Welcome to Zeavola, yes we have Ladyboys

The Zeavola Ladyboy and Selene

“Welcome to Zeovola, ladies”, said Florian the friendly GM, “Please take off your shoes, this is a barefoot place, barefoot luxury is what we call it, in fact. You’re going to have a great time, we love parties. You can pretty much do what you like. We are also gay friendly and there are Ladyboys.”

This was an interesting welcome.

The Press Princesses had slipped and slithered out of the heady jungles of Elephant Hills Rainforest Camp in Khao Sok National Park and suddenly here we were on Koh Phi Phi island in southern Thailand, freshly disembarked off a speed boat, eager for Ladyboys,  yes, why not? But first, er, howabout a drink? We’re like, from the press remember?

“Tom Yum cocktails is what the doctor has ordered!” said Florian firmly. Well, Zeavola shall remain forever pleasantly blurred in my mind as a result of my discovery of the Tom Yum cocktail. This is surely Asia’s sexiest - made with vodka, rum, lemongrass, lime, chili and spices, like a very cold Tom Yum soup, right? With some serious kick-ass zingaling. Oh me oh my. Zeavola's slogan is 'step back to simplicity' but it may well have been 'stagger about happily'. 

Where does that leave me philosophically? 

Zeavola is suitably private and calm even though Koh Phi Phi island is a busy string of resorts with all the Experiences ranging from speedboats to visiting the actual beach where The Beach was filmed, I hadn’t seen it, but now I’ve seen the actual beach – so where does that leave me philosophically I wonder?  

I loved the place, I loved the names – Wang Long Cove, La Na Bay, Sea Gypsy Village, Loh Moo Dee Bay, sigh, yes I’ll have another Tom Yum puh-lease. Prrrr. We did just about everything from massages during a tropical rain storm to beach side dining to snorkeling, swimming. We even got to play for a bit at the Zeovola annual staff party (everybody wore red) and did indeed meet the, or a, Ladyboy of Zeavola who was suitably delicious and slender. 

The spirit of Tom Yum 

This was all after we went up the beach in search of tequila and found a Scotsman who had lost 18 friends in the tsunami a decade ago, and poured us four rounds of free tequila in glasses the size of candle holders! Anyway the Ladyboy didn’t seem to mind and I think it would be safe to say that Selene was definitely the belle of the ball. Check out www.zeavola.com

So pretty Phi Phi 

Goodbye Darling, Hello Thailand

The lovely Noo Dang with bubbles!

So the next thing Darling has slipped out of my grasp like a greased piglet – or perhaps it is I who is the greased piglet – and he’s on a plane to LA and I’m on a plane to Hong Kong. The only thing that can assuage my shattered heart at our temporary separation is the fact that our Princess Press Party – destination Thailand - has been upgraded to business class on Cathay Pacific and suddenly I am quaffing real French champagne along with five other happy purring princesses and we are 12 000 feet above the ground, spoilt for life.

I am on my own next to the window. My seat is like a moveable pod, enclosed in all the right places for privacy and you can push various buttons to turn it into a flat bed, and yes, you get a duvet and pillows and there’s a little cupboard for shoes and alongside the seat, a wide surface to spread out your reading material.  Like the South China Morning Post and the international express version of the New York Times. A flat screen TV of course, all remote controlled, a vanity case with toothbrush and lotions and eyepads (as opposed to i-pads) and little bottles of stuff – and never mind the fine dining which involves silver cutlery, white tablecloths, a menu offering exotic Asian cuisine. Real French wines, 12 year old whisky…. Prrrrrrr.

A flying lounge, what heaven. I think of the miserable squashed up people behind the curtain – yes THAT curtain - in Comedy Class and I feel like I really have done something to deserve this although I am not quite sure what it is. I lie there finding it astonishing how we fly through the sky and gain hours, arriving much later in the next place, timelines and zones and seas and continents and land mass and all of this in my princess pod for the next twelve hours.

Peach of a day at the Sarojin Hotel outside Phuket 

Another 20 hours later I will be on the ground in a jungly spa with a pretty and lithe Thai girl squatting over my back and giving me the most incredible massage, ironing out all the dragging of suitcases, the onward connection, passport and customs, the drive through Phuket. And then OMG the welcome Thai massage at the Sarojin Hotel. There will be water lilies and an Indian Ocean beach, a bathroom with real pebbles and jungle plants, orchids and ice buckets. Then there will be fine dining next to a waterfall with five hundred candles.  A lovely woman called Noo Dang will bring me a glass of champagne for breakfast.

But right now I am time-warped and still purring happily on the flight in my princess pod.

I did think of you Darling, of course. I have always wanted to join the Mile High Club and I hoped you would suddenly slink up alongside me in the pod, maybe with a bunch of grapes or perhaps a small flower. Don’t worry about hot and cold towels – there is an endless round of those on this flight. Of course I would have preferred the décor to be a bit more Barbarella, and maybe a better music selection – I did trawl the channels – but you never made it. So I tried every conceivable gadget, ate everything that was put in front of me, drank some wine and then not being one to sleep on a plane - took the 12-year-old whisky option, popped a tranquiliser and watched all seven episodes in the first series of Breaking Bad.

Not Breaking Bad 

Prrr and a thanks to Lesley Simpson PR, Cathay Pacific and the Sarojin Hotel, Destination Asia and Thailand SA xx