BYO Red Flag

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We head down to the beach. The sand's so white that it hurts our eyes, and the sun's not even out. There are lots of signs telling us what we're not allowed to do. Apparently topless and nude sunbathing are ”strictly prohibited under Malaysian law“. This is a lot different to Europe where topless sunbathing seemed to be almost compulsory in some places, particularly if you were over sixty. We head in for a dip. The water's almost too warm to be refreshing; it's about twenty degrees warmer than it was the last time we went swimming, which was admittedly in the North Atlantic. We were hoping to see some coral, but the bottom's all fine sand. This doesn't however seem to have deterred a lot of enthusiastic snorkellers; they must really enjoy looking at sand.

There are signs under all the straw huts on the beach saying that if we want service we have to wave a red flag, but these seem to be noticeably absent from our hut and all those around us. I hope we weren't supposed to bring our own. I think I've got a reddish brown tee shirt back in the room; I suppose I could put that on the end of a stick and wave it if we got really desperate.

We fall asleep seemingly forever. I think we might be doing this a lot here. I think I slept well last night, so I'm not sure why lying on the beach doing nothing makes me want to do so again so soon. I always feel guilty when I spend a lot of the day sleeping, but the whole idea of coming here at the end of the trip was to relax and wind down before heading back to reality, so I think I need to overcome my guilt. Actually I can’t be feeling all that guilty; if I was I don’t think I’d be able to sleep.

As we munch on some lunch at the snack restaurant next to the beach we notice two small red flags in a holder on the wall. I wonder if maybe we were supposed to get one of them before we went and set up shop in our straw hut, and wave it if we wanted some service. This would seem to rather defeat the purpose of the exercise. It would be a bit like having to go the hotel kitchen to get a telephone so that you could ring up for room service. I wonder why there are only two flags on the wall, unless maybe the staff don’t want to have to serve more than two straw huts’ worth of people at any one time. I wonder who keeps an eye out for people waving red flags. They're very small, and if we waved one in our hut, which is a long way up the beach, it'd be a bit hard to see from here in the restaurant. I think I might need to get my reddish brown tee shirt after all; it's a lot bigger.

We get chatting to our waiter who's also from Lombok, as apparently are seven other members of the hotel staff. He's very friendly, just like Max was last night, and the service is very quick. On the basis of the evidence so far, the strategy of importing wait staff from other countries seems to be working well.

We head back to the room and fall into dreamland yet again. We've been asleep now for just about the whole day, as well as last night. I begin to wonder if I might have been bitten by one of those flies that give you sleeping sickness; I thought they were only found in Africa but I guess a few of them could have migrated here. I then think again about the cat that bit me the night before last. I hope constantly feeling sleepy isn't a symptom of rabies.

We head down to dinner. As was the case last night, it seems we want the only things on the menu that aren’t available, only tonight this includes Issy's preferred whisky. The only available brand is Johnny Walker Blue, which is about three times the price of all the unavailable brands. We didn’t know that Johnny Walker came in a Blue Label. Issy says that she can’t tell one whiskey from another, so an expensive brand'd be wasted on her. The Blue Label costs the equivalent of a bit over thirty Australian dollars for a single shot. Apparently one of the reasons it's so expensive is that the taxes on alcohol in conservative Muslim Terengganu are exorbitant, and we’re only able to be served alcohol at all because registered hotel guests automatically become de facto members of a club. Issy orders some bourbon instead. She says that she’s pretty sure that it's having the same effect as Johnny Walker Blue, or any other colour label for that matter......

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