In August, I wrote about Dutch people and their holidays, but since I just came back from a late summer holiday, I would like to write about my experience.

I went to an all-inclusive beach resort in Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

Such resorts, where all meals, drinks, snacks, entertainment and even ice creams are included in a Club Med-style, are also very popular among the Dutch. There are an uncountable number of such places in Europe and surrounding countries.

Because the resort we chose was a five-star international hotel, its guests were a nice mix of people from many countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Spain, Israel, Russia and Latvia, to name a few. And since it was quite an upmarket resort, there were luckily not too many tattooed or obese people walking around.

But as I talked to the holidaymakers from different countries, I found one remarkable difference between the Dutch guests and many of the rest.

While people of most other nationalities stayed at the resort between 10 days and two weeks, many of the Dutch (and some Germans) who stayed in ours and surrounding resorts stayed for as long as three weeks.

I must say we were also a minority since we were there for just a week. Though my husband is Dutch, we have a "Japanese tendency" of preferring to make short trips to many destinations. (Our trips this year consisted of 10 days in Japan, one week in Denmark, one week in Turkey, then five days in Israel.)

And the resort was wonderful in the sense that the food was excellent, the staff pleasant, the beach impeccable, with even water slides in the pool, a great amusement park for kids, and entertainment for adults and children, such as a mini-disco at night.

At least a few times during my stay I had to rub my eyes because the place started to look like heaven.

Still, like many such mega-resort developments, there's not much going on once you are outside the complex and I thought I wouldn't know what to do if I had three long weeks to spend there.

But a Dutch woman I met in the resort's bar tried to help solve my mystery.

"Well, you do need the first week to get rid of your stress and get used to the fact that you are on a holiday, right? Then the second week, your body and mind start opening up, and the third week, you are finally relaxed. You do need at least three weeks for that, don't you?" she said.

What stress is there to get rid of, I thought, since she and her husband were retired.

And if a working person spends three weeks becoming so "utterly relaxed," would he or she be able to return to work smoothly when the holiday ends?

One Dutch father of two boys pointed out that it bothered him that staying for three weeks at such a resort was costly (though he got a discount for staying longer). Still, he and all the other Dutch people I talked to seemed to share the same opinion that holidays should at least be three weeks, or as long as possible.

So my queries were probably unnecessary trouble and a sign that I'm still too Japanese despite living in Holland for almost 10 years.

I wonder how long it will take me to need three weeks off at a resort to become relaxed like the Dutch. Or will that ever happen to a Japanese?