Tanning with Trotsky

by Ram Murali

I went to Club Med for a few days in January, and it struck me as being a communist state. Kind of like Warsaw on the beach, in fact.

The trip started auspiciously enough. We arrived at Club Med Paradise Island in the morning, and were given coffee while waiting to be checked in. A perky young French girl showed us to our room.

We knew something was askew when we realized this girl did not have a very good command of English. As we walked past the bar, she said, “This bar.” My sister, uncomprehending, replied, “This bar what?” The girl giggled and said, “This bar.” I looked at her, shrugged and said, “Ok.”

We continued our walk. The girl stopped outside a door marked “Nightclub” and said “This nightclub.” My sister, who had caught on, replied, “Ok.”

We then passed a grove of trees with a clearing in the middle which, perversely, was marked “Classical music.” The girl stopped. “This classical music.”

“Ok.”

The trip continued. By the time we got to the swimming pool, the girl had managed to point out everything that had been clearly marked.

When she said, “This swimming pool” and I said “Ok” she burst into a fit of giggles. “All you say, Ok, Ok!” she laughed helplessly. My sister and I looked at each other but said nothing. We got to our room and she said, “This your room.” I said, “Ok.” The girl nearly had a hysteric fit outside the room as we went in and closed the door on her.

“Whew,” I said. We poked around the room and waited for the baggage to come. It didn’t. “Let’s call the front desk and see how long it’s going to be,” I suggested. That was when we figured out that our room had no phone. So I decided to walk back to the front desk and see what was going on. On the way there I found our luggage resting placidly under a sign that said “Pick up bags here.” I hauled the bags back to our room.

Once back, we unpacked and decided to go to the front desk to see why we didn’t have a phone.

The woman working there explained that none of the rooms had phones. “To preserve the island atmosphere,” she added.

What?

“When Club Med began, the rooms didn’t even have locks on the doors. This was to encourage guests to leave valuable clothes and jewelry at home so that everyone was more equal.”

I was starting to feel sick at this point. My sister looked horrified.

“How do we make phone calls?” I managed.

She pointed to an office to the right. “You can make calls from there between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM.”

I gave up.

“Let’s go to lunch,” I said, though I wasn’t hungry.

We went to the restaurant, marked “Restaurant,” which the French girl had helpfully pointed out earlier. Someone seated us at a big round table with eight other people. “Excuse me, there must be some kind of mistake,” I volunteered.

“We seat our guests together so everyone can get to know each other better,” the hostess smiled. My sister clutched at my arm under the table and hissed, “This is camp.”

All of the meals at Club Med are buffets. We got food and sat down, listening to the rest of the table discuss how “Seinfeld” was going off the air. This had been announced at least two weeks before and we did not get involved in the conversation. I was wearing a Dartmouth T-shirt. Someone asked me, “Do you go to Dartmouth?” I said, “Yes.” That was the extent of lunch conversation for me.

After lunch, we went to the beach, which was beautiful. We spent a couple of hours there, after which I began to get hungry. “I’m hungry,” I announced.

“I kind of am too,” my sister replied. “Do you want to go back and get room service?”

“We can’t. There’s no phone.”

“Oh yeah.”

We went up to the other restaurant and it was closed. This was when we found out that you can’t get food between the hours of 2 and 8.

“Excuse me?” my sister hissed at the poor Bahamanian who was cleaning the restaurant. She was getting good at hissing.

“Sorry ma’am. Restaurant closed.” We returned to the front desk to find that it was closed between the hours of 2 and 5. We went back to the beach.

Don’t get me wrong. I was enjoying myself. The weather was perfect, I was on a beautiful beach, and I was in a good mood. And complaining is the spice of life. But I could not understand Club Med.

I was more puzzled than annoyed.

At around five we went to play tennis. While waiting for a court to free up, I got into a conversation with one of the people working there. G.O.s, they call them.

The guy was a student from South Africa working there on his break from school. He waxed ecstatic about his job and about all things Club Med. It was his second time working there.

“I love it. I get to be outside all day, and I really like everyone I work with. It’s a lot of fun.”

After we talked for a few minutes, I said, “If you don’t mind my asking, is the pay good?”

“Oh, we don’t get paid.”

What?

“We don’t get paid. We get room, board, and round-trip travel.” So why work here?

“Honestly, it’s more fun than you could ever imagine.”

Oh, that explains it. Club Med’s purpose is to entertain its workers, not to entertain its guests. A true Resort of the Proletariat.

We saw further into the psyche of Club Med later that night. After dinner, where we successfully evaded the horror of sitting with strangers, we went to the bar and realized that we had to buy prepaid “tickets” for drinks at the front desk. In the big open auditorium by the bar, we saw that preparations were taking place for some kind of show.

I asked the girl at the bar, “What kind of show are you putting on?”

“It’s a new show.”

I looked at her and waited.

“Dancing.”

We waited to see what was going on. The show began. It was entirely put on by the G.O.s. They looked like they were having a lot of fun. We were really bored. Then they started playing music such as “Hands Up!” and “The Macarena.”

“I think we’re at a bar mitzvah,” I commented. “Let’s get out of here before they start playing the Electric Slide,” my sister said astutely.

So we got into a taxi and went to a casino at the other end of the island. By the time we got back “Nightclub” was in full swing but we were tired.

We had many surreal encounters with the Club Med G.O.s over the next few days. One day, I was buying something at the store. As I was paying, the girl working there peered at me closely and said, “Did you go to the dentist?”

What?

“Maybe it was ze woman wiz ze perfume...” She trailed off into space.

Whoa. I left, hurriedly.

We spent the next three days dodging overfriendly workers, well-meaning G.O.s, and random people at meals. It was tiring.

But in the end, I had a really good time. Club Med is without a doubt a communist state. I would even go so far as to call it “Club Marx.” And though I would never go back there on vacation, I plan to work there after graduation.

So much for corporate recruiting. You see? It’s contagious.