Jack Spratt

I just broke my #1 rule of travelling. When will I learn? Guide books will tell you not to drink the water, not to eat from the sides of roads, to take the address of the hotel wherever you go. I tell you this - Never order a cheese sandwich. Or if you are in Asia - Never, ever, ever order a cheese sandwich.

Americans will use a sweet cheese, often out of a tube. Asians use ... well I'm not actually sure what the Asians use. It's something sweet that has had lots of yellow colouring infused into it. Certainly nothing that most of the world would identify as fermented milk. I'm still scraping the last cheese I had in Cambodia off my upper palette, and that was 8 years ago. Maybe if you are in Italy, where they certainly know their cheeses, it might be safe, but then they'd probably die before squashing their wonderful product between layers of bread and putting it on a menu, so it would never happen anyway. France, well why spoil the bread with cheese. So, no, just don't do it.

However, today, in a country with a British heritage, I thought it would be safe to order a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, so I broke my rule. Of course they had no ham, which is no real surprise to anybody. Jamaica man! Whatever! So I ended up with a toasted cheese sandwich. Sigh! Yep, gooey yellow, sweet something inside three layers of bread. Now to be fair, the bread was reasonable. Not like sweet bread you get in Asia - hence the subtle variations in my #1 rule. But still, it's just confirmed my determination not to do it again. I could have had fries for lunch instead, but my guess is that Bob Marley visited here in 1973, and they decided never to change the fryer fat again because he ate food cooked in it, so the cheese sandwich it was.

Spent the morning wandering through the little village of Treasure Beach, past all of the little shacks that probably only get opened during the peak tourist season, through Jack Spratt's which is the iconic bar and outdoor eating area with live music that every tourist under the age of 40 gets plastered at each night, and then along the coastline as far as we could get. Hard to call it a beach. There is some sand, but it's very rocky with lots of secluded coves pounded out of the cliffs by the waves. Unlike most Australian coastline that is either sedimentary or limestone, these are all coral cliffs, so you have to be quite careful clambering over them, though the cliffs themselves are quite beautiful. Stunning views of the ocean and the waves from the top. Kind of more like the Jamaica experience we expected to see from the brochures.

After the aforesaidmentioned cheese sandwich for lunch back at the hotel, it was off for another walk along the beach as far as we could get the other way this time, and a stroll back along the narrow winding roads of the coast, past some guest houses and a local women's cooperative which didn't appear to be open.

We all walked down the road a bit to a nice fish restaurant for dinner. The music is always reggae. However, the songs can be anything at all. Tonight it was hits of the 60s, to a reggae beat. In the bus yesterday it was 80s disco music reggae style. I wouldn't have thought you could sing "God Didn't Make Little Green Apples" (O C Smith 1968) to a reggae beat, but I was wrong. It was the Eagles this afternoon, and even Elvis gets a new lease of life.