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A holiday in the Virgin Islands doesn’t have to cost the Earth. AMY LAUGHINGHOUSE, a regular visitor to St John, has some tips on how to get the best value for your dollar

I’M SUNNING myself beside a swimming pool in St John, a lush, feral gem in the US Virgin Islands, sipping a rum-laced lime and coconut brought to me, unbidden, by a waiter who seems to anticipate my every need. My favourite tunes are wafting across a salty sea breeze, harmonising with the twitter of unseen birds nestled in the palm trees and bougainvillea. There is hardly another soul around, and my lazy idyll is uninterrupted by screaming children doing cannonballs into the deep end or somebody talking so loudly on his mobile phone that the person on the other end could probably hear him without the aid of a cell tower.