This side of paradise

The Perhentian Islands are the textbook tropical paradise boasted about in the holiday brochures. I sleep in a little dorm with a door that opens out onto a little beach lined with palm trees, a blue sky and a bluer sea. Hammocks and wooden swings and little tables and chairs made from tree stumps, marked out with chess boards. It's beautiful and peaceful and full of a few quiet, well behaved tourists and their oddly pacified children.



I soon discover that the Adonis has no practical skills. I half expect dryads to come and spin him a bed of gossamer silk, but instead I have to offer my help to pitch his very rudimentary tent.

I spend my days swimming, eating, snorkeling and reading. It is paradise; all clear turquoise waters, lying in twin hammocks at night discussing our place in the universe, moonrise and the rustle of waves meeting the shore.

I get up with the fish at 7 each day, both willingly and before breakfast, to watch the fish eat theirs. Floating over spectacular reefs with technicolour dreamcoat fish of every denomination feeding on the coral is my new favourite way to start the day. I feel like I'm on a TV show about snorkeling, hanging out with giant parrotfish, spotting rays and teasing schools of tiny silver fish, letting them circle around me in their thousands. I brace myself for the reef sharks, certain that they will sniff out my fear and find me first, but they are adorably small and cute, like the soft cuddly toy version of sharks in the aquarium giftshop. On my best morning I spot five, which probably means I saw two sharks several times. There are huge clam shells as big as my head, which sink me down when I try to pick them up, and legless blue/mauve jellyfish and purple corals. I find Nemo, then find him again and again, and wish he would play harder to get.



Behind our dorm are little jungle paths, leading off to still more deserted beaches, where giant sea turtles lurk (sightings: two, two different ones!) where no Starbucks or McDonalds will ever reach.

I become a creature of the water, eschewing the shower, because I am never out of the sea for more than a few hours at a time. My hair takes on the colour and consistency of straw. My feet and legs are covered with forgotten scrapes and gazes from the coral. I am a savage being that clambers over rocks barefoot and communes with monitor lizards and befriends the needle fish. Make up, jewellery, even clothing all seem to prosaic and tedious now.

I catch sight of myself in a mirror one day, and this strange, half wild savage creature stares back at me. Brilliant green eyes staring out of a dark brown face. A filthy gypsy tan, that makes me look dirty rather than healthy. I may start selling pegs from my bunk. I avoid the mirror from then on. I'm a little scared of the wild girl with the eyes of a child from a horror movie, whose imaginary friends make her do Bad Things, and who draws harrowing, violent pictures of family members at school.


My First Monitor Lizard. Harmless but terrifying dragons of the forest.

It is pleasant to look only upon beauty for a few days: the trees, the underwater world, the Adonis and the Hot French Dad, who makes eyes at me at breakfast each morning. I return the gaze happily, til one of his flaxen haired spawn comes bounding into view and drags him off for a game of chess.

I raid the communal bookshelf, finding scant amount of English books, confirming some of my worst fears about British people: that they do not travel, and when they do, they do not read. I manage to find some F. Scott Fitzgerald and from the laze of my hammock, let Anthony and Gloria fall unwisely in love, or something like it. Then I slum it with Push, by Gabourey Sidibe, which is basically Tess of the D'Ubervilles set in the 80s Bronx. If Alec gave Tess HIV.



In the evenings, James and I discuss our respective adoptive countries. We appear to both love n hate the same things about Korea and Japan, and neither of us see living there as a long term solution to our wanderlust.

He drifts off into talk of his time in the Moroccan Sahara, retreats he has been on, the joys of mushrooms, his adventures in northern India, living with sadhus and smoking charas. I'm yet to meet anyone on my travels who didn't have a more profound experience in India than I did, but I will persevere.

I wonder how long this existence can continue. It is a little too perfect. Any minute now, I expect one of the Hands in the kitchen to commit an immense crime of passion, and the sea will run red with blood like that scene in The Beach, and we will only have Leonardo DiCaprio to save us.

James is on the verge of becoming dull and I want to see what life is like on Long Beach, on the other side of the island, where I've heard talk of drinking and dancing in the evenings and beach bonfires.

Right before I leave, I snap a picture of the Adonis, and to my dismay, watch his features dissolve into a plebeian mass on camera. I try to keep the disappointment from my face. He will never make it as a Calvin Klein model. I wonder if he doesn't secretly know this. Oh, to be cursed with unphotogenic beauty! We all have our cross to bear.