Journals of a Hotel Manager

Did you know that remote tropical islands have very little wild life on land?  I never thought about it before I came here.  We have the two resident crows who probably were stowaways on cargo ships which docked at the main island.  They are loud and obnoxious like all city crows.  The only indigenous animals on my island are fruit bats.  They live in the coconut trees.  Brown in color and with a wingspan of a good 3 feet, they are silent gliders across the turqoise blue at sunset.  During the day, I would occasionally see one swooping overhead, their leathery wings batting without a sound. 

But recently we have a new species on island.  I am sorry to say that rodents are among us.  They are, again, stowaways on cargo ships that transported timber from the other tropical countries.  Since there is no cat on the island, the crows eat only human leftovers and the bats are vegetarians - sorry, fruitarians - the rats run the island at night.  We set traps all over the place with little results and store food source carefully.  Their ferocious appetite is not to be messed with.  Last night, we discovered that a couple of bags of green tea in the kitchen were torn open and obviously chewed upon.  I guess they are getting hungry and desparate.

Chef has an idea.  Since kitchen and food sources belong to his territory, he finds the rodent problem particularly irritating.

“Why don’t we catch a few of these damned rats and burn them?  The smell and the scream will certainly scare the rest of them bad rats!” he proclaimed.

“And where do you think the rest of them will escape to? This is an island my friend.  You think they will steal one of our boats and sail into the sunset?” I laughed.

Once they are here, the rats will never leave - until we kill all of them.  I wish we could do a ceremony for the Rat God. 

Why is it that everywhere I go I need to deal with these bloody rodents? 

They scurry around in our makeshift restaurant at night since the cafeteria is still under renovation, illiciting a few yelps from female staff.  They pull acrobatic stunts a la Cirque du Soleil on a tiny ledge from the thatched roof.  Tonight one even came up to me as I was enjoying a rare cup of tea in the evening breeze on the wooden deck in front of the lobby.  It stopped barely a foot away from me, landed on its haunches and sat up like a dog begging for food.

That is just wrong.  I vow to myself I need to get rid of them before the opening, which is about 2 months away if things go on schedule.  

Things happen on an island with great timing.  A coconut will choose to fall just when a person passes underneath to either scare the hell out of him or render him unconscious, depending on how fast that person walks.  However, when the barge with our much anticipated supplies of toilet paper, ink cartridges, cement and a rare box of sirloin arrives, the tide chooses to be the lowest in months.  The barge runs aground in the channel.  It sits like a beached whale awaiting the rising of the tide.  I had to dispatch a dive master who is a good swimmer to rescue the sirloin.  The cement and toilet paper can roast in the sun.

Our HR director went on an R&R over the weekend.  The office was unmanned.  Upon his return he was shocked to find a voice mail informing us of a bomb to be detonated at 11am.  The voice was menacing.  The culprit unknown.  The threat sounded real.  The only problem was that the message was 3 days old.

My question is: is this a coconut about to fall at any moment or the tide which will eventually rise?

Luckily the island is small and a search for a bomb turned up empty.  Let’s hope for the best.  Most of the time the coconut misses.

The recent lack of posts is simply because I have been working about 20 hours a day. There is absolutely nowhere to go unwind on an island that is a construction site.   The home I have currently is not enticing at all.  Therefore I work.

Most staff loiter in the cafeteria after dark when the temperature is cooler, where they smoke a cigarette and watch ESPN. But now even the cafeteria is being gutted out to be renovated. We all need to trek through dangerous pipes and uneven sandy path to the northern tip of the island three times a day to eat our meals at the Seafood restaurant. At night, it is pitch dark and only our cell phones provide a glimmer of light so at least we won’t run into each other or into a ditch.

The food also starts to get to me. Due to the tiny kitchen that we are currently operating in, there is no point importing expensive food supplies. The ingredients are all fresh but the menu consists of tuna, tuna and tuna. In the morning it is canned tuna; lunch is tuna curry; and dinner gives you tuna broth. We have to eat everything with steamed rice. The only vegetables we get are onions and carrots. I am certain that at the moment, after years of abusing my heart and liver with fatty steaks, foie gras, pork chops and the essential cheeseburgers, I should be in better health than when I was born.

I don’t feel healthy though. I feel as if my stomach is eating itself. I have been dreaming about a greasy burger and a cold beer. That’s bad. Therefore today I decided to take the evening off and go to the famous Airport Hotel bar. The most important reason is, of course, our alcohol license has expired and can only be renewed after the renovation.
As the country is strictly Muslim, only islands that have hotels can apply for an alcohol license. The Airport Hotel is renowned for being the only locally run hotel that sells alcohol. Because it has no star and is just an airport hotel, a beer has a much more reasonable price than in a 5-star hotel such as ours. I could go to another luxury resort and I am sure they will waive the charges. But it requires a phone call to the GM as an island protocol, an unavoidable hello and chitchat with one of the executives who will receive me, and I don’t want to say I simply pine for a burger.

The Chief Engineer, an Aussie, and a consultant for boats (yes, there is such a job and he gets paid well), a Yank, joined me in the watering hole for expats who crave cheap junk food. Half of pound of beef pattie and half of a dozen beer later, I am happy to report that the sound of the lapping tide on the beach is sweeter, and the millions of stars above are brighter than ever.