Seems the ‘Mai Dee’ incident is forgiven.
I opened my door this morning to find a door mat.
The doormat that was unceremoniously removed the morning after the ‘Mai Dee’ incident.
Thais are like children, which has it’s plusses and minuses. They have a childlike enthusiasm and love of life and a childish response to criticism and any confrontation.
I suspect my losing my room key last night (for the second time) and after 3 red wines, 2 Mai Thais, an evening spent with a delightful Polish contingency and telling the staff ‘how stupid’ I am might have had something to do with the forgiveness.
Anyway, me and my dog are very pleased the mat is back. He has a comfortable bed for the night and I can stop rubbing my feet on my trousers to get rid of the sand.
Three days of wall to wall sunshine and it looks as though the patchwork on the tanning quilt is finally joining up.
Not having as much luck with the white spots. The ointment with the hieroglyphics was about as effective as a plaster on a severed leg. The Selsun shampoo, (a good friend who suffers with the same affliction, assured me that it worked), is nice and foamy but when washed off reveals – white spots.
Mai has now given me pure coconut oil. I’m not sure whether it is actually getting rid of the spots but they are certainly going darker. Tip for future travellers to Koh Phangan. Go find Mai and buy her pure coconut oil. 80 baht a bottle and it’s farewell to sun burn.
Son returns to my island on Saturday so am on a mission to find a room for him and for daughter who gets here on Christmas Eve.
There is a lovely resort further up the beach. Not as western as mine, but spacious and set back in the coconut groves, with a huge expanse of white sand that has not as yet been ruined by beach bars. It is more like a village. I decide to enquire as to whether they have rooms.
It’s Black Moon (that means no moon) tide, and as I prepare to walk up the beach, I discover – there is no beach, well none where I am. The black tide is in and it comes right up to the bar. The bar – which is some 4′ higher than the beach and built on hideous, environmentally destructive and only just hidden by a thin layer of sand, plastic sandbags. The bar that should never have been built this far out.
I wade through the sea to ‘Ibeza Bungalows’, (even the spelling is charming). Here there is sand, 50 glorious white yards of it. The restaurant looks busy, so I decide to settle by the dive school until the breakfast rush (maybe 10 people) is over.
I lie on my beach mat, open my kindle and look upwards.
Now coconut trees afford wonderful shade but lying directly under one that is bulging with ready to drop fruit is possibly not the best location to pick. I shift everything ten feet.
Carol arrives. Carol is young, toned and an even golden brown. I hate her. I can’t hate her, she’s so sweet. She offers to look after my fins and snorkel while I go and enquire about the rooms.
She is from Switzerland, a nurse, and has been on the island since April working as a dive instructor. She goes back to nursing and Switzerland in March and has mixed feelings. She is ready to go home but knows she will miss the island.
Booking a room proves impossible, even with Joy from the massage ‘parlour’ (I say that loosely) acting as my interpreter. It seems Ibeza doesn’t do bookings. Ibeza doesn’t even do bookings if you offer to pay for the whole lot in advance. They tell me that the other resorts do bookings.
I KNOW THAT! I didn’t say that. I just thought it very loudly.
Seems they like to work in the old fashioned Thai way; turn up on the day and if there’s a room, fine. Suspect that they actually don’t have a clue as to how a booking system works, but hey, thats fine.
“Come back saturday.”
“What if you’re full?”
“It’s quiet.”
“It might be fucking overflowing by Saturday!”
I don’t say that either, I just smiled and nodded understandingly.
I don’t fucking understand!
They do show me the bungalows which are, in all fairness, not as nice as mine, but the location is just so pretty. I agree to come back on Saturday.
I probably won’t. Go back on Saturday.
I’ll probably book rooms in my resort. I am far to British and repressed to take a chance of a room being available on Saturday.
The children will have to settle for high tide, no beach, a dog who thinks he belongs to me and ‘maybe’ a doormat.