Picture the scene: you’re on a sun-drenched tropical island surrounded by azure waters and dazzling white sand. A lone palm tree casts shadows across your lover’s bronzed skin as you sip an ice-cold Campari Spritz. It’s a scene pictured a million times a day on Instagram feeds and the biggest holiday cliché of them all. But does the reality of an exotic island paradise live up to the fantasy peddled by popular TV shows such as White Lotus ?

T.S. Eliot wrote that ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’. I would argue that humankind cannot bear very much fantasy either. Yes, turquoise oceans, sugar-white sand and tropical flora are all pleasing to the eye, but are they enough to sustain one’s interest for an entire week, let alone two? It’s depressing how quickly we acclimatise to even

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