A blue sky, a turquoise sea, white sand and a few palm trees: here I am in heaven! Unfortunately, finding the paradise on this vast planet is not that easy!
To reach the postcard paradise, it sometimes takes courage and perseverance, but the reward is not always at the end of the beach!
The boat that leads to the enchanted island is old, noisy, uncomfortable. Everything is broken, ruined, old, irretrievable. The life jackets are piled up behind a mountain of luggage, so I hope we won’t have to use them. It’s a two-hour trip at best.
It’s already complicated when we board the boat. Travellers are not taken care of. Everyone looks at each other and asks “is this the right boat? ».
But I don’t care about all that, because if it’s difficult to get there, the inaccessibility makes the place more desirable, full of promise.
The arrival is even more rock’n’roll: there is no port. Several Long Tail Boats pick up travellers from the boat that stays offshore. The price is fixed from the start, fifty baths per person. Of course all this is already included in the ticket you bought, but… if you don’t pay, you stay on the boat.
Three or four long tails are parked in a row near the boat and it’s scary. You can’t keep your balance. You have to get in there and you have to hang on as tight as you can. Well, that’s good, man. You’ve got to earn heaven, and then you’ve got to be adventurous.
The suitcases are transferred with a delicacy of tyrex. If it’s not the luggage, you’re treated, I say as a person, with the same consideration as a bag of dirty laundry. Like sheep. Finally, we are landed on the beach.
The island is tiny, I figure it can’t be that hard to find the right address. It’s paradise here, isn’t it?
But even though the island is really small, you still have to get from one place to another. After many inconveniences and tricks, I decide to follow the good advice of a old tour guide picked up in Bangkok. He recommends a place in the north of the island, facing the sea, not expensive at all, no boat noise, but with a nice atmosphere.
Yeah. But, the irascible landlady explains to me that everything is “full” and that prices have changed. For a shanty in palm facing the sea certainly, but with nothing in it, I’m saying nothing, not even a roll of toilet paper, it’s eight hundred baths and nothing less. Otherwise I can go somewhere else. Paradise at an exorbitant cost even when you choose simplicity.
Here is paradise: a bungalow on stilts facing the sea, immense and transparent, white sand, an immense sky
The bungalow… Disjointed tree trunks, two wooden mattresses, a funny grated plaid as a blanket, no toilet flush, no shelves, only one electric plug and a neon light to light the whole. The coconut walls are smashed, full of holes. It still suits me, I’m not going to spend my day in it, paradise is sobriety and simplicity.
Besides, I prefer simple places, a bit wild. The desert side might give me a little breathing space, a place to settle down.
I’m off to explore the island, which can be visited in less than 2 hours, but night falls early here, so it’s quickly time to go back in my leaf hut. It’s dark as in an oven now. I’ve taken some landmarks to find my way back: the wasteland, the school, turn right after the laundromat, turn at the Ricci House sign, straight ahead to the football banner, left after the big red boxes and then straight ahead. I like the idea that this haven of rest is badly marked, it’s like a treasure hunt.
As soon as the sun sets, the beach is plunged into darkness. Here and there, lights and offshore on the sea of black ink, a few fishing boats cast greenish reflections
The wind in the coconut trees makes a strange popping sound. A black dog with white legs accompanies me to the hut and sits on the plastic armchair on the terrace. I hire him as a companion for a few potatoes chips. I think he took pity on me. All of a sudden everything is silent, everything is closed, turned off, asleep. When I finally lie down under the mosquito net, lulled by the light sound of the waves and the comings and goings of the hermit crabs on the shore, I really feel like I’ve reached the end of the world. The one we almost all dream about. The one printed on travel catalogues.
It’s not that easy to find this piece of paradise, and in the end it doesn’t look like the idea we have of it.
A few hours before dawn, the motorboats make a hell of a noise and after midnight you have to deal with the terribly noisy Chinese neighbours, the greedy partygoers. It would almost be heaven if I could turn the sound off. It would be almost that, with a bit more softness in the mattress, just a bit. Honest, kinder, friendlier natives, too.
All of this is only scenery that promises us silence, a little solitude but not too much, rest, little obligation, no watch, no appointment, space to occupy and beauty to contemplate.
Here it is not paradise, it is not hell either, it is a draft of Eden.
But what’s the point, I’ve seen enough beautiful places to know it, for me, paradise is a Grail, a quest, it’s a journey.
Paradise is not a place strictly speaking. It’s where the ones we love are, and who love us back
Paradise is not an island, it’s not a place on a map. A pristine white sandy beach can be sad, a 4-star hotel gloomy.
Finding your piece of paradise is a delicate combination of the right place, the right weather, with the right people… and the right bed too a little.
It can just as easily be in Spartan comfort as in a luxury one, in an ugly city or in the bare countryside.
I sometimes found it, this place, I stayed there a little longer than elsewhere, but in the end, I always left. Paradise, except in religious books where it is eternal and always in the same place, does not last long on earth and changes place continually. This is surely what makes it inaccessible.
Paradise does not exist, it is we who invent it as we need it. Paradise is where we are loved, accepted, welcomed, where nothing threatens, no pain, no sorrow. It is a place where one has a place, unconditionally, without passport or credit card, forever.
Paradise is an enchanting parenthesis, your soul at peace, with or without coconut trees.
