighs until you got it right.

The nicest thing was when you heard your name but couldn’t recognize the voice. I always found it comforting that someone unexpected would think to choose me. I’d fall asleep wondering who it could have been, and who I’d choose the next time.

Set up in Bali, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao, Boracay, and the hordes are bound to follow. There’s no way you can keep it out of the Lonely Planet, and once that happens it’s countdown to doomsday.

actually managed to get it all done. I suppose I sort of knew. If I’d learned one thing from traveling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.

so late—and small talk had always been the extent of our conversations. Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly.

Golden rule, first thing to do when you arrive someplace is find out how you can get out again. These caves are the only ways out of the lagoon.”

Less banal, or maybe more so, was that I wanted to witness extreme poverty. I saw it as a necessary experience for anyone who wanted to appear worldly and interesting.

I didn’t wake Jed because I like being awake when other people are asleep.

I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once, and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as if my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason, I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots, and anything I forget to record is lost. Apart from that, photographs never seem to be very evocative. When I look through the albums of old traveling companions I’m always surprised by how little I’m reminded of the trip.

If only there was a camera that captured smell. Smells are far more vivid than images.

course, I know that there’s an element of pop psychology about how much you can read into people’s favorite travel locations. You can choose which aspects of a nation’s character you want to accept or ignore. In the case of Keaty, I chose liveliness and enthusiasm because mercenary and calculating didn’t fit the bill, and in the case of Françoise I ignored dictatorship and mass murder in East Timor. But nonetheless, I have faith in the principle.

camp. It was used commonly enough to have acquired a nickname—the Khyber Pass—and the regular tramping of our feet kept the weeds under control.

Look this up why the names

David Attenborough.

Look up

penumbra

prurient.