Life on a Thailand island - 'The Nunnery'

Just when you think life can’t get much better…it does. I saw a small ad which flashed up, briefly, on Facebook, about a writers’ workshop on a Thai island.
So I joined up!
And it was great!
It was held at The Nunnery (name has been changed to protect the innocent) which is quite well-known in the UK as several excellent reviews have been written about it. This is the brochure entry that I could write some day.

Come to the Nunnery and leave the real world behind. Many who come here for a week stay for a month. This is because they cannot face the difficult, often hazardous climb off the small speedboat which has conveyed them across choppy seas. Anxious as always to provide an excellent service, sickbags are free or you can vomit into the sea. This is as long as you have not eaten any plastic recently: we try our very best to be truly eco-friendly. A favourite timewasting pastime of our long-term residents is watching people jump off the boat. Highest marks are awarded to those who fall backwards into the surf and soak their rucsacs. Gold stars if they are carrying an ipod.
This island paradise is set on a remote, palm-fringed beach. We have a wide range of huts and luxurious houses to suit every wallet. Unfortunately they are always full. Or possibly double-booked, so that you have to leave your accommodation at a strange time in the day – or night. Often at (literally) a moment’s notice. We do this deliberately – we feel it adds excitement and spontaneity to your stay as you never really know where you will sleep each night. Or with whom.
Our accommodation is beautifully positioned in secluded locations up a steep hillside. We have avoided signposts and adequate lighting; we feel that arriving at your home – or arriving anywhere – should be seen as an achievement. It is also an exciting way to make friends and influence people, by asking for, or giving, directions. However, we do not suggest giving wrong directions to the same person too often as the Nunnery is a place of peace, harmony and love. And we do not have a hospital nearby.
Sample the delicious, healthy food in our restaurant. Our menu is filled with exciting recipes, each of which is carefully described. We have done this to help you survive the hunger pangs as you wait a) to be served, b) to receive the food. We are attempting to gain an entry in The Guinness Book of Records for the slowest service in the world. This is another reason why many people stay for a month. They are awaiting the order which they placed on the first day. Our restaurant speciality is serving the wrong things to people; again, this is part of the Nunnery’s delightful emphasis on spontaneity. If our guests always received what they ordered, life could become boring. And what a delightful way to make friends, as you wander amiably around the restaurant, asking if anyone would swap a spirulina milkshake for a health-giving salad made entirely from wheatgrass.
“But what can I do to fill those empty hours” I hear you ask. If finding your room and waiting for your food does not provide enough joy and satisfaction, the Nunnery has other delights to entrance you. The yoga hall has discovered a unique way to test the focus of its participants by allowing a 3 foot snake to drop from the roof. If that is not enough excitement, then you can undertake the Nunnery’s trademark fast.
Our fast is special. You are medically supervised throughout, given soups and juices at regular intervals and you regularly eat clay. And spiruina, which has the flavour and texture of rancid mucus. Enemas make sure that you are thoroughly cleansed - by the end of your time with us you have a totally, completely pure gut. Waiting for our restaurant food is our economy version, though you cannot book ahead for this. However, it leads to the same excellent results.
We like to make our guests feel wanted so we arrange a grand finale to everyone’s stay when we present them with the bill. This provides more excitement for our long-term guests, many of whom have stayed with us for years because they cannot produce the money to pay their own bill. We achieve this excellent result by:
a) refusing to accept credit cards.
b) Refusing to accept anything other than Thai bhat. The fact that 99% of our customers are not Thai and have dollars a-plenty in their wallets adds a certain frisson to that eagerly anticipated final encounter, particularly when they wave the dollars in our faces in a most un-nunnery-ish manner.
c) Getting the bill totally wrong. We like to include at least 6 errors. The best ones are when we get the accommodation entirely wrong and charge a budget room at the luxury rate. Guests have been known to jump onto the reception desk and gibber like apes. This provides excellent, free entertainment for those waiting for food. We specialise in smaller mistakes, however, such as putting the wrong food down, charging fasting people for double portions of Thai curry and billing abstainers for half-a-dozen ‘Sex on the Beaches’ on Free Mike nights.
d) If you really want to know, Mike is being regularly fed and he is very happy doing the washing-up for the next 2 years.

So, there you have it; life in our very own tropical paradise, an oasis of love and spontaniety. Book your place now. We won’t have kept a record of it but, when you arrive, we will have such sweet smiles when we tell you to trek off that you will find it a pleasure to do just that.