“Don’t visit Thailand’s Koh Tao,” Mummy Lulu advises. “Too many tourists have been raped and murdered there.”

 

“What’s your plan for Christmas?” Mummy Lulu asks, her too-plump body almost bursting the seams of a tight chiffon dress, with two massive breasts clamping her cell phone in the V-neckline.

Seated beside her at the bar in Hot Legs Niteclub, I take a hit of my whisky. “Singing carols in Koh Samui and a ferry ride to Koh Tao for snorkelling.”

 “Jesus Christ!” Mummy Lulu sits up straight, and her eyes snap all the way open. They are coffee-coloured glassy beads in fat. “It’s nicknamed Murder Island, and also Death Island.” Mummy Lulu shakes her head, crowned by a topknot held up by an ivory clip. “No, no, too dangerous to go there!”  Her gnarled thumb and forefinger whisks her cell phone from her cleavage. She taps  the screen and hands the phone over to me. “Here, watch this YouTube video.”

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIWtPcKqUY8

I finish watching the video. Terror yanks at my mouth, pulling it open. “Sweet suffering saints, all female victims were raped and murdered, the Russian girl’s body wasn’t even found. And what a coincidence that CCTVs were not working when the Indian millionaire and his wife were drowning in the hotel’s swimming pool.” I down the rest of my whisky. It burns and I shudder. “As for allegations of a crime family running the island, well, there’s no smoke without fire. I’m cancelling my  reservation with Agoda.”

/end