I write this update from the swankiest hotel at which I have ever stayed in my short and impoverished adult life. If you have ever met us, you will know that the Sheppards are not wealthy people. We are, at best, Comfortable and spend the majority of our time either staring wistfully at, or bad-mouthing Those People who stay in posh resorts and eat at the Ritz. The Sheppards waitress at the Ritz and suffocate themselves with stolen fois gras canapés when the maitre d' isn't looking or we dress up in our best clothes and pretend to know what the heck we're talking about when the sommelier asks for our wine order in fancy restaurants. We are more ruined aristocrats than New Money.
Having arrived at the Mia resort in Nha Trang and gorged ourselves on complimentary breakfast, taken photos of complimentary breakfast and supped on birthday bucks fizz, it was time for the De Tang Clan (this is our 5-piece girl band name that will rival K-Pop's 2NE1) to rest by the infinity pool. Infinity pools are a scam, by the way: I swam to the edge of infinity and looked over the side expecting to see rushing water and an endless blue horizon and maybe a lone tree branch clinging to some form of cliff face. Instead there was a gravel path and a Vietnamese man searching around in some sort of maintenance cupboard. I smiled at him, but really, I felt betrayed that he was not some form of mythical sea creature. (Both 'Pirates of the Caribbean: at World's End' and 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader' have been on HBO recently. My perception of reality may in some ways be altered by the fiction I consume.)
All this relaxation infinity nonsense couldn't be kept up for long so, prancing around and wiggling my hips like a dog waiting to be thrown a stick, I asked the De Tang Clan who wanted to go and play. Play. Play. Play. Primary 1, who will now be known as Risk Or Death, and whose Big Birthday it is this Sunday, hence the Weekend of Luxury, decided that sea kayaking sounded like the playtime activity of choice.
Sea kayaking! Li Hi!
This sounded like the best and most fun idea of all time ever, so off we frolicked down the private beach, singing the Baywatch theme tune. Alarm bells began ringing through the Li Hi fog when the volume of the waves pounding mercilessly against the long-suffering sand seemed to be somehow amplified the closer we got to the sea. The red flags dotted along the beach also made me a little nervous as did Risk or Death's snorting in the face of the offer of a life jacket.
"Life jacket?" she scoffed, like a fifteen-year-old cheerleader of whom we are all afraid, "I am not wearing a life jacket."(Disclaimer: none of us are afraid of Risk or Death. She is way too maternal.)
Luckily, PETA and I were those pale-looking nerds at school who pulled their socks up to their knees and wanted to play women's rugby and didn't have the social skills to say no to our parents telling us to roll our skirts down. So we took the life jackets, gratefully because as adults, we now have a certain fondness for Life as a concept.
The following conversation with a member of Vietnamese staff from the hotel was the icing on the Birthday Cake of Warning that we continued to ignore:
Risk or Death: we can take the kayaks?
Vietnamese Staff: uh... it is vey dangerous...
Me: we can charge it to our room.
VS: of course.
RoD: great! Emma, are you alright in the single kayak?
VS: uh... the sea...
RoD: it's fine!
The Vietnamese are, as a peoples, incredibly willing to help each other out and please you and will go to great lengths to see that you are happy, even when you haven't asked them to, so this dude's reluctance was a bit of a hint.
It was in a floaty sort of dream then, that I found myself dragging a kayak down to an angry set of waves, urged on by a blindly confident Risk Or Death who assured us all that she did this sort of thing all the time in Cornwall. Could it be, I wondered, that I had stumbled across someone who was more stubbornly insane than even myself? Did she have even more voices in her head than me? Did she have the happy voice that hummed merrily as destruction approached?
Thankfully, the leggy Dutch manager who had spoken to us earlier came sprinting down the beach at this point, arms outstretched, desperately trying to reach us before it was too late.
"I've just... got off... the phone... with my management," she panted, doubled over, "and I'm very sorry, but we cannot let you kayak today."
PETA, The Hare and I visibly slumped in relief. Risk Or Death pouted in disappointment. It was her birthday, after all and if she wanted to kill us all by smashing our heads open on the ocean floor, was that not her anniversary right? It was her birthday and she'd die if she wanted to."Can't we even swim?" she asked, petulantly.
The Vietnamese staff began to nod, eager to win back some sort of customer service points, but PETA, The Hare and I had already begun dragging kayaks back up the beach. Refusing to walk away empty handed, Risk Or Death then simply walked into the sea and dived into the nearest Wave of Destruction.
"Risk Or Death...?" I called.
"Risk Or Death!"
"RISK OR DEATH!"
Time stopped and, as is her wont, PETA froze, with her gammy shoulder and her mouth open like some broken-stringed muppet. Half a second, a whole second - we all thought, "Well, at least she died happy and full of eggs royale. It was nice knowing her." A second and a half...
Maybe it wasn't even that long, but up she bobbed and waded her way out of the water, finally satisfied that today she had Risked but not Died.
"Yeah," she said, stumbling slightly, "Pretty strong. Maybe we'll go tomorrow." And then, to the Vietnamese Staff: "We go tomorrow?"
Yes, the eager man nods. Tomorrow.
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