Travel they say improves the mind, An irritating platitude, which frankly, entrenous, Is very far from true. Personally I've yet to find that longtitude and latitude can educate those scores of monumental bores Who travel in groups and herds and troupes Of varying breeds and s**es Till the whole world reels to shouts and squeals And the clicking of Roliflexes. Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel When the right people stay back home? What compulsion compels them and who the hell tells them To drag their cans to Zanzibar, instead of staying quietly in Omaha The Taj Mahal and the Grand Can*l And the sunny French Rivera Would be less oppressed if the Middle West Would settle for somewhere rather nearer Please do not think that I criticize or cavel at a genuine urge to roam But why, oh why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home And mind their business when the right people stay back home with television when the right people stay back home I'm merely asking why the right people stay back home Just when you think romance is ripe it rather sharply dawns on you That each sweet serenade is for the tourist trade Any attractive native type who resolutely fawns on you Will give as his address American Express There isn't a rock between Bangkok and the beaches of Hispianola That does not recoil from suntan oil and the gurgle of Coca-Cola Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel When the right people stay back home? What explains this ma** mania to leave Pennsylvania And clack around like flocks of geese Demanding dry martinis on the isles of Greece In the smallest street, where the gourmets meet, They invariably fetch up And it's hard to make them accept a steak that isn't served rare and smeared with ketchup It would take years to unravel, ravel, ravel Every impulse that makes them roam. But why, oh why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home And eat hot doughnuts when the right people stay back home with all that lettuce when the right people stay back home I sometimes wonder why the right people stay back home Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel When the right people stay back home? What peculiar obsessions inspire those processions Of families from Houston Tex with all those cameras around their necks? They will take a train Or an aeroplane For an hour on the Costa Brava, And they'll see Pompeii On the only day When it's up to its a** in molten lava! Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel While they gaze at St. Peter's Dome, But why oh WHY do the wrong people travel When the right people stay at home." and play canasta when the right people stay back home won't someone tell me why the right people stay back home