Le Tour Eiffel

Back from another holiday, albeit a shorter one this time. Still recovering from post-holiday hangover in which the symptoms could range from mental and physical fatigue to laziness to cope with real-life to-do-list. It's just your brain in the process of switching off the holiday mode. Those people who travel for a living, man, what a life that must be. I'm jealous.

Traveling has a lot of appeal. On one hand, it's the anticipation of finally getting to see the place that you have spent time researching about while planning your vacation. On the other hand, it's like a mental refreshment, getting out of your comfort zone and figuring your way out in someplace new. More than anything, I love traveling because of the stories you are bound to pick up along the way.

Which brings us to this story.

Over the decades, scientists, skeptics and believers alike have debated over the existence of bigfoot (yes, bigfoot; bear with me, you'll see where this one is going pretty soon) and I must say, I am all for team bigfoot. I mean, the world would be too boring if we choose to dismiss anything beyond any scientific explanation, backed with cold, hard proof. Though that doesn't mean I believe in fairies and elves and hobbits. Come one, I'm not that naive. Or nuts.

So back to the story. You'd thought that Paris, a city bustling with tourists all-year round, would be the last place you would bump into a bigfoot, right? Well, think again.

It was noon, the sun was quite unforgiving that day. We were under the tower of what is supposedly one of the most romantic monument on Earth. The queue to get the ticket was impossibly long, so we were just chilling around people-watching, having a nice conversation with 2 other Malaysians we had just met. After a while, we excused ourself to go admire the tower from another view. Even though the tower is ubiquitous, especially around the city of Paris (you can find the image printed on almost everything, from umbrellas to postboxes), the hype of the monument is actually not really overrated. The sight of the tower with bare eyes, its tip pointing proudly towards the sky is quite breath-taking. And romantic. Really.

That was when I noticed 'it'. The elusive black creature of the myths. Out of nowhere, amongst the crowd, there it was. I started to panic when I realized that its eyes were directed our way. Well, you must understand, even though I want bigfoot to be real, at that time, the creature caught me off guard, I wasn't ready.

I alerted my boyfriend with a quick nudge and signaled for us to make a quick move before the bigfoot got to us, which was what was exactly on its mind, judging by the determined look it was giving us. Our trick was to move in a random manner among the tourists, in hopes to confuse the bigfoot and it would loose our trail after a while.

Obviously that ploy didn't work because when I stole a look behind my back, its evil face was inches away from mine, eyes staring right into mine, teeth showing menacingly, challenging me to make my next move. My feet were rooted to the ground, I was speechless. Crap, we are trapped.

My boyfriend turned towards me, a look of defeat planted across his face, and said, "Come on, give it up, let's get it over with." He fished a coin from his pocket and handed it to the bigfoot. Motioning for me to get closer to the hairy creature while getting out his camera from the bag.

Cringing I inched closer to the hairy creature, mind you, I don't have anything against hairy creatures, it's just that they HAVE to be cute as well for them to be likeable, like these chaps:

A few snapshots later, happy that it is now 2 Euros richer, the bigfoot walked away, continuing its hunt to find the next prey amongst the relentless crowd under Le Tour Eiffel.