NIMBLE fingers kneaded my naked body, working in aromatic oils to ease taut muscles and melt away the stresses of city life. The masseuse was aided and abetted by soft, taped music and a gentle breeze that rustled through the nearby palm trees.
For more than an hour I had been pampered like royalty in this roof-less spa pavilion, sweating out impurities in a Turkish bath, pummelled by invigorating warm water jets in the Jacuzzi, anointed with body milk and gently scrubbed with a loofah from head to toe.
The water treatment has been christened the Oasis of Enlightenment, the massage Lomi Lomi, and I should have been floating on a cloud of contentment. But the picture in my mind's eye was hardly exotic: a pair of black trousers hanging in a wardrobe, untouched for two years, nearly 2,000 kilometres away.
Roger Moore, the former James Bond, and Jean Claude Van Damme, the kung fu star, stayed at this exclusive resort, the Banyan Tree Phuket, for three months recently, with good reason. They were making their latest movie, The Quest, and sought the privacy offered by the complex's luxurious walled villas, each with its own swimming pool.
My quest was hardly in this glamour bracket. All I wanted was the pleasure of being able to get into those trousers before the moths do.
I had to pull my stomach in slightly to get the button to fasten at the waist when I tried them on in the department store two years ago. No matter. I bought them. I liked the style. I'd take that half inch off in no time.
