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Elizabeth Weintraub
A Trip from St. Regis to Bora Bora
The passenger boat from the St. Regis to Bora Bora leaves for the mainland base on Bora Bora twice in the morning. We read this in the literature left in our room. They also provided us with an entire schedule that showed us the time of the stops at Matira Beach and Vaitape for our return trip. We trusted this information, especially since the passenger boat left the dock from the St. Regis at the time scheduled. Little did it dawn on us to verify the return time. Because we had the schedule. The official schedule.
Because of our limited French, it is sometimes difficult for us to carry on a conversation with a person who can speak two or more languages while we can speak only one language, and we probably don’t do a very good job at that in their eyes. You know what the French think. Our taste in music sucks, we have no fashion sense, and we wouldn’t know a good truffle if we ran into it sideways.
The other night at dinner our waitress was explaining the rolls. We have seeded, raisin and nut, and white, she said. What? She repeated the choices. I questioned, “Raisin and nut?” Plop. She put the raisin and nut bread on my plate. I did not want raisin and nut. She obviously did not want to discuss what raisin and nut bread was doing filling up a spot in our bread basket that could have been occupied by sourdough or wheat. But what do I know? I am an American, and from California, no less.
There is not a lot to do in Matira Beach except eat, swim and watch pregnant dogs drop massive amounts of steaming poop on the beach. In Vaitape, you try to stay out of the street and avoid getting runover. Vaitape has a lovely grocery store, Chin Lee, which is owned by a woman. She plays very loud music right by the lottery tickets. I don’t know how that loud loud music helps to sell lottery tickets but I suspect it does. It makes people dance down the aisle, even people searching desperately for dried prunes.
Bloody Mary’s, that popular tourist spot, is closed for renovation. We bought a few postcards, walked around Vaitape for a while and then grabbed a taxi for Matira. Matira Beach is billed as one of the most stunningly beautiful beaches in the world. It’s a public beach. The view is spectacular.
We sat at the spot designated in our literature at the Intercontinental Hotel, which at one time was probably the Matira Hotel from the sign out on the road. No bus came. The appointed time came and went. The staff at the Intercontinental called the St. Regis for us and then assured us the bus would come. Where have I heard this type of empty promise before? My mind was clicking through my memory banks. Oh, yes, I know why this sounds familiar. This is like when a short sale bank negotiator says the file will be approved after we submit one more HUD with one tiny little change. Yeah, right.
I’ve got a bus schedule I’d like to give you from the St. Regis to Bora Bora.
The bus did not come. When we were 5 minutes from the boat departure back to the island, we called our butler, Konstantin. He came to the rescue. I will send you a cab, he says. The vehicle that arrived appeared to be driven by somebody’s aunt, but we did not care at that point. When we got back to our hotel room, Konstantin had had delivered a bottle of champagne on ice. Next time, he says, before you venture away, check with me. Yes, Konstantin. We will. It would be awful to have to spend the night at the Intercontinental. They have horrible beach chairs and no tips on their pool cues!
Just Stage That Home
Hotels could use a little help from the home staging industry. When we were first escorted into our villa at the St. Regis by our butler — I still can’t get used to Konstantin as our personal butler, it seems so unnecessary and pompous — as he opened the door he beamed, “Welcome home.” And he had both TVs blaring, in the living room and the bedroom. This did not feel like my home. It felt like I was intruding into somebody else’s home.
Staging a home is crucial to setting the mood for a sale. The easier buyers can view themselves as living in the home, the faster that home will sell. Buyers generally don’t spend as much time inside the home as people think. You’ve generally got about 2 or 3 seconds in each room to make an impression. A buyer pokes in her head and goes down the hall.
This morning a reader from my About.com homebuying site asked if he should stage his 8,500 square-foot home. He thought the home showed better vacant. Well, I haven’t seen the condition of his furniture, but I doubt that is true. He went on to say that most TV shows seem to favor vacant homes. At first blush, I want to scream: Stop watching those shows. They are TV, for goodness sake. I’ve appeared on some of those shows, and they are television, not real, created for entertainment, fabricated. If you want to learn something, go to school. Read a book. But don’t watch TV.
But I’d be talking to a door. And an unadorned door at that. I wanted to say hey, just stage that home.
I explained to him that the guys from TV shows have a hard time talking people into letting them intrude into their personal space. Nobody wants a film crew in their bath or bedroom. They worry about being judged or criticized, not that they have anything all that personal to protect in privacy. It’s much easier to get permission to film a vacant home.
And, having sold my own 8,600 square-foot home, once upon a time, I can tell you that almost every home, large or small, will sell faster and for more money if it is staged. It’s not a question of whether you should stage a home. Just stage that home.
Another Bank of America FHA Short Sale
You can tell me the buyer is canceling the short sale, and when I’m looking out on this view, I’m only half as annoyed as I normally would be. This is the view from my balcony at the St. Regis in Bora Bora. They put up the orange cones to keep the drunken jet ski drivers from running over naked swimmers. Not that it does any good. When jet skiers get disoriented, there is no telling where they might end up. Just like buyers of short sales. Hard to say. They start out saying they want to buy a short sale but then when approval arrives, lots of them tend to freak out.
As though it’s all fun and games while they are waiting for short sale approval. They can run around and boast to friends: “Look at me, I am buying a short sale. Hey, I have a lampshade on my head.” But when it comes time to put pedal to the metal, some of them just can’t do it. Is it because they’ve had too long to think about it? In a regular escrow, they would be closed within 30 to 45 days, not sitting in limbo waiting for short sale approval. Is it because they forgot they were in escrow? It’s not like there is constant activity that they can see, unless they follow updates on my website.
In one escrow, the dreaded Bank of America FHA short sale escrow, we’ve been working on the file since April. That’s not unusual for a Bank of America FHA short sale. It’s par for the course. Other lenders can process FHA short sales in a normal time period, but that has not been the case with Bank of America. We closed 2 or 3 other B of A FHA short sales recently, and each was almost a year-long process. Because getting the approval from HUD is difficult for B of A. And by the time the bank analyzes the offer, another 4 months have passed and the ATP has expired. So, they start over. Those falling over “for sale” signs in people’s yards are due more to the lengthy process for a Bank of America FHA short sale than from buyers canceling.
Fortunately, Bank of America is moving its FHA short sales to Equator shortly. We hope this happens by its target date of February. It will be a joyful day to celebrate when that happens.
But in this particular Bank of America FHA short sale that we’ve been working on since April and just received approval on 5 days ago — well, the buyer up and canceled yesterday. The agent says it was due to the “whole house inspection” as though we need some kind of excuse. We don’t need no stinkin’ excuse. Just send the cancellation and muddle on with your life. We will sell this home again, and this time to a serious buyer. Or, so this Sacramento short sale agent continues to hope.
Arrival at The St. Regis at Bora Bora
Ants, teeny-tiny, itty-bitty ants are crawling around my keyboard. They are zipping in and out, over and around. They are doing somersaults in delight. And I’m just thankful they are not those little lizards. My husband says I should AEL — Always Expect Lizards. But they still freak me out when they show up unexpectedly. It’s not like they crawl with a purpose. They are not determined lizards. They change their mind in a flash about the direction they are headed and all of a sudden, there they are, looking up at you quizzically, like a bank short sale negotiator who doesn’t bat an eyelash over taking 6 months to process a short sale.
Today we are at the St. Regis at Bora Bora. Air Tahiti does not fly directly to Bora Bora from Rangiroa, although it does fly from Bora Bora to Rangiroa. I was told by a tour operator in the islands that our vacation needed to “progress,” to get substantially better, which is why we could not fly the other way around. Which meant to get to Bora Bora from Rangiroa, we needed to return to Papeete on Tahiti, retrieve our luggage, and then go back through Security to board a flight to Bora Bora.
I did not see how it could get any better than Rangiroa. Our overwater bungalow at Kia Ora was stunningly beautiful, modern, and it had just been remodeled. What could possibly be better than looking out on the warm sapphire waters and endless horizon? First, there is no bumpy van ride from the airport to the hotel. In Bora Bora, you are transported via a yacht. Second, I can’t say the view at Bora Bora is any better. On the one side we have the island, and on the other we have the mountains, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that view. The water is a pale pearly greenish blue. Although, you can see a portion of your neighbor’s bungalow, which you could not at Kia Ora. I feel homesick for Rangiroa already. I felt a strong connection to that atoll.
However, our overwater bungalow villa at St. Regis at Bora Bora holds no candle to Kia Ora. We have our own bedroom, which is enormous, lots of island thatch, wood, bamboo, ceiling fans, cathedral ceiling and sliding doors to the deck. A separate bath is also enormous with a walk-in open shower and a rainshower head as big as a Super Bowl pizza, situated next to a sunken and jetted tub, plus wood floors, dual stone sinks. There is requisite glass-in-the-floor windows, too. But we also have a separate living room / dining room. We had to take a golf cart shuttle to get here from the restaurant last night because it is so far away from the lobby. I bet it’s a 3/4 mile. Most guests grab bicycles. But a nice unexpected feature is the fact we have our own butler. He offered to unpack for us last night.
Would you let a butler unpack your suitcases?
Our butler motioned toward the table where a tray of chocolates and a box of chocolates and a bottle of champagne awaited consumption. But the ants had gotten to them first. That’s what we got for going to dinner before settling in. I am thankful that my cold has pretty much cleared up, and our sunburn pain has been minimized somewhat. Not enough that we could, say, enjoy a Swedish massage, but we’re here for two more weeks. Stuff can change.
Gauguin’s Pearl Farm in Rangiroa
It is Christmas morning and I have, temporarily, no Internet. Our entire covered balcony deck is wet, and the table where I set my laptop has puddles. Rain during the night must have crept in sideways over the rails and under our thatched roof. The wind had been strong enough to throw an empty Coke Light can against the door, but not so strong as to whip an empty bottle of our Spanish Baron De Castaneda from the table. Is it still paradise at Kia Ora Resort on Rangiroa?
Let me check. I hum a few bars of She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain, and yup, my voice is much better. I’ve been nursing a progressive cold for the past 5 days. Check. Sunburned back acquired from walking across the reef from the Blue Lagoon to Bird Island without wearing sunscreen. We made an emergency trip into Avatoru yesterday to the pharmacy to get an ointment with special properties beyond Aloe Vera, and it’s much less red and botchy today. The pain has subsided. Check. Hair. My hair is a tangled, twisted, poofy and swollen blob looking very much like Lyle Lovett hair crossed with Albert Einstein’s. Who gives a rats about my rat-nest hair but rats? Check.
My husband is ready to pull out his hair if he has to hear Dean Martin or Bing Crosby sing any more Christmas carols at the restaurant. It’s sheer torture to him, and the smiling French Polynesian waitresses have no clue. The words to those songs are complete lies, he says. There is no marshmallow world. I suspect he thinks of the world as evil and corrupt and doesn’t buy the pretty pictures painted by anybody, especially not by crooners from the 1960s and their ilk. I am much more hopeful for the world. Especially after our visit yesterday to the Gauguin’s Pearl Farm to witness the miracle of the birth of black pearls.
Because we don’t speak French, we had a private tour of the farm, which pretty much consisted of: here is a technician operating on the oysters, and here is the lagoon where we put the oysters to bed. Perhaps a better term for the technician would be doctor, I wonder? If they are calling the act of slicing open the appendix, inserting a pearl, followed by a graft from a donor oyster, an operation, then the person performing the operation should be a doctor.
Gauguin’s Pearl Farm gets their pearls from the bottom of the Mississippi River in America. The pearls are small, very round, and they cover them in an antiseptic of sorts that is a pale lemon yellow. The grafts are very tiny, at least four times smaller than a sliver of clipped fingernail, a teeny rectangle. A different crew of workers push a plastic wedge into the oyster, which props it open just enough for a technician to peer into its opening. Using a tweezer type of instrument, the technician inserts the pearl, followed by the graft, into the open wound. Then, the oyster is tied to others and then placed into a pocket of the net bag. Each oyster occupies its own pocket. This way, if the pearl is not accepted by the oyster and is instead rejected, it will fall into the netting, and that oyster can be removed from production.
It takes a long time to make a black pearl. First, the oyster has to be at least 3 years old to be of age to produce a pearl. The pearl itself takes at least 2 years to create. By the time you hold a first generation pearl in your hand, 5 years have passed. That’s a long time for investors to wait, sighed our tour guide. Second-generation pearls, the larger size, take another 2 years, and the really large pearls, the third generation, well, an oyster will have invested 9 years of its life. That’s assuming no predators have eaten the oyster by then.
The real estate business in Sacramento is a much safer investment than pearl farming.
