swimming without water

So, I imagined myself on this long skinny whitesand beach, with palms and sparkling water, and craggy islands in the bay, and nightly thunderstorms on the horizon, and well-spaced thatched bungalows going at a 150 baht a night and a balcony with a hammock and a little table perhaps, and a not-too-far internet cafe but not much else around, and cheap motorbikes for hire for special days, and good meals at 40 baht a piece.

I imagined it this way because this is pretty much the way it was, I am sure, last time I was on Thai beaches.

And every morning I would wake at 6am and I would go for a jog along the beach, a fair distance, and a bit of a workout, some upper-body stuff, a swim, out to an island perhaps, and a day of writing and reading and studying Arabic, and the incredible water stretching out like forever.

Now, I must admit the transport here, rather than the advertised 6 hours took about 11 to get here, and we arrived after dark, and I let myself be guided by a 40 year old Belgian Hindi who is studying yoga in India and loves "The Power of Now" by Eckart Tolle, and that the place he recommended didn't even have vacancies, and so we were left with no choice (in the dark) than to take the neighbouring establishment, whose huts were seemingly built only as spillover from the more popular, and thus full, place next door, and whose huts are not on the beach at all but in the jungle and close together and the nearby shoreline is filled with rocks and I'm sure when I look around I'll find right what I'm looking for... I admit this, but:

At the moment my dream is being pretty much shattered here, good readers.

Coming over on the boat at sunset, though, the water surface did prism into layers of amber and mica, and navy ghosts sliding sideways across the swell. Which helped take the mind off the fat, red Norweigan family with infants sporting bright blonde mullets, and the smug Americans talking about the various merits of their respective Oakleys.

Things there is a lot of here:
1. Mosquitoes.
2. Trees.
3. Israelis.
4. Electronic music.

Tomorrow of course, I am sure I will be singing praises about this tropical island paradise.