Feel the seaweed between your toes, the wind upon your cheek, the rain in your eye and glow in the experience.

Sitting in a 5 star hotel luxuriating in the wonderful air conditioning.  Outside is baking in noonday pavement roasting madness but here inside this place of the rich, all is well.  A pampering spa offers a massage, pedicure or facial rejuvenation.  On level 1 there is an expensive hairdressers.  You can tell how much they charge, as even 5 star guests can obviously not afford to go in.  Bored staff look at you with genuine distain.  “You cannot afford us”, they seemed to positively glisten with the knowledge.  They, of course, are absolutely right.  In fact I can afford none of this I am an interloper on foreign turf. 

This 5 star luxury is a stolen moment and I sit here awaiting the hand on shoulder, saying in pitying terms, “be gone, lowlife!”  But I have a small protection; I am wily to the ways of the rich and their patch.  First, you must dress as if you belong.  Wear your best but be careful to look as if it is some old thing you’ve just thrown on.  Be careful of shoes, watches and jewellery they give always too much about you.  But it is also the attitude you need to have that languid air of, this is all just not good enough.  It is an air of unhappiness tinged with “I’m paying through the nose for all of this and it is just not what I am accustomed to?”  Towards the staff they radiate the message, “you could do better if you only made an effort”. 

Inside, I celebrate the free air conditioning, the icy cool against my tomato skin.  I am in ecstasy at getting all this for free.  At my flat, I’d be sitting glued to my small fan but here I can take my pick of seats opulent and rich with breath taking views of the blue Med below and the sweating tourists on the open-topped buses below.  What is it about open topped buses?  Are they a torture that countries have invented to vent their dislike on unsuspecting tourists?  Here in Malta, red-faced tourists with shoulders the colour of raw beef sit in the blazing sun, trapped on the moving barbeque.  Only their abundant sweat to fry in. 

We have the opposite version on the North coast of Ireland, where I’m from.  There, the tourists clamber eagerly onto open topped buses to see the Giant’s Causeway and beautiful north coast.  It pisses rain on them in torrents, often combined with a ferocious horizontal wind and tourists frantically wipe their soaked camera lens to capture the sodden splendour of our green isle.  Nothing excites a tourist more than an open topped bus.  Downstairs is for the cautious and those who make it to the top deck, whether cooked or drowned, grin their happiness and appreciation, waving childlike at passing strangers. 

The five star guests at this place will never know the ecstasy of open topped buses.  Theirs is a different world from the rest of us.  Living in luxury, insulated from the working masses, they hug their boredom and discontent to themselves.  Vaguely aware that they are missing out on what they deserve but pacified by the subservience with which they are cushioned.  Only the best is good enough, you sense, but uncertainty remains.  Is this really as good as good as it gets? 

If you really want to see a happy tourist look to the open topped buses.  These guys know that to really enjoy anything you have to let go and remember the child within.  Feel the seaweed between your toes, the wind upon your cheek, the rain in your eye and glow in the experience.