The Tribe Has Spoken

On Saturday I returned from a twelve day trip to Club Med, Phuket, with my parents and children. We had a wonderful time. And twelve days is a long time. Long enough to have six $10 massages by the beach. Long enough to have two dresses made by a tailor down the road. Long enough to sample everything at the buffet at least once. Long enough to buy three pairs of shoes for $12 each, and a real, authentic, 100% genuine Jimmy Choo bag for, er, $20.

And long enough for my mother and I to decide that we ruled Club Med, and that we ought to decide who stayed, and who left.

Yes, by the end of our stay, we were getting a little... shall we say... intolerant. We liked our Club Med Village and we wanted to control who visited. Various guests, we decided, were not up to par. They irritated us, or they were loud, or obnoxious, and we wanted to vote them Off The Village.

It's Time For You To Go

We voted various Club Med guests Off The Village during our stay:

• The woman who wore an adult-sized version of her toddler daughter's polkadot dress. (No matchy matchy in our village!);
• The Caucasian-yet-dark-dark-chocolate-brown-skinned Donatella Versace lookalike who wore her blonde hair scraped back so tightly it made my own face hurt;
• The man who spent three entire days taking pictures of his wife in various poses around the pool, buffet table, bar, beach and - I kid you not - gift shop;
• The man who insisted upon facing the wrong way during the water-aerobics. WHY DID HE HAVE TO FACE THE WRONG WAY???
• The woman sitting by the pool squeezing her husband's back pimples;
• The woman picking her young son's nose at the breakfast table and inspecting her findings. (Seriously: a Frenchman at a neighbouring table turned around and told her sternly to arreter);
• The group of Aussie men wearing matching novelty team shirts. (Just don't);
• The couple who stripped off their matching pants and shirts to reveal male/female matching bathers. (We said no matchy matchy!);
• The little girl who ran on stage in every single performance every single night (First time was cute. So was second. Third, fourth, fifth and subsequent not so much);
• The group of 23 students who went everywhere together and giggled preposterously at the slightest provocation. (Groups of six or more are far too cheerily rambunctious and make the rest of us feel awkward and left out);
• Any people who hog the middle of the pathways so that I cannot pass at the brisk, walking-off-the-buffet-pace I prefer.

They may not have left. Hell, they may not have even known that they were voted off. But The Tribe Had Spoken, and that was all the satisfaction we needed.

Do complete strangers ever irritate you for no good reason?