Wish I was there… (Picture: Rex Features)

Most of us are guilty of somewhat maybe exaggerating our lives on social media a bit.

But Dutch student Zilla van den Born took things a few steps further by faking an entire exotic five-week holiday across South East Asia from the comfort of her own home.

From snorkelling in clear blue seas to visiting temples, sunbathing on idyllic beaches to trying new exciting foods, Zilla did it all.Except she didn’t. In fact, despite being waved off at the airport by her family, she didn’t even leave the country.

Amsterdam to Cambodia in a few clicks of the mouse (Picture: Rex)

Instead, the 25-year-old graphics student spent the next 42 days at holed up at home in Amsterdam with her boyfriend, skilfully Photoshopping herself into a variety of envy-inducing holiday snaps, which she then posted on Facebook.




So why did she do it? Well apparently Zilla wanted to demonstrate just how far we can use social media to manipulate the image we put out to the world.

Zilla’s envy-inducing faux Facebook page (Picture: Rex)

She explained: ‘I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media – we create an ideal world online which reality can no longer meet.

‘My goal was to prove how common and easy it is for people to distort reality. Everyone knows that pictures of models are manipulated, but we often overlook the fact that we manipulate reality also in our own lives.’

Zilla’s authentic Buddhist temple was actually in Amsterdam, not Cambodia (Picture: Rex features)

And while she made her point in style, and we have to admit, we’re kinda jealous at her mad Photoshop skills, we still think we’d have preferred an exotic holiday ourselves.

Still, if you fancy treating yourself to a faux-cation, check out how she did it in the video below.

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