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I had almost drunk the mini bar dry; the only thing left was Chang beer, which is the cheap dirty beer that the locals drink. Singha is a much better beer and Heineken slightly better than that. Top of the pile is the exports, Corona, Bud. I would rather drink wine. In fact I may buy a bottle if this bloody rain stops for a while. The hotel has a nice wooden writing desk and three rooms. Wooden paneled; like you just walked into a Somerset Maugham short story. It’s called the World Resort and is the perfect honeymoon resort, and if I was a honeymooner, it would be perfect. As it is I am going through a nasty divorce, but I enjoy the fixtures and fittings all the same. Perhaps more so than the honeymooners, being as I am, the only singleton in the resort, I can appreciate the place more than the honeymoon couples. How many newly weds do you see staring with awe at a piece of static furniture. Me, I marvel at the craftsmanship of the bed stand and the vanity unit without contemplating using it as some kind of obscene love prop. The shower is simply somewhere to wash ones self. Not an excuse to let loose and vent some half thought love fantasy witnessed in a low budget eighties movie staring Tom Cruise and his female counterpart.

So, the mini bar dry and the rain stopped I venture out to the romantic seafront restaurant, ask for a table for one. The waiter could hardly believe it. Are you sure? Yes? I said. As I sat down and waited for my steak I noticed something in the water, about thirty yards from where I was sitting on a raised veranda. It looked like a human head. Bobbing up and down. It was not swimming; it was just bobbing up and down in the water. At first I thought it was a coco-nut or some trick of the light. Then I saw what looked like two arms arc out the sea and back down again. I checked the label on my beer and kept looking. Was it a dead body washed up to shore? Maybe from the full moon party. Every month backpackers try and swim over and drown half way only to be washed back to Mainam or Bophut. No - the arms wouldn’t move in that way. The head remained in the same position for around twenty minutes, just bobbing up and down. Was it a late night swimmer? The position of the head hadn’t moved. This, what ever it was, was not swimming. For a crazy moment I thought that perhaps it was a mermaid. Then suddenly the form grew bigger and began to approach the beach. I noticed her shoulder blades at first milky white under the moonlight. Then the hair, long, dark falling beneath the neckline. A dark bikini, narrow waist, wide hips. She walked up onto the beach and began to towel herself dry. On the way back to her room she stopped at my table as I went seventeen shades of red.

“I saw you looking,” She purred in a Scandinavian accent.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were a mermaid.” I reply. She seemed to like this and suppressed a smile.

“Maybe I am,” she said “But without fins.”

“That would make you a maid, or a maiden then” I stammered.

“Yes,” She lifts the towel to start drying her hair revealing all the glory of womanhood in a navy blue bikini. She was all the right shapes in all the right places and had a small tattoo of a cartoon devil above the right side of her bikini line. “I’ll see you later.” She says and winks as she walks away leaving wet footprints on the wooden decking.

I sat waiting for half an hour, drank my beer, and went back to the bungalow.

I never saw her again.

 

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