The other day, I had the misfortune of witnessing how rude and threatening the Maltese people can be towards tourists.

While visiting Golden Bay I rented two sunbeds and umbrellas for the day. These were for my wife and I and a British couple.

At about 2pm we decided to leave and we offered the use of two of the sunbeds and one umbrella to two Maltese ladies whom we had befriended. One of the beach boys working for the contractor who rents out these items soon came over and shoved a piece of paper in my face which said the beds were not transferable. I disputed this, pointing out there was no law that said I could not do this. We then left and headed for the car park.

All of a sudden, a Maltese person approached (he had followed us up to the car) and started being threatening towards me in English, thinking I was a tourist. He came right up close and was waving his thick set arms about, wanting to know why I had given the sunbeds to others when I was leaving.

I spoke to him in as calm a manner as possible but after a few exchanges he threatened he would chop me up in bits if I ever tried anything like that again. His manner was really threatening to the point that even the parker tried to calm things down.

I left the scene as I did not want this incident to escalate but I later contacted the Ministry of Tourism, which advised me to make a report to the police.

More important for me though is the creation of awareness about what is going on. These thugs who manage to get a licence to rip people off and who abuse members of the public need to be sorted once and for all before they cause untold damage to our tourism industry.