It was when the peasant didn’t move for the second hour that I became suspicious. I was in an ultra-expensive hotel in southern Thailand. It was built to resemble a sequence of exquisite villas from some ancient Thai dynasty, arranged around tropical gardens and meadows. I was staying in my very own, beautiful, teak-and-mahogany mini-palace, which came with a grand piano and butler – all the usual things I’d come to expect as a luxury travel correspondent. Yawn.
The only thing really unique about this five-star hotel (they tend to blur, eventually) was the fact my own villa, the best of the best, the jewel in the crown, came with its own paddy field. And in that paddy field was a singular peasant in a charming conical hat, next to an ox. Apparently he was busily reaping the rice growing in the water.
Except the peasant never really did much. He never seemed to actually do any harvesting. He barely moved. Was he really there to harvest rice, or was it more… for show? Because he was truly picturesque, perfectly located within the framed view from my enormous bed – like a Japanese print of idealised rural life. Suspicious, I called the managers and asked, and eventually, they yielded to my brutal sleuthing.
‘Yes sir, your villa comes with its own piano, butler, personal gym and steam room, and also your own peasant, to make it look pretty. Is he annoying you?’
By the third hour, he was annoying me – by making me feel sorry for him. I began to wonder if he ever went away. When did he go to the loo? Did they have a series of identical peasants, working on rotation? It was all too much to bear, so yes, they came to take away my personal peasant. I clung on to the private steam room.
And if that sounds mad, then it should sound mad. Because this is what it is like down my way – this is a glimpse of the crazy world of the luxury travel correspondent, where we don’t have first world problems, more like billionaire issues, and absurdly minor peevs in paradise.
Take my trip to check out the ten best hotels in the Maldives. That sounds like a tough assignment, doesn’t it? Staying at the ten best hotels in the Maldives, one after the other – how much nicer can it get? And it was extremely nice. The trouble is each hotel – whether the Shangri-La, Soneva Fushi, One&Only, the hotel so posh it cannot be named – kept trying to outdo the others, to prove to me how opulent and upmarket they were.
The madness started in the south of the archipelago when Hotel X led me to my overwater suite and I saw a bottle of Moët in an ice bucket. Mm, nice! Who turns down free champagne? Not me. So I guzzled it immediately as I sat on my overwater glass terrace, with reef sharks cruising underneath.
At the next hotel, they offered a vintage bottle of champagne. Iced. With stingrays underneath. I did a Google search and worked out the champagne was worth more than £100. Mmm! So I drank that too. At the next hotel the next day, it was a bottle of vintage Ruinart. £200. The next, Dom Pérignon. £300. Stuff you simply have to drink. You begin to see the problem.
The daily bottles kept getting nicer, and by now I was stumbling onto seaplanes completely blotto (because I was also drinking the free gold leaf bellinis and Penfolds St Henri every evening, to be polite) and by the end of a week, I believe I was suffering a form of vintage champagne poisoning. I began to feverishly imagine some conspiracy to kill me via Cristal, complete with headlines: ‘British journalist found dead in Four Seasons Landaa Giravaaru, last heard muttering about Marie Antoinette’s breasts.’
My suffering only came to an end when I reached Hotel Y, and I warily approached the inevitable ice bucket with its attending array of tropical fruits and hand-made macarons. I lifted out the bottle and noted, with a cry of pure relief, that it was merely a bottle of upmarket prosecco. I didn’t have to drink it. I gave it to the maid, who nearly fainted.
For that money, you also got a butler (of course), but my butler was about 23, extremely beautiful, and she lived in an alcove in one of the castle towers
There are many such stories I could tell. The time I stayed in a transplanted 14th-century castle in Shanghai, complete with moat and fog machine, surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. The castle cost £10,000 a night (as with all these tales, I wasn’t paying). For that money, you also got a butler (of course), but my butler was about 23, extremely beautiful, and she lived in an alcove in one of the castle towers. She kept hinting that ‘more was on offer’ than her perfectly curated Monkey 47 martinis. And she was very beautiful. And she hovered a lot. The ache of uncertainty was real. Reader, I didn’t, but looking back I suspect I was meant to. £10,000, after all.
I could go on. The seaplane in Australia that was meant to arrive ‘right after your dessert, outside your restaurant, to whisk you away’. It actually arrived during my dessert. The helicopter ride over Victoria Falls without any personal hand towels (I was hot!). The stay at the Gritti Palace where they gave me the ‘best truffle in Venice’, so I felt obliged to eat it all. Turns out you can have too much truffle.
Most momentous of all, however, was a trip around north India for the ridiculously luxe Oberoi Hotels. In one hotel in Delhi, they welcomed me by recreating all my travel articles, plus a photo of my face, in chocolate and sugar. I am not joking.
On this same trip, I stayed – with my then girlfriend, lovely and young – at a smart hotel in Agra. We were in a suite overlooking the Taj Mahal. I got talking to the hotel manager and he told me the previous guests had been a European politician and an American talk show host (I can’t say who, for legal reasons). This made me so excited – actually sexually excited – that I went straight back to the room and took my girlfriend on the chaise longue. At the moment of orgasm, I looked up and saw a shaft of sunlight hit the dome of the Taj Mahal. My poor girlfriend underneath could only see me staring boggle-eyed over the balcony.
OK, I hear you asking, what exactly is wrong with that? That sounds like a pretty peak experience. And that is the problem. That was it. That was the peak of my life. Nothing can ever match it. It’s been downhill ever since. Please share my pain – perhaps with some free bubbles. And artisanal blinis.
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