Vacation

On my seventeenth birthday, my boyfriend’s family and I went on a cruise to the Caribbean. We boarded in Florida and had four destinations: San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Tomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; Sint Maartin – Saint Martin, Dutch and French Virgin Islands; and Labadee, Haiti. The difference between Saint Martin and Sint Maartin is that France owns part of the island and the Netherlands Antilles owns the rest, though this has now changed. It was in Sint Maartin where I had my frightening encounter.
First of all, we docked on the Dutch side and from there went on our assigned tour. The one we went on was the Island tour of local artists. This tour was mainly on the French side, so we didn’t get much interaction with the Dutch side until later in the day. The French side is renowned for ‘clothing optional’ beaches, shopping, and food, while the Dutch side is known for casinos, jewelry, and strong drinks made from rum or guava berry liquor. I remember the French side being formal in behavior, whereas most of what I remember about the Dutch side is sex. The first thing we saw when we got off the tour bus on the Dutch side was an adult toy store. These began to show up everywhere, even less than a half of a mile from a school.
In addition to the astonishing amount of adult shops, there were also a lot of people hitting on tourists, myself included. I was alone at this point, because my boyfriend had gone to the beach, and his family had gone shopping. So I was exploring the city and looking for free jewelry, which was everywhere since Sint Maartin is known partially for jewelry. Stores actually hand out free sample fliers just to get tourists in their stores. I have trouble acknowledging compliments, and it really scares me to be hit on, even if I know the person it bothers me. So here I was seventeen, in a foreign place, and completely alone, but it was when I was coming back to the cruise ship that I really started to become scared. I was just walking down the streets along with all of the other tourists when I was approached by a strange man standing in an alley. At first I thought that he was stopping me because I had dropped something, which I had, so I picked up what I had dropped, thanked him, and continued walking.
It was then that he stopped me again and started hitting on me, which I respectfully declined. It was then that he asked me my age, to which I replied,
“I’m only seventeen, sorry.”
“Hey! It’s no problem; you’re on the Dutch side!” was his reply.
He held me in conversation for another twenty minutes before I was finally able to make it clear to him that I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Now I don’t know if this man was a prostitute or if he was just looking for someone to “keep him company”. I wasn’t even wearing revealing clothing, like the other tourists, because I didn’t want to get sunburned. In fact, the only skin I was showing was my face and my hands. So I don’t really know why I was being stopped so frequently, but after I got away from the strange man, people kept stopping me, both men and women telling me that I was sexy and I was really getting scared. It was only when I met up with my boyfriend that I even remotely began to feel safer.