There was a nude beach just down the way, a stretch of sand about half a mile from the resort, tucked into a little cove. When I’d first heard about it I’d suddenly understood why my parents were always so insistent on taking us on walks in the other direction. That made me even more curious, of course. I really, really had to go and look, so finally, I snuck off and had a peek. What a letdown! Clearly, there was some sort of mathematical equation at work. The less attractive somebody was, or the more overweight they were, the more likely they were to be there, walking around naked or playing volleyball on the beach. The few woman who were worth looking at were always lying face down, discreetly, on a towel.

I decided it was far better to spend some time getting to know the good-looking girls in cute bikinis around the hotel pool. Not that there were that many girls around the resort that I could imagine as girlfriends. It was more of a family and retired folks sort of resort. There were a few little kids, a lot younger than me, and a lot of people the age of my parents and up, plenty of them senior citizens, but I was virtually the only guy my age at the whole resort. It made me wish even more that my sister had been able to come. Even though she sometimes acted like a fussy old woman, she would at least have been somebody close to my age to hang around with.

None of this answered my question about time. I knew there was a clock behind the desk in the lobby, so I got up and strolled around the pool. People nodded or said hello as I passed. I didn’t know any of them, but people who came here seemed to get infected by the Thai friendliness. In New York they would have just rushed by. Here, people seemed to have time to talk. There probably would have been even more conversation if more of them had spoken English.

I knew from the little snippets of conversation that I heard, and from past visits, that there were people here from dozens and dozens of countries. Not just from the United States and Canada, or England and Australia—places where they sort of spoke English—but from all over Europe. My mother’s family was originally from Sweden—she even spoke a little Swedish—and there were lots and lots of people from Sweden here.

You could tell who the Swedes were without even asking. They were usually the ones playing volleyball or running on the beach. They looked athletic and were tall and often had whitish-blond hair. My mother and I both had hair like that. My father always joked that he could see himself in his dark-haired daughter, but nothing of himself in me. In fact, my mother and I looked so Swedish that sometimes a tourist would just walk up to one of us and start speaking Swedish. Mom knew enough that she could sort of communicate. I only knew a couple of words, including how to say “Hello” and “How are you?”—“Halla dar! Vem ar ni?”—and “Goodbye”—“Adjo.” That was about it. Luckily, it seemed like everybody in Sweden spoke at least some English. Actually, all the Europeans at the resort seemed to speak at least a little English as well.