R & R

 "Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."

- '"The Book Thief," Markus Zusak

"Whoa, is quiet here," the cab driver declares as he hands me my back pack.

I smile. "That's what I'm counting on," I answer, holding up my overflowing plastic bag of books.

I took public transportation to the northern part of Phuket Island but, when the bus (the shortest word I know for the canvas covered flat bed trucks favoured by the locals) made it's final stop, I was the lone remaining passenger and there were no taxi stands anywhere along the highway.

"Taxi?" Is the only word I can think of to say to the driver.

He smiles and provides me a diligently detailed response of which I understand not a word.

"Taxi?" I try again, pointing this time in the three directions I think a taxi might be.

He nods and patiently repeats himself with a happy smile on his face.

I try again. "Beachside Cottages?"

Still smiling he points to a sign for Ritz Carlton Spa Resort and the Hyatt-Regency Resort. I smile back, shake my head and shrug. I pay him and reach for my bag, but he's obviously decided I paid him enough, gestures for me to sit down and turns onto the winding country road towards the resorts. He chatters happily for most of the twenty minute drive.

Fifteen minutes down the road I finally realize he's trying to tell me something about taxis and where I'm trying to go. From what I gather, there are none. He keeps waiting for me to understand, or so I think, so I nod and say, "Yes," but then he gets upset and starts his whole speech over. This time, when he reaches the end of his speech and pauses, I screw up my face, shake my head and say, "No." This provokes the same unsatisfactory result and, after a sigh and a brief pause, he begins again. This time, when he looks over at me for a response I give him a very long winded explanation of life the universe and everything. He seems pleased.

"Taxi!" I yell excitedly, pointing to a taxi stand outside one of the posh hotels. This precipitates another long winded monologue on the bus driver's part and when he finally stops talking I just look at him with my sweetest smile and say, "Taxi, taxi, taxi," pointing back down the road. He turns around eventually, and when he deposits me at the stand there is much hand folding and head bowing in the parting.

The cab driver charges me an extortionist fee that he refuses to negotiate and proceeds to drive ten minutes in the wrong direction, then gets lost two more times before we finally get to the construction zone town. We follow some faded signs to a dirt road, more of a sandy path really, where he hangs an immediate left into a parking lot.

"No," I say. "I think it's farther down this road."

"Why? Have you been there?"

"No. But the sign said it was straight ahead."

"No, no. Stay here," he says, getting out of the car and walking into the back entrance of a hotel.

When he returns he announces, "It's down the road," in that universal way men have of ignoring what you've already told them that so they can believe they've discovered something on your behalf.

The sun is nearly kissing the horizon beyond the dark shadows of the palm trees when I check in. The white noise of the giant surf coming to shore plays the bottom notes to an orchestra of thrumming insects and trilling birds. I linger at the bookshelf in the lounge, finally selecting a 500 page tome entitled "The Book Thief", before settling into my hut.