“reacquaintance” at a hammam in Bodrum. When
I was a teenager I’d scoffed at the suggestion of
joining Mum at a Korean bathhouse. Being rolled
in sludge and stamped on sounded like some kind
of medieval torture – not to mention the sheer
horror I felt as a teenager of getting naked, with or
without my mother. I was always a firm “no” when
she took herself off to the Ginseng bathhouse in
Kings Cross, even though she always floated back,
slick and soft and smelling of honey and cucumber.
In Bodrum some 20 years later, I was more
enthusiastic about having my delicates scrubbed,
pummelled and burnished by a burly and almost-as-
naked Turkish woman. Stripping down next to my
then 62-year-old mother, surrounded by other glorious
glistening bodies of all ages and shapes, it felt like
a re-birth. The two of us were like kids, high on the
adventure of having our hair washed.
Travelling with a parent gives you a front-row seat
to all your biggest differences and, whether you like
it or not, your greatest similarities. We’re both quite
good with languages, but bad with maps. I fold and
Mum rolls. She dances with her thumbs, and I my
knees. I travel with 40 pairs of underpants so I can
avoid washing at all costs. Mum packs seven and a
worn-down bar of savon de Marseille; with just a
week’s worth of black cotton knickers, she converts
any five-star hotel room, New York City brownstone
or river cruise water-closet into a French laundry.
Where my dad kept his cards close to his chest,
Mum and I are more transparent. When a taxi
driver tries to rip us off, it’s personal. And when
our “luxury beachfront accommodation” in Tulum
doesn’t have so much as a bathroom door, let alone
a wall separating bed and porcelain throne, it’s war.Of course, some trips require more planning
and patience than others. My mother loves facts,
and in the months before a trip is the one cutting
out articles and filling folders with snippets on
galleries and neighbourhoods we should visit. She
gets frustrated when I forget to read them, but I, for
the most part, prefer to turn up and stumble across
something on my own that I can later recommend.
After multiple trips, she knows now how beneficial
an apartment can be over a hotel, and how, despite
her dislike of offal, I’m always going to order San
Sebastián’s kallos de bacalao al pil-pil, tell her it’s fish
(knowing full well it’s stomach) and make her try it.
In times of grief, stress or even just too much of
anything, water is the only thing that calms us down.
That’s great when what ails you is sore feet after a
long day wandering the Marché aux Puces in Paris, and
another gommage at the Grande Mosquée in the Latin
quarter awaits. It’s not so foolproof when what should
be calming you – a waterlily-dotted cenote in the middle
of the Mexican jungle, say – decides it has other plans.
ThelattercameintheYucatán,aftera 20-minute
rideinaMadMax-lookingexoskeletonofa van
withblown-outwindows.Theretovisitoneofthe
peninsula’s 2400 registeredcenotes,orsinkholes,we
arrivedtofindtheonlywaytogetintothe“aguadulce”
waterwasviaa ricketyoldzip-line.Tothisday,I don’t
knowwhatI wasthinking,butI letMum,almost
40 yearsmysenior,gofirst.Shepin-dropsgracefully
intotheabysslikea spearofasparagus,emergingwithTravelling with a parent gives
you a front-row seat to all
your biggest differences and,
whether you like it or not,
your greatest similarities.74 GOURMET TRAVELLER
ILLUSTRATIONS LAURA JACOBS.