Party Holidays – Love them or Hate them?

Yes – Izzi Graham

Every year there are horror stories reported of teens being reckless, drinking too much and getting hurt when abroad with their friends.
So these holidays can only be a bad thing, right? Wrong. We should not let these incidents, which are far in the minority, put us off what can be a fantastic trip and a positive learning curve.

So you’ve finished school, just turned 18 and are excited to go away with your friends and have some independence.

This means you have to take care of yourself and anyone who’s done this will relate to the panic of thinking you’ve lost your passport (usually to find it’s in your hand, these are the things you will laugh about later!) For a young adult, particularly one who is about to move out of the family home, this can be a taster of just how much there is to think about when you go it alone.

The knock on effect of this is that you begin to appreciate how much your parents do for you, as we see teenagers confessing on programmes such as Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents. I know I finally understood just why my parents get so stressed at airports!

The other major plus of this kind of holiday is how close you become with the people you go with.

Yes, you’re bound to have a few fallouts – 10 teenagers often intoxicated or suffering a hangover is not a situation for peace treaties – but the bond you form from spending so much time together, taking care of one another and sharing such amazing experiences means these are people you will not forget in a hurry.

My post-exam holiday was made by the people I went with and we can sit for hours going over the whole thing – the good, the bad and the downright embarrassing!

We have made memories that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

Just like any other situation; if you’re sensible and aware of the dangers then it’s not hard to stay safe in these holiday destinations. The memories you make are second to none and, after all, don’t we deserve a bit of a break after the stress of exams?

No – Adela Iacobov

Should getting smashed every single night, being hungover every single day and repeating this until you go back home, looking like you need to go to rehab, be the sole purpose of your holiday abroad? Absolutely not! Unless you are 12, have never been to a proper party and have never had an alcoholic drink, you should not consider the fact that you managed to not sleep in your own vomit a victory.

Seriously now, if you still feel like you need to travel to Zante, Malia or Magaluf just to get drunk and have fun in a crowd of people who all eventually end up throwing up everywhere and imagining they had the best time just because they don’t remember, they probably passed out in a pool of, well, you can guess, that probably means you’ve been overprotected or lived in the most boring place on Earth. If that’s the case, trust me on this: you can get drunk and have just as much fun anywhere. With a little luck you’ll find a place to do so where the average age is higher than 15, where people are over the ‘Woohoo, I’ve just discovered alcohol’ phase and where you can actually have fun, rather than simply assuming you had fun because everyone around you seemed to have fun, because how can you not have fun the first time you are given access to vodka and a crowd of equally drunk and horny people who are still going through puberty?

I’ll let you in on a secret – you can now do that pretty much anywhere you want. So if you decide to spend money to travel abroad, you might want to consider going to a place you actually want to see. You can get just as drunk, have just as much fun, and you might also remember some of the cultural, traditional or touristic highlights as well, as opposed to the beauty of the absolutely identical teen paradise resorts, with the exact same scenes, hotels, bars, views, marketing strategies and types of people. By now, you’re supposed to have discovered vodka, sex, hangovers and clubbing; you’ve been initiated. It’s not a big deal anymore, act cool. You successfully became an adult. That means it’s time to move on from Malia, Zante and Magaluf.

Congratulations. Now you can actually have fun.