A chattering, boisterous crowd gathering on a quay with bags and boxes, cases and Eskies, already sipping beers, keen, eager, ready to party, clambering aboard a large, pelican-like banca bobbing in matronly fashion on a subdued sea…
A significant birthday, celebrated in style, on a tropical island cloaked in jungle and hemmed with lilting, azure blue waters…
Tinnies, yachts, bancas and motor boats moored in the bay, set in the deep, blue-glass water like insects in amber…
A bedroom with a broad balcony, French doors opened wide to welcome the cool breeze that sails in on the calico curtains and whips them to a frenzy…
A cocoon-like pod attached to a motorbike skimming perilously along a winding coastal road, with the breeze skipping in through the open sides, skirting shrubs and shanties and semi-naked toddlers playing in the dirt, roosters strutting their stuff in polished feathers, trucks roaring past and stirring up nose-scrunching clouds of dust…
A quayside full of cosy bars, beers, burritos, and men offering pearls, sunglasses, hats and
hands full of slightly-stale peanuts…
A straight-backed Australian with a chunky walky-talky, calmly choreographing boats and accommodation, meals and massages, sailing trips, bands and bottles, firm and efficient, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, as we all trail cheerfully in his wake…
A flat bottomed blue-and-white service boat chugging back and forth across the bay ferrying goods and chattels, travelers and locals to their various destinations…
Another body scrub? No thanks, but a wonderful, heavy-handed massage to iron out the knots and pound me to oblivion and back, in an airy space with gabled windows beneath the roof, would be fine…
A barbecue on the patio at the yacht club, with gallon glasses of red wine or buckets of beer, ribs in slabs, and salads, chatter and laughter, a sprinkle of rain, a t-shirt stamped with a picture of the Birthday Girl, a tiny tiara to designate her Princess-For-A-Weekend status…
Brunch on a yacht, glamorous and poised, lying elegantly in designer bikini along silky cushions, crystal champagne flute in perfectly manicured hand… oops, wrong channel, wrong dream… out on a yacht, perching precariously on the brim, dodging the boom and yelping as the wind seizes the sail and tears it from the rope, clinging to a paper cup of sparkling wine (priorities, girls!) as the boat tips vertically, and garrotes us in glorious splendour on the wire railing, our legs hanging down into obstreperous waves desperate to drag us in to play…
Becalmed, calmer, bruised, but still beautiful (ha ha), chewing hungrily on a chicken wing and a chunk of baguette after a swift swim through clear, slightly bumptious sea…
Sailing past curvaceous coastline spread thickly with deep green trees, dotted with the 
thatched roofs of small, shady cabanas or nipa huts on the sand, a rustic wooden house, like Bunyip Bluegum’s, settled into the steep hillside above the beach…
A dining room bedecked in white linen: napkins twirled into plate-sized petals, delicate vases of fresh flowers, deep pink balloons and deeper pink sunburned cheeks, smiling broadly, eager to celebrate…
A talented, be-hatted saxophonist, serenading us with seductive notes of jazz and blues and old favourites from bygone musicals…
A beautiful Birthday Girl, glowing, glossy brown in white cotton, crowned in a twinkling tiara, twirling, tall and lithe, her fifty years sitting as lightly on her shoulders as butterflies, beaming with childlike joy and delight…
A band stridently engaging our attention with an endless array of dance songs, no time for a ballad, as we bounce and dance about for hours, grabbing the odd glass of water or bubbles as we career past the bar, hoarse with singing exuberantly to every song we ever knew…
Tired feet trudging up a stone staircase, looped with gauzy white fabric and the ubiquitous pink balloons, past a dining room bare and bereft, and a vast tarpaulin poster of the Birthday Girl, marking the various eras of her life, draped on the wall…
A soggy heap of party aftermath, recovering on carbs and coffee, recounting the exploits 
of the night before with weary pleasure, bright and cheery little Hobbits bobbing and swirling amongst the detritus that are – or were – their parents and their parents’ friends…
A subdued return to the mainland across boisterous, churning waves…
*Photos from my One & Only, except the banca from Google Images.