THE SPA CHRONICLES: The Return, The Relax and the Surprise Offer...

If I were to tell any normal person (or as Pam calls them, Muggles) that I spent five days on a tropical island and didn't even go to the beach, they would judge me. Harshly.  But that is indeed what happened on my previous trip to Koh Samui.

Beautiful green island...sigh

 On that previous trip, I spent most of my time on my scooter going from spa to bank to lawyer to spa to furniture store to spa and, ultimately, to sleep so that I could do it all again the next day. Call it a non-stop-drama-buffet: steamed stress, fried jet-lag, jellied firings, sauteed meetings, mixed lawyer-ings, a full and varied selection.

Keeping all of that in mind, it was a joy to return to find that Mr. Long and the staff had lived up to their promises and reputations by keeping the spa clean, organized and running smoothly.  (Customers would be nice but that's another thing)

 It's good for me in that it means I can trust the staff that is in place. Bad for me in that I then have to find "owner/boss" tasks for myself to do in order to not become completely superfluous to my own business. So I put up the wallpaper mural that I had brought with me on the last trip.

 

Other than the wallpaper mural and a few small administrative details, there was precious little else to be done, to the point where I felt like I was interfering if I hung around too much. So that left playing, lounging and touristing as the only other options, with no complaints. And much needed playtime it was after an exhausting week and a half of 12 hour days leading up to departure.

Touristing...

Island hopping, courtesy of Colin's generous hospitality...

and his boat...

Cooking...

And eating...

Scooter blessing...

And there was, of course, plenty of drinking, (Pride Bar once again experienced their usual spike in red wine sales). It was all fun and games until the night before departure when I received a call from another spa owner that I know. He said, "You come talk to me. Maybe you want to buy my spa." This came out of nowhere and totally took me by surprise. I sputtered that I had absolutely no intention of buying anything, but I agreed to meet with him just to hear what he had to say. 

I arrived at his spa late in the evening and he made his case to me. He explained that he was tired of running the place, but mostly, he wanted to move to France and marry his boyfriend. I did a quick tour of the place, even though I had been there before, and paid more attention to details this time. It has always been, and still was, impeccably clean, and it's huge and beautifully decorated. We got down to nitty-gritty and had a talk about price. I explained to him that I was intrigued by the idea, but that I would need to do some thinking about it. My gut was saying, "Are you insane?? Get a grip, man!" But my sensible voice said, "Talk it out with your business guru, Kate, at Southcoast in Singapore. After all, it's her fault that you bought the first spa."