Play — Recovery01The shadow of the palms reaches the lip of the pool, and half the water sits in shade. Dug in a shape that isn't straight, it has a long edge. Before I can swim a length, my hand reaches an edge somewhere. 1 session 15 minutes swimming, 15 minutes floating
I get in the pool every evening
Half of that I spent swimming. The other half I spent bobbing at the edge, holding on. Arms and legs gone slack, looking up at either a ceiling or the sky.
02(Image) The top stays indigo, and the lower it goes the wider a band of orange stretches sideways. The edges of the clouds are bright, and below them everything has already sunk into shadow.
I left the room at 6:00 p.m., got into the water, and was back at 6:30 p.m. I settle on the time I get in the same way every time. There is no one I have arranged it with, and still that hour does not move inside me.
I go down around 6:00 p.m., and the 30 minutes until I am back in the room are the whole of that day's pool. The 15 minutes floating feel longer than the 15 minutes swimming. I am not thinking about anything, just handing my body over to the water.
The pool is usually quiet at that hour. Almost no voices, and now and then the sound of someone cutting through the water. Apart from that, the sound of my own breathing is the louder one.
The colour of the light on the surface differs a little from day to day. Some days it is close to orange, some days it is still whitish and bright.
I repeat these 30 minutes every time I move hotels. The country changes, the place changes, and the habit does not. The size of the room and the price change; my habit does not change by country.
I pick a hotel by whether it has a pool
I do not rent a place; I live moving from hotel to hotel. When I decide where to stay, the first thing I look at is whether there is a pool. I check that before the price or the size of the room.
I get up and eat the buffet, go out to the mall, have a beauty treatment, get in the pool in the evening, and sleep at the hotel. Since I moved to Thailand this order has barely changed
- Eat the buffet
- Go out to the mall
- Have a beauty treatment
- Get in the pool in the evening
In Kuala Lumpur I took a suite at 15,000 yen a night for 4 nights. On the roof there was a long, narrow pool lined with white loungers. Out the window I could see skyscrapers and the Twin Towers.
03White loungers stand at even intervals along the edge of the long, narrow water, backs propped up, every one of them free. At this hour the question of which one is free does not come up.
Working out of the hotel, I worked when I felt like working, and when the mood took me I swam in the pool with the Twin Towers in view. Sometimes I had proper Arab food brought up to the room.
04On a white plate, meat still on the skewer, fried potato and corn pushed together. What I ordered came up to the room, and the plate stayed on the table afterwards.
That said, this 5-star hotel struck me as a bit of a hassle. The lavish full kitchen, and security so thorough that I had to hold up a key card every time I got in the elevator — neither of them suited the way I live.
Some resort hotels are a miss
I have also stayed at a place in Bangkok near Suvarnabhumi Airport. Right after I arrived they moved my room up to a floor with a view of the pool. The person carrying my bags asked how many nights, and I said 1 week.
A city-view room turned into a pool-view room, and the price was apparently the same. I did not ask why, and I had no reason to turn it down. Perhaps that was simply the room that happened to be free.
That pool really was big. But the shared facilities stopped at the pool and the gym, and a massage was 1,600 baht for 90 minutes, twice what it goes for in town.
Resort luxury and easy living turned out not to be the same thing. In exchange for being close to the airport, getting into the city cost time and money. So I ended up having my massages there every time, at the steeper price.
I knew that if I went into town, the same 90-minute massage would cost less. Even so, there was no chance I was going to make that trip, so in the end I just accepted the price.
Every time I switched hotels, what was in the shared spaces was different. Some places had nothing beyond a pool and a gym; others had several restaurants inside.
Something similar happens with the time of day. The water is cold in the morning, and at midday the sun is too strong, which does not suit me, since I would rather not tan.
When I stayed in a room on a high floor, the pool sat where the towers of the city were in view. Holding on to the edge and looking out, 15 minutes went by fast.
05Seen from the edge, the surface of the water lines up straight onto the outline of the city. With my eyes level with the water, I can no longer see where the seam is.
I spend longer looking out than swimming. Even so, the way it ran until I was back in the room was the same as ever. The view changed, and the length, 30 minutes, did not move.
In the evening, three things line up at once
- The water is warm and it feels good
- The sky is still bright
- There is no one there
Getting in around 6:00 p.m., the three of them come together. The water is cold in the morning and it is hot at midday, so I go down only once the sun has started to drop.
On the roof in Kuala Lumpur, and at the place near the airport in Bangkok, the hour I was aiming for stayed the same 6:00 p.m. The shape of the pool and the height above the ground were different, and the hour my body had memorised did not move.
Even the town I went to expecting nothing had one
The day I stayed in the Polish countryside, I reached the hotel at 6:20 p.m. When I arrived, I thought I had come to a place with nothing in it.
Out the window there was farmland with almost no lights in it, and the outline of a wood in the distance. No mall in the same town, and no street lined with lamps anywhere in sight.
Pool ⇨ jacuzzi ⇨ shower, did the whole run! Felt amazing! I had been thinking, what am I even doing out in the middle of nowhere, but I am so glad I came here!
Until I got there, I had been thinking, what am I doing out in the middle of nowhere. Even so, the way it ran until I was back in the room was the same as the usual 30 minutes. Pool, jacuzzi and shower in that order, and I was back in the room in 69 minutes.
There was not a single shop around the hotel, and not much light either. Even so, the act itself, getting into the water in the evening, was no different from a hotel in a city.
How I look at a hotel changed
What I look at stopped being the size of the pool and became whether the evening sun reaches it. On the booking screen, that is the one photo I open first. I check it before the pictures of the room.
A beauty treatment, a swim in the pool, and now and then a mango. In Istanbul that run did not change either. That run is what my days are now.
When I swim, whatever I had been fretting over stops mattering. The corridor back to the room after I get out of the water is cold every time. That temperature is how I know the hour I went down was the right one.
When I decide on the next hotel, I put the same question first. Is there a pool, and does the evening sun reach it? Only once both answers are there do I go through with the booking.
In Kuala Lumpur, in Bangkok, in the Polish countryside, I was putting the same question. I forget the name of the hotel and the size of the room, and the view from the pool is somehow the one thing I remember every time.
