an idiot abroad mexico — a thorough investigation

mexico, in the show, is a place where karl eats things he did not order. mexico, in real life, is approximately 762,000 square miles i will never see, because t…

the ellipsis is the cold open. an idiot abroad mexico, as a search query and as a life problem, has two answers. the show’s answer is karl pilkington walked through tequila country with a face that suggests his body is in mexico but his mood is still in manchester. mine is a tab i opened at 9:47am, on a monday, between two emails about a spreadsheet nobody is sharing.

writing this from my desk. the boss is doing the monday vendor walkthrough that always runs 90 minutes long. i have, by my calculation, until lunch.

i should explain. this morning, before work, i stopped at the coffee shop. the barista — the one who already knows the order — asked me, while pouring, if i’d ever been to mexico. i said no. she said she went last year. she said “tulum” and “mezcal” and “ten days” and i nodded the way i nod at stefan when stefan describes a wine. then i paid four dollars for a coffee that costs ninety cents to make, walked the two blocks to the office, sat down here, and typed an idiot abroad mexico into the search bar before i’d opened a single email.

that’s how i got the idea. the barista, briefly, had something to do with travel. i did not.

an idiot abroad mexico: the mexico episode of an idiot abroad sends karl pilkington across the country chasing the day of the dead, eating things he did not order, and being driven through landscapes he keeps describing as “alright”. it is, of all the show’s destinations, the one that most resembles a man having a long, quiet argument with a holiday.

the show’s mexico, in case you, like me, are working from memory

i watched it on a sunday, three years ago, on a laptop balanced on what was then the second yoga mat (this is the third yoga mat now, under the couch, possibly evolving). karl is sent to mexico for the day of the dead, which, in his words, is “a lot”. skull masks. a tour guide patient with him the way a kindergarten teacher is patient with a child who has just learned the word “no”. food karl will not eat. a hotel he describes with the tone i use when describing the elevator in my building.

what i remember best is karl’s face on the imdb page for an idiot abroad, which i opened in another tab — the face you make when somebody hands you a fork and a problem at the same time. forks and problems are a personal subject. moving on.

mexico vs the rest: a table i drafted between two emails

i take comparative seriously, in the way a man takes anything seriously when he has 38 minutes and a tab open. so — table. mexico in the show against the other destinations the show sent karl to. you decide which column you live in.

mexico is the gentlest of karl’s destinations. the china episode asks him to eat a toad. egypt makes him climb. brazil throws him into carnival, which is the worst possible holiday for a man who responds to noise the way karl does. mexico just walks him through a country and asks him to feel something about death, which he sort of does and sort of doesn’t, and either way you can watch it happen on his face.

my mexico, which is a tab i opened at 9:47am

i have not been to mexico. i have not, in fact, been to anywhere. i own a tie i bought for a wedding (tom’s, 2018) and have not put on since. a passport that expired in september 2021. a suitcase from the supermarket bulk place because it was $19 and i thought i’d use it. it lives on top of the wardrobe, watching me.

so my version of an idiot abroad mexico is, in practice, browser tabs. flight prices. weather in oaxaca. a sentence on a forum that said “do not rent a car your first time.” a youtube clip i watched twice with the sound off because i was at this desk. that’s the trip. cost $0 and one episode of mild guilt.

the bar verdict, courtesy of mike, who has not left the state since 2017

i ran this thesis past mike, the man at the corner bar who tells the truth in the tone other men use to lie, on monday night. (mondays. mondays are objectively better than fridays — that is the pivot of this entire post. fridays are crowded, expensive, and full of people pretending to be happy. mondays are the bar at half capacity. mike behind the counter. one tv on mute. a real conversation possible.) i told mike i was writing about the mexico episode. he said: “the one with the skulls?” i said yes. he said: “i remember the skulls.” mike said it with the conviction of a man who has not filed his taxes since 2019 but is, in spite of this, generally correct about the world.

i asked if he’d ever been to mexico. he said he’d been to a town in arizona that was “basically mexico, just with worse food.” i asked if he meant it as a compliment. mike said he didn’t mean it as anything. mike means most things as nothing. that is what makes mike useful.

the karl problem, also known as: why a man who hates travel is the perfect travel host

the trick of the show, which took me three rewatches and one barista to land on: karl is the perfect travel host because he doesn’t pretend. every other travel show is a man in linen telling you that this market in marrakech “changed his life”. the man’s life was not changed. he got a per diem. karl looks at the market, says it smells like a bin and he’d rather be home, and you, the viewer, feel seen, because your life is also like that, except you don’t even have a market.

this is why the entire idiot-abroad project works as cultural cover for people like me. the show legitimises staying put. it implies, without ever saying it, that the wisest people are the ones who never leave the room. i’d like that to be true. i have a couch and a tie i don’t wear, and that’s most of the equipment.

findings — what i’m taking from this, and what i’m leaving on the desk

in my hierarchy of the seven destinations the show sent its host to, mexico is the most quietly recommended. the one i’d press on someone new to the show. brazil is too loud. egypt is too hot on screen, which is impressive given screens have no temperature. china is too toad-based.

mexico, on screen, is a man on a long bus, looking out a window, mouthing the word “alright” to himself. that is the tone i live in. that is the tone of this entire post. that is the tone of most wednesdays at this desk.

a slack from procurement just landed. marking it read without reading. that is also a tone.

the seventh microwave is buzzing in the office kitchen because somebody, not me, is microwaving fish. the building has a policy. the policy is being violated. nobody will say anything. this is, in a small way, also an idiot abroad mexico — except the abroad is the kitchen, and the idiot is whoever is doing this to me at 11:02am.

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