Lotus Blood

Lotus Blood Part 2

I found my tatty old blue swimsuit, slipped it on along with a pair of shorts and grabbed a towel that wasn't full of glass fragments.

The heat hit full on as the door slammed behind me and the drill shrieked again. I gritted my teeth and prepared to face the endless drilling, hammering and the dust flying everywhere.

I was sure the hotel hated me. I sure hated it. Men and women in bright blue T shirts and hard hats were everywhere, shouting, hammering, jabbering away in Thai and walking in when they shouldn't. We'd been here a month and nothing ever got finished - all totally half-assed and hotter than hell.

The row of bungalows stretched back from the palm trees lining the potholed beach road. Blue Shirts swarmed over the tiled roofs, their yellow hard hats glinting in the sun, racing to get the bungalows ready for the Grand Opening in five days time.

Behind the bungalows, the roofs and gables of the local Thai temple swept upwards in swirling golden serpent shapes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know, Thai temples are spectacular, but for me it's seen one, seen them all.

We were existing; you really couldn't call it living, in the Ugly Block facing the bungalows. Junior had first christened it 'Ugly' and it had stuck, because it was just plain ugly - three harsh floors of concrete, wooden doors and small windows.

"Sawatdee kap, Nam!" A tall gangly Thai lad carrying a plank squeezed past me, brushing his hard chest across my bare shoulders.

"Sure. Hi, Lek."

He grinned and shot off a load of Thai at me, so I shrugged and nodded back at him. He'd tried and tried to talk to me and I didn't understand a word.

Thanks to Mum, I was half-Thai, and it sucked. Back home in England it had been kind of cool, at least my friends, and some boys, thought it was. But, now here in actual Thailand, I was nobody, nothing. And, everybody thought I could speak Thai.

I'm from Manchester, for God's sake.

"Got to go, Lek, swimming!" I waved my arms around, miming.

He laughed, matching my miming and pointed at the sun speckled sea beyond the swaying palm trees.

"Bye, Lek."

His laughter followed me as I clambered down the rickety stairs, dodging round drills, hammers and paint pots.

Haven't they even heard of health and safety?

I came out into the full sun, like walking into a hot, sticky sponge, the so-called lawn hard under my feet. It wasn't proper grass, more like spiky spinach, growing together pretending to be a lawn and crawling with huge biting ants.

More drills shrieked at me, more blue shirts, ladders and buckets everywhere.

"Morning, Nam," a voice boomed from behind me.

"Hi, Dad."

My giant father stood there beaming, bright and happy as ever, a hard hat stuck on his huge bald head. Even he'd got a blue shirt on today.

A picture jumped into my head; Dad shouting, "Phone the plumber, quick!" as he fought to hold back the water shooting out of the pipe he'd drilled into. He was a walking DIY disaster, and now he had a whole army of workmen to help him cock it up.

"Feel that earthquake?" he asked.

"Sure, Dad," I replied, cowering in a minute patch of shade. "Where's Mum?"