I was woken up by the pissing rain this morning, but (for the moment at least) even rain is fun on holiday. We headed down the hill to breakfast under a big umbrella, laughing. Maybe if it rains for the next fortnight we will be less amused.
It eased off as we ate our food though. A bird sat by our table whistling and cawing in an attempt to get some croissant. It puffed out its chest and then seemed to point to the ground in front of it with its beak as if to say, "Put your food here." It was a confident display, both arrogant and cute and it worked. I gave it some free pastry.
I had a lot more energy today, even managing a 45 minute visit to the gym, but it still wasn't sunbathing weather so we walked up the road, out of the massive hotel complex to investigate the nearby town. Along the way men attempted to befriend us in the hope that I might want to buy a suit. "Where you from?" asked one.
"London," I replied.
"Lovely jubbly," he said, because that is how everyone in London speaks. It made me laugh, but I wondered if he had a similarly racist repertoire for every geographical location. It was almost worth hanging around to see what impressions he had. Mind you, I watched an old episode of Bullseye a few days ago and back in the 70s and 80s it was pretty much all Jim Bowen did with regional variations amongst his contestants. "You're from Wales, is it, boyo?" and so on. But I wouldn't buy a suit off Jim Bowen and I wasn't going to buy a suit off of this man either. How dare he think a whole city speaks that way? The plonker.
The nearby town turned out to be just a collection of tourist shops and restaurants. I'd hoped we might find a small and authentic local cafe where we could eat the kind of Thai food that the Thais eat, but everything mainly catered towards the kind of European tourist who goes abroad to eat pizza. Sad eyed girls sat outside a massage parlour. I don't think it was that type of massage parlour, but evenso it must be a slightly depressing job. We had some flavourless noodles in a restaurant. The people at the other tables also looked quite sad. Couples sat in silence, tattoed men drank from big bottles of beer. My holiday has been making me happy. Maybe I've been doing something wrong. But this place made me feel sad too. Commerce slapped down in the middle of paradise, making everyone feel dirty and wrong. I was glad to head back to the hotel.
I managed to stay awake all afternoon for once, reading and enjoying the peace and quiet of our isolated room on a hillside overlooking the sea. The hotel complex spread over most of the bay, and there's lots of restaurants and pools, but we're in a more tranquil area, designated for couples, with (as far as I can see) no kids. We headed out to the main area for dinner though and sat an a verandah where docile little flies played on our table. Some of them flew too close to the candle and ended up falling into the liquid wax, which obviously killed them and yet they seemed to be flying/swimming in this pool of molten lava. It was oddly beautiful. Perhaps one day they will be found in their waxen grave by future archaeologists. My girlfriend thought that future aliens might be able to extract our blood from them and make a human version of Jurassic Park. But I don't think these were bitey flies. I had made the mistake of squashing the mosquito who held our hopes of regeneration against a wall. He really had been Jesus - through him we could have had eternal life.
A man with a guitar entered the restaurant and started seranading the table next to us with some Elvis Presley songs. I hoped he wouldn't come and serenade us as I find that kind of thing a bit embarrassing. The man at the next table gave him a tip in gratitude for his slightly rubbish singing. I was tempted to offer more money for him to leave us alone, but that would have been as embarrassing as having to sit and endure his singing. He was a fellow entertainer and maybe I should have shown him more generosity of spirit, but we were a captive audience and had not requested his presence and I just wanted to talk to my girlfriend about flies in wax. But he sang us some Beatles songs anyway. My girlfriend clapped, but I didn't. I am horrible. I didn't have any money to tip him with anyway. At least the bird at breakfast was satisfied with a bit of a bun. I wasn't sure that giving this man some bread out of our bread basket would have been enough. Especially if I had just thrown it on the floor for him to peck at.
I still felt guilty about my misanthropy, but does anyone actually enjoy being serenaded? I wouldn't walk around a restaurant and do jokes to people who hadn't asked me to do them. It's a bit of an imposition and one that assumes that everyone enjoys a certain type of music. He had asked if we had any requests and I wondered if I could get him to do something by the Sex Pistols, but I didn't ask. I just felt awkward.
But maybe I am the weird one. With my mosquito Jesus and my dead insects animated by the heat of a candle. And I hadn't had my afternoon nap so no wonder I was grouchy.
