South Beach (Bum) Diet

The Diplomat always told me I was a special person and have many talents in varying disciplines.

It's true. My skill set looks like this:

Fair: reading maps; identifying constellations; emptying the dishwasher

Good: shuffling cards; navigating airports; walking without purpose

Needs improvement: wanderlust

She recently asked me would that wanderlust ever be satiated and will I ever just settle down in one place, please?

Well, mom, I have good news.

It takes a special person willing to sit in the sunshine on a white Thai beach, watching the hours pass with virtually no thought running through the head besides, 'Where has that fire-dancing cabana boy gone with my caipirinha?'

Great: beach bum

Finally! A marketable skill!

Seriously guys, it's true. When you find something you love, you never work another day in your life.

Around the end of the second week in my new calling, I realized it was my life's work. And I loved my new job, I challenged myself to do nothing on the beach for 30 days, committing by way of new sun cream, new sunnies and a new book for the tough work days ahead. (I can hear some of you arguing that a book is technically 'doing' something, but I can assure you my second-hand Harper 'Modern Classic' is the antithesis of serious thought).

I was happily blobbing along in the azure tropics, when one day clouds rolled in and it didn't stop raining for six days. Maybe you heard about it? Hundreds rescued by the Thai navy, villagers swept away in mudslides, trains cancelled, airports closed...

It was at this exciting time that all the SPF went to my head and i came down with what I self-diagnosed as strep throat. It was just me, the mosquitoes and the amoxicilin in the bungalow watching it pour on paradise.

My hut mate, a fancy lady I will call The Brazilian Princess, would periodically walk in, survey my sickness, announce, 'I don't think it's fatal. But it's too damp in here, that's why you're sick. This isn't what we're paying for, Julie. I'll just let the owner know...'

The owner was not unhappy to see us leave after we changed bungalows three times, The Princess letting Paolo know the drainage inefficiencies of each waterlogged thatched roof. Also, could he do something about the banana leaves that kept falling into our outdoor bathroom? They're clogging the drain. Grazie.

When I met The BP, she was complaining. We were on the same boat in the Galapagos and she was going on to the captain that she'd been promised her own cabin. 'I can't sleep in a room with a snorer... That's not what I paid for,' and she'd look disparagingly at her bespectacled, chubby English roommate who did, in fact, breathe like a chainsaw. Even at breakfast.

It was my single cabin The Princess was after and there was no way I was giving it up to room with old snore-eyes.

A stare-off ensued and in the end I respected her gumption and she found in me a kindred princess, 'though you like to hide it by eating granola, but I know...'

It was easy to convince The BP to join me beachside. Being a lazy bum is a prerequisite to royalty the world over. As my new, esteemed colleague, I believed her reading-in-the-hammock skills were world class.

I don't know if it was the complete lack of exercise or the overdose on mango and sticky rice dishes that kept us going, but we were inspired enough to island hop in the non-flooded isles of Thailand's Andaman Sea for three solid weeks. But in the end I couldn't complete the 30-day beach diet because, well, I got bored.

That's another of my special talents.