Kamalaya

Day 1:

The immigration line at Koh Samui is exactly two people behind their own wooden podiums in an open-air, thatched roof room with a lazy ceiling fan spinning above your head. For a second, I am confused about whether I’ve just landed in Hawaii or Thailand because Koh Samui airport embodies the welcoming laid back Hawaii vibe. As I wait in line for my turn with the immigration officer, I’m already thinking how this solo detox vacation is going to be the best thing ever.

Driving from the airport to Kamalaya, a highly lauded wellness resort, the streetscape looks almost identical to Bali or Phnom Penh or any other city in Southeast Asia – that is to say, there is garbage piling up in the gutters, a dearth of street lights, the smell of rice and coconut and fuel emission fumes in the air, random streetcarts selling everything from fruit to grilled chicken to rice noodles and entire families precariously balanced on a single scooter whizzing by. These are the sights, smells and sounds I love about Southeast Asia.

There are some places in the world that I just love, no matter what they put me through. Barcelona, of course, tops the list, but it doesn’t put me through anything other than sheer joy and gastronomic bliss. In the second and third worlds though, I have a certain fondness for Southeast Asia (particularly Thailand) and Mexico. When I’m in travelling through these places, I’m willing to put up with a lot more….of everything than I’d be willing to put up with anywhere else.

So even though I just faced a cockroach in my bathroom, instead of screaming and running around frantically and calling the receptionist to demand that they come kill it and change my room, I simply took my flip flop and squashed it (to give full disclosure, however, it was a baby cockroach only about an inch long. If it had been full-grown, I probably would have shrieked and run around in my empty bathroom, as if shrieking would scare the cockroach into leaving my room). That’s exactly the sort of thing I would never do in normal life – I abhor cockroaches, probably more than almost any other critter in the world.

Anyway, so I’m spending the next five days at this detox/wellness resort and things didn’t exactly get off to a great start. First, while I was waiting for the receptionist to check me in, I was checking my blackberry and the director of the resort came by to introduce himself and welcome me, then to gently advise that no phones, blackberries or laptops are allowed in any of the public areas because seeing other people using these stressful devices stresses other people out, and this resort is all about getting away from all that.

I looked him coolly in the eye and said I’d try to abide by the rule but inside I was thinking: omg! What kind of kooky hippie commune did I decide to come to? No blackberries? You’re not relaxing me, you’re stressing me out!

He then told me that the rooms don’t have TVs and also don’t have internet, at which I became a little more hostile to the permanently smiling director. No internet? Excuse me? He replied that if absolutely necessary, internet is available in our rooms for an additional fee (omg, in addition to the exorbitant fees I’m paying already for this hippie commune where they are charging more per meal than should be legally allowed to basically starve me?), and that they charge this fee not to make more money, but to encourage guests to truly shut the world out. Did I detect the teeniest bit of condescension in his voice? I think I did. I told him that of course, disconnecting from the stressful world and refinding balance is the whole point of this trip, but I will still need internet access, thank you very much. He was pretty much done talking to me by then.

5 minutes later in my room, I think to myself: wait a minute, they might be on to something with the no blackberry/laptop/internet rule. After all, didn’t I come to detox, rebalance, relax, and all that other hokey stuff they’re trying to sell?

Fine, I can do this. (They have internet access in the library, which we are welcome to use, but that’s the only place we are allowed to bring laptops – no other public areas – so I’m not completely disconnected, which would stress me out more than it would de-stress me)

Maybe it’s because I just spent the last 3 days at a Mandarin Oriental resort with El Hombre where I didn’t see any cockroaches in our room, where we had a TV with many cable channels, a wonderful king-size bed with deliciously cool, soft high thread-count sheets, poolboys bringing us mist spritzers, cold towels and water and where I was allowed to use my phone or blackberry or laptop wherever and whenever I pleased, but this vacation is starting to seem a teeny bit hokey to me my first hour in Koh Samui.

After I’ve killed the cockroach and done a cleen sweep of the room looking for more critters, I head down to the restaurant for a late dinner. And this is when I start liking the place. The thing is, when it comes to worldly comforts such as nice cockroach-free hotel rooms and non-condescending hotel staff, I fall squarely on the side of the more luxe the better. I don’t want an eco-friendly tree-hugging hotel room because in real terms that means no air conditioning, no high thread count sheets, no plush thick towels.

But when it comes to eating, I love new age stuff, just as much as I love haute cuisine. So I’m thrilled when I look through the menu: raw pad thai salad made with coconut tendrils, banana blossom and wakame salad, raw vegetable platter with various vegan dipping sauces, a whole separate book for just juices and smoothies. I choose a raw maki roll made with water chestnuts (instead of rice), carrots, and avocado, served with a muddy green spirulina-wasabi sauce. Absolutely delicious.

Day 2:

The plan was to wake up for morning yoga. The yoga pavilion here is about 6 steps from my room, so really I have no excuse to not make it. But of course, I sleep in and when I finally wake, the yoga class is half over, and everyone knows you’re not supposed to walk into a yoga class late. So after fixing myself a cup of warm lime elixir (hot water mixed with limes), which the little card left by housekeeping next to a plate of limes says is an “alkalizing drink that gently stimulates and cleanses the internal organs for a healthy start to the day,” I head down to breakfast. Breakfast turns out to be a buffet! El Hombre and I just spent the past long weekend at the Mandarin Oriental in Hainan Island, where they had one of the most impressive breakfast buffets ever, so I’m looking forward to more buffet breakfasts.

Once I take a look around though, I realize this buffet is very very different from the Mandarin Oriental’s. Instead of five different types of congee (fish, chicken, beef, sweet potato and plain) with all sorts of traditional Chinese congee toppings, there’s a watery, grayish concoction labeled “millet congee.” Pass.
Instead of an egg station where you can get eggs benedict, perfectly round sunny side up eggs or omelets made to order, there’s…no egg station. And instead of a pastry spread and dim sum spread, there’s a salad bar with lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, pureed pumpkin, pureed asparagus, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, nuts of all sorts…and that’s about it. Not even any tomatoes or corn or tofu, as these items all apparently slow down the detoxification process. There’s also some fresh tropical fruit and a juice bar where you can down all sorts of vegetable juices and wheatgrass shots to your heart’s content.

So I down my first shot of wheatgrass ever. And it occurs to me that it’s strange that I’ve never had wheatgrass before since it’s supposed to be the mother of all healthy drinks, and I am a sucker for health food items. Then again, the idea of paying $5 for a shot of liquefied grass never ever appealed to me, and I’m dubious about the health benefits of grass anyway. But since wheatgrass is included in the breakfast, why not give it a try?

I’m disgusted to find out that wheatgrass tastes exactly like grass. Gross.

So I eat a spoonful of raw honey, taken fresh from the beeswax. The one awesome thing about this buffet is that they put out a block of real beeswax about a foot long and 3 inches high, with its tiny hexagonal caves oozing honey. You spoon it yourself into a tiny bowl, to eat however you wish. I figure after inhaling that nasty green liquid, I deserve a spoon.

After eating the rest of my breakfast – lettuce, papaya, pineapple and a green juice made with leafy greens, green apples and coconut water (the juice may sound gross, but it was honestly the best-tasting part of breakfast – liquefied leafy greens are delicious, especially when mixed with fresh apple juice!), I head down to the beach. Kamalaya has a tiny private beach and it is maybe the most relaxing beach I’ve been to in my life. I think it’s because this beach can’t be swum in (the tide is super low so mostly it’s algae-covered sludge, although it still looks beautiful), so the ocean vista can’t be marred with people splashing around. Sitting on a beach chair, drinking another green juice (another delicious concoction of vegetables and fruit), watching the calm sea with a backdrop of mountains and a single perfect wispy cloud in the blue blue sky, it’s impossible not to feel utterly relaxed.

After a few hours of reading and lounging in the shade under a palm tree on the beach, I head up to lunch. Raw banana blossom and seaweed salad and raw pad thai made with coconut, bean sprouts, carrots and sunflower seeds. I think the pad thai is a bit of a flop – it tastes nothing like pad thai, and leaves me wanting…for something more (more flavor, more food, more calories, perhaps).

I have my consultation with a naturopath in the afternoon to go over my detox program. First, they conduct a bio-impedance analysis using some sort of electroplate machine. The nurse explains my results and tells me I’m in excellent health, that my cells are in excellent shape and that I have an excellent ratio of lean body mass to fat mass. Which is more than a little bit surprising to me since in the last six months I’ve been living in HK, I’ve given up any form of exercise, eat out (mostly rice, dumplings and noodles) 99.9% of the time and breathe in toxic air that must be carcinogenic and breaking down my cells. I tell her so, but she smiles and tells me that my body must be very resilient. And I ask myself: well what am I doing here, trying to restore my health, if I’m apparently in excellent health? Ah well, there’s always room for improvement. Plus, psychologically, I don’t feel that I’m in good health.

My detox program will consist of various massages, including lymphatic drainage (which improves circulation) and chi nei tsang (an ancient Chinese abdominal massage that supposedly restores balance to the body and improves the digestive system). Today, they start with a foot massage and a session of chi nei tsang. Some of the treatment rooms are outdoors on private balconies – the views are amazing, but being outdoors means that there’s no air conditioning. And April is the hottest month in Koh Samui, my masseuse tells me. It turns out that getting your stomach massaged in 95 degree humid weather isn’t the most pleasant experience in the world, but neither is it the most unpleasant.

I head back to my room afterwards to shower and check in on my blackberry, which has been sitting on my bed all day long. After reading through about 5 or 6 emails, my stress level immediately shoots up, and now I can understand the rule for no blackberries at this place (which by the way calls itself a “Wellness Sanctuary and Holistic Spa” – which sounds more new agey than makes me comfortable).

The great thing about having no TV and no internet is that it frees up a lot of “dumb” time to do more productive stuff, like read and write. I’ve finished one book and am halfway through my second, and I’ve probably written more in the last 24 hours than I’ve written in the last two months (non-legal, that is). I wonder if I went and lived in a secluded bungalow somewhere with no TV, internet or other distractions for a couple months, whether I’d actually come out of there with a manuscript I could send to publishers. Who knows what I’d write about, but I’ve already written 4 pages on just my first 24 hours at this place. My problem with writing is that every time I start on my so called “novel,” a few pages in I realize it’s a badly disguised autobiographical memoir, get disgusted with myself for my utter lack of creativity, then give up. But I’m beginning to think: what’s so bad about writing a novel loosely based on the things I know?

Day 3:

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. I think the saying goes something like that. Anyway, I woke up bright and early today, checked my emails in the library, had another breakfast of lettuce, fruit, wheatgrass and green juice then went to a Hatha/Kundalini yoga class with a visiting instructor. This guy was pretty far out there – a former skier, he traveled the world in his 20’s (searching for adventure and the meaning of life), met a yogi in the Himalayas and now devotes his life to yoga. The thing is, instead of doing “traditional” yoga that I’m used to (with sun salutations, downward dog, etc.) he did a more “spiritual” yoga, which involved a lot of standing around just rotating our necks, or standing around touching our toes or holding our breath for as long as we could, then trying to feel our chakras, or something like that. So I don’t feel that I got a deep stretch or any exercise, but to be honest, the setting for yoga here is so breathtakingly peaceful and beautiful (the yoga pavilion sits on a hill overlooking the ocean and mountains, with birds chirping in the trees and the deep blue ocean melting into a clear blue sky in front of you) that you feel great afterward anyway. I’m heading over to the wellness sanctuary (yes, that’s what it’s called) for another round of chi nei tsang, followed by a colonic. Fun times.

**

Two for two – that is, yoga classes that sucked. I went to my second yoga class this afternoon, one called Yoga Nidra. Turns out that this is a yoga class where you spend an hour lying on the ground in savasana (corpse) pose, while the instructor says all sorts of new agey things about your chakras (I wouldn't remember because I was drifting in and out of consciousness the entire time). Two people actually fell into a deep sleep and when the instructor had us sit back up to end the session, they were still lying in their corpse poses, sleeping blissfully through our oms, until the whole thing was over. I want some real yoga - with deep stretches and challenging poses. Not that I’m a yogi, which I’m not – in fact, precisely because I’m not a yogi, while I’m on this detox vacation at this wellness center that boasts about its yoga classes, I want to do some real yoga. I find it annoying that precisely when I have all the time in the world to actually practice yoga, the classes available are some hokey spiritual ones rather than actual challenging physical practices.

In between my two busted yoga classes, I went through a very unpleasant experience called a colonic. There’s no pretty way to describe what a colonic is. A colonic is basically the granddaddy of enemas. The nurse sticks a tube up your rectum, through which clean water is pumped into your colon and the sludge from your colon is pumped out. The entire time, you feel intense discomfort because as the water builds up in your colon, you have the sensation that you have major diarrhea, but the nurse instructs you to hold it in and let the machine do all the cleansing for you. Meanwhile, a second nurse comes in and massages your stomach to help the cleansing, which creates even more discomfort and cramping. It’s not an experience I’d recommend to anyone unless absolutely necessary, and one I will not likely be going through again for a very long time.

I vacillate between really liking this place and thinking it’s a hokey new age place that’s not for me. What I love is the serenity, the breathtaking scenery, the peacefulness, the delicious but healthy detox food, the hospitality and friendliness of the Thai people. But the one hour yoga session where you just lie down like a corpse, all this talk about chakras and finding your inner balance and complimentary self-help seminars – this is the kind of stuff that makes me think it’s all a joke. Having lived most of my life in the Bay Area, I definitely have a fondness and inclination toward some hippie stuff. But being a cynical, suspicious corporate type, I have my limitations, and Kamalaya keeps pushing the envelope.

Even though I’m in Thailand, I’m the only Asian person at this resort that is not an employee. I find that to often be the case when I go to some hippie-ish place (such as when El Hombre and I went to live on a farm in the countryside in China for a week). Asians are too practical to waste money on this type of stuff – why would you pay more to eat only vegetables when you could eat meat? Why would you pay more to stay at a place with no TV, when you can stay at a hotel with a flat screen plasma TV with 100 channels? Why would you want to spend your vacation basically not having any fun?

When I think about how much I’m paying to be here, I can’t help but think that I really could have gone on two vacations instead, and probably at nicer places. But then…those would probably be at overcrowded resorts with either screaming babies or obnoxious drunk people, where the food most certainly would not be carefully prepared with detoxification and maximum health in mind. Ultimately, I’m glad I decided to do this detox trip, because I think it’s fulfilling the goal I had: to truly rest and restore myself, to forget the stress of work, to be renewed (so that I can go right back to the grind and get stressed out again, the irony).

Day 4:

Even as of last night, I didn’t feel a noticeable difference in my physical health or emotional well-being, but today, I feel…fantastic. My body feels lighter, my mind feels clearer, my skin feels smoother, my worries seem ten thousand miles away. Not sure what the difference is – maybe it takes a few days of detox to actually feel the results, but today I definitely feel them. I feel relaxed, calm, ready to go back into the world and embrace (or tackle, whichever is more appropriate – in HK, it’s usually the latter) whatever it has to offer me. Maybe that colonic was effective after all. Nevertheless, I don’t plan to go through another one anytime soon, even though they actually recommend at least 3 treatments to fully cleanse out your colon and digestive system.

As a side note, today at the wellness sanctuary, I was happy to see other Asian guests.

Today was more of the same: eat healthy, work out, read on the beach, get massages. We don’t have TVs in our rooms and I only check email sporadically in the library, so it wasn’t until this afternoon that I learned of the tornadoes in the US, and the royal wedding, which shared news space equally. I happened to be in the library just as the wedding was about to be broadcast on BBC, and some Brits had arranged for it to be shown on the library TV, so I watched the procession, just up until Kate said “I will,” then had to run to my massage. The craziest part of that wedding was just how many heads of state were present – if a bomb were to go off in Westminster Abbey, about 90% of the world would be without a head of state! I thought Kate’s dress was pretty, but she looked rather tired.

Heading to bed early tonight – all this doing nothing makes me tired.

Day 5:

It occurs to me that I’ve had no meat, fish, rice, bread, pasta, grains, coffee, alcohol or dairy for 5 days now. Neither have I had any tomatoes, corn, bell pepper, eggplants, potatoes, mangoes or bananas, as these fruits and vegetables supposedly slow down the detoxification system. You can’t even eat tofu! Who knew that even supposedly good-for-you foods are off limits when detoxing! What I have had a lot of is green vegetables, green juices, green soups, coconut, papaya and pineapple. Surprisingly, I never feel hungry.

As much as I’ve enjoyed being completely clean for a few days – something that was utterly impossible in noodle/rice/dumpling-infested Hong Kong, I’ll be glad to return to normal life and normal food. I crave a frothy latte or chai tea from Fuel, my favorite cafe in Hong Kong (purveyor of the only truly decent cup of coffee in the city). And Haagen Dazs ice cream. And fiery hot Sichuan food.

I woke up early today to attend the stretching and abs classes offered in the morning. The stretching class was much like a classic yoga class, exactly what I was looking for to stretch my back and hamstrings. The abs class kicked my butt and made me realize I have exactly zero stomach muscles.

I’m glad this is my last day because I definitely feel ready to go home. Tranquility and serenity are really nice, but even those, only in small doses.

Day 6:

I'm at Koh Samui airport, waiting to head back to Hong Kong. From solitude, clean air, no internet (well, almost), no TV, no carbs, no meat, no white noise (other than the sound of geckos croaking, chirping and crying - I had no idea geckos made all kinds of crazy noises) to the city of zero personal space, incredible smog and pollution, neon lights, concrete buildings, non-stop advertisements and materialism, dumplings, noodles, dim sum and so much human noise and traffic that you can never hear your own thoughts. But if not for that life - my everyday life - I would neither have the need or the financial means to splurge on a week-long spa/detox vacation.

A detox vacation is nothing more than a glorified spa vacation, worded carefully with phrases such as "holistic," "wellness," "detox," and "restoration" to try to make more serious-sounding and guiltless what it really is: a completely bourgeoise indulgence where days are filled with pampering, rest, relaxation, exercise and carefully prepared overpriced vegetables. It's a creation of our generation - one that feels entitled to resting, relaxing and restoring when the stresses of everyday life get to you. I 'm quite certain that in my parents' and grandparents' generation, they never thought to indulge themselves in such a way, despite the stresses of immigrating to a new country, working non-stop to make ends meet and raising a family - arguably a more stress-inducing lifestyle than the one I lead. And so, I feel a little guilty about indulging myself. But (and I recognize this may just be my self-justification), I also feel that it was wholly necessary. Simply said, I was burned out. And while my parents and grandparents may never have thought to indulge themselves in such a manner, I think they would have been emotionally and physically healthier if they had. My dad and grandfather still smoke at least a pack a day and drink almost every night - this is how they deal with their stress. Instead of wasting $8 a day on cigarettes and killing myself slowly in the process, I choose to deal with my stress with the occasional spa getaway. And I think that's ok.