Yupin and I were on a mission. We were going to find the perfect bungalows for my parents on Koh Phi Phi.

She suggested Serene Paradise Bungalow, where she had once stayed, smack in the middle of everything on the beach at Ao Lohdalum Bay. I shook my head. I wasn't staying anywhere with "serene" or "paradise" in its name. Besides, swimming at Ao Lohdalum, on the northern, mudflat side of Phi Phi's wineglass stem, is lousy. Yupin shrugged and resumed her reading of The Lord of the Rings.

Online, every resort was "an oasis of tranquility in tropical island paradise". An oasis from what? The rainforest? All I wanted was a clean, comfortable room with fresh running water. A peaceful setting on a nice swimming beach. But the web copy got me nowhere. I had heard about post-The Beach Phi Phi. I could as easily land in a mildewed oven far from the water, sandwiched between a garbage dump and a discotheque, as find the oasis of serenity.

So we stopped by a reputable travel agency on the way to dinner. The agent said, "Peaceful, eh? Laem Tong is quiet, with good snorkelling." I scratched at the recesses of my memory. That's where we'd stayed before, on Phi Phi's northernmost cape. We had liked a local restaurant, but I couldn't picture the beach. I mulled the idea over as I flipped through brochures. By now it was well after dark. Yupin sighed loudly as her stomach rumbled.

I was turning our scouting trip into a chore, and for what? My parents are easy. Mom is happy if she gets papaya, Dad if he sees a boat. Any of Phi Phi's tranquil oases would delight them. Which meant this dithering was about me, my weekend with Yupin. My vacation with the folks. "Whatever," I thought. I plunked down my dad's credit card and pre-paid two nights on Laem Tong.

The thing I had forgotten about Laem Tong was low tide. We arrived in the morning to a desert of dead coral. Forget swimming. Where was that oasis? And our restaurant was gone. I tried to get the second night refunded, to no avail. "It's a nice room, though," said Yupin. "We'll just take the boat into town."

Phi Phi is a warren of restaurants, dive shops, souvenir stands and roti pancake vendors set between two coves and limestone cliffs. Nevertheless, we covered a lot of ground that afternoon, poking into most bungalow operations. Yupin's Serene Paradise was one of the nicest, but I still wanted better swimming.

Later, we took a boat to Haad Yao, or "Long Beach". Here, the sand actually is white, with a drop-off into water of Absolut clarity. A resort tour revealed comfortable beds, clean rooms and decent water pressure. Perfect. Mission accomplished. I reserved two bungalows for my parents' vacation.

Back at Laem Tong, the feeling of satisfaction wore off. What if I had made a mistake? You wouldn't buy shoes without trying them on, right? I hemmed and hawed. It didn't seem cool to bail out of our second night and throw away my dad's money. On the other hand, the cost of a boat taxi almost equalled the price of a room on Long Beach.

We moved in the morning, then spent the afternoon swimming and lounging on the beach beneath shade trees. The cliffs of Tonsai Bay and the neighbouring island of Phi Phi Le loomed like the gates to Atlantis. My parents would love it.

In the early evening, we were napping in the air-conditioning when a mighty commotion jarred us awake. It sounded like monkeys bowling coconuts on the roof. I went outside, but found nothing.

"It's in the ceiling," I said.

"Rats," said Yupin, meaning rodents, not the comic-book expression.

"They sound like buffaloes."

She was sitting on the bed, looking up. It was either a war or a rave. Squeals. Scratching. Thunderous sprinting, swirling like a cinema's surround-sound commercial. "Think they'll fall on us?" she said.

We stared at the ceiling, waiting for it to rain rats the size of dogs. I pictured them gnawing into our bellies, feasting on our livers. "We should tell the manager," I said.

"Huh," she said. "Like they're going to do anything."

"It's rats."

"You think they'll give us a new room?" She rolled her eyes. Then she got up and took a shower.

On the way out, I said, "I just want to talk to her."

"Talk to her. But she's not going to help."

"Let's just see what she says."

She followed me to the reception area, but stood at a distance as I asked for the manager. A heavy-set, no-nonsense woman in her 40s came out and glared across the counter. She said nothing, just tipped her head back as if to say, "What?" "We have rats in our ceiling," I said.

"What do you want me to do? All the bungalows have rats."

"Can't you get rid of them?"

She raised her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth curled down. Then, with a twinkle, she asked: "You want me to give you a cat?"

I laughed. "Yeah. We'd love a cat."

"I'll go find one," she said.

I thanked her and walked over to Yupin, who said, "See?"

"She is getting us a cat," I said.

In good spirits, we took the boat into town, devoured some seafood, and perused the shops, joking about the cat. Had she been serious? How was she going to put the cat inside? Wouldn't the rats kill it? Her question must have been rhetorical. "You want a cat?" was just her way of saying Get out of my face.

But when we returned, we found a sleek tom on our porch table.

"What are you doing?" I said.

He shrugged, lifted a paw and gave a lick, as if to say, "You go up there."

We left him and went to bed.

Beneath the shrieks and crashing of rat warfare, I said, "I guess we'll stay at Serene Paradise."

"We can come here in the day," she said.

We lay there, staring at the ceiling. Was it sagging, or was it just the moonlight playing tricks?

The rats raged until dawn. In the morning, the cat, still guarding his table, looked well-rested.