Retreat Month

Courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer I stayed at two fancy resort hotels in the past four weeks. We got lots of work done, but we also had time to play and explore the grounds.

At the first spot, the architecture and the food were Thai, but scratch the surface a little bit and it might have been located anyplace in the world where Westerners enjoy beaches. English was the lingua franca. The behavior code was American. A high-intensity water slide towered above the pool.

The second resort was also by the Gulf of Thailand, but nobody seemed to be going into it. In fact it was hard for me to figure out what the guests were into, because they were mostly speaking Russian, German, or Korean. They hung out, nearly nude, in the lobby.

At the buffet, besides rice and curries, we found goulash and sauerkraut. In the rooms, the cable channels included Deutscher Bundestag and Al Jazeera, as well as broadcasts from Moscow and Malaysia. Signs were sometimes in Russian, sometimes in Thai, but rarely both.

Down the beach was another curiosity: a huge wooden temple known as the Sanctuary of Truth, which I gather was built around 30 years ago by an eccentric Thai billionaire to celebrate the religions of the world. Seems like he chose the right neighborhood for it.