The restaurant at the end of the world

Atop Penang, atop the hill, there's a little hotel with a restaurant sitting by the cliff side, overlooking everything. The grass is green there and the trellis grows thick over the tables. And you are the king of creation on your cafe chair throne, sipping your drink. The waiter plucks flowers for the ladies and makes butterfly shapes. And then he asks you, do you want to see the snakes?

Yes, we cry.

He points up at the trellis. Two adult pit vipers and 5 baby pit vipers, all in their full potency of venom but quiet as the leaves themselves. Minding their own business. After a few photographs, we mind our own too.

And then the rain rolls upon us and beats thickly on the canvas sheet. The four of us and seven snakes under a canvas sheet protected trellis, looking out at the white world, sitting where the earth ends.

The Gods on Mount Olympus. They must have felt a bit like this.