Monday, May 04, 2009

Upstairs Downstairs on the inverted pyramid

If you want to mug a Royal, the time to get around the 24hr. security may be on the flight, if not at the hostel:
The bill for her protection on this trip alone is thought to be in the region of £100,000.
The mugging happened as Eugenie and two friends were walking along in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It appears the thieves mistook the royal for a normal backpacker.
[...]
The mugging happened at night and began when one of Eugenie's friends took her purse out. At that point the SO14 Special Branch officers were just a few feet away.

Although Eugenie, who is paying for her own travel, has booked economy airfares and is bunking down with friends in £15-a-night beachfront hostels, her security officers are travelling business class and staying in up-market hotels.
Princess Eugenie mugged in Cambodia as thieves pelt her bodyguards with rocks | Mail Online

Poor Cambodian thugs. This is one time I sympathize with the third-world marginals confounded by Western status symbols. How dare the princess play the romantic backpacker!

2 comments:

Dag said...

I read "15 pounds per night...." In Cambodia! Is this some kind of joke? I have a friend who lived in a luxury hotel on a Cambodian lakeside, all by herself, lit by candles, cooked on a butane stove, and was a backpacking romantic, who paid-- $2.00 U.S. per month. Free snakes as well. Royals slum at at a pretty high level, seems to me. Don't know, having never stayed in a 15 pound per night hostel in the Third World.

truepeers said...

The article suggests they have been in other countries, like Thailand. 15 quid in Phuket would not be luxury nowadays. Anyway, Dag, there was a time when 15 pounds was the annual income of a not totally penurious sort; time and tide...