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By Kit C. Cauw
Wonderful as the resort is at Pimalai Resort & Spa, lovely
as its blue infinite pool and powdery sand beach may be, once you
enter the spa, you realize the error of this romantic getaway's
name. Once you enter spa treatment, this knowledge crystalizes to
a clarity as tangible as the knot worked out of your back by expert
hands. The Pimalai is no resort & spa. The Pimalai is a Spa.
Connected to a resort, yes, but it is the spa in which its essence
and definition are discovered and celebrated. As the motto reads,
"Discover Nature, Discover Yourself."
Pimalai Spa, near the southern tip of Krabi's Koh Lanta Island,
is a shrine to the forest, a gorgeous model of how tropical development
could and should be.
The buildings, walkways, waterfalls and pools weave into the jungle.
As you look up from the Thai massage pavilion, the thatch roofs
of treatment salas blend in with the vegetation like pictures from
decades-old National Geographic magazines, from Pacific island villages
before the advent of plastic and petroleum. Before I visited Thailand
the first time, I naively expected the entire kingdom to look like
Pimalai Spa.
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While Pimalai Spa treasures its primitive facade, it creatively
deletes the harsh realities of jungle subsistence living. No headhunters,
no tigers, no land leeches wriggling through your sandals, no spider
web stuck to your face, not even any mildew. Each treatment sala
has been fashioned with native wood, bamboo, stones, iron, natural
ropes and ceramics, yet the massage tables are state of the art,
the rooms air conditioned, the showers hot.
I drove from Phuket and took two automobile ferry boats to visit
the Pimalai Spa on a late afternoon in January. A brief, and rare,
rain shower had just passed through, leaving the air rich with ozone.
You could practically see the rainforest vegetation shooting up
after its nourishing drink. We were wise to arrive a bit early,
for this gave us the opportunity to walk through the grounds. Stairs
led down from the reception sala into the tropical garden. A sheer
waterfall with moss growing on its rocks flowed downstream in a
series of small pools, opening to a larger pond at the lowest level.
Water beaded on the wooden plank walkway, dripped from the trees
and leaves, and gurgled from the brook and fountain.
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After taking our fill of the garden forest setting, we returned
to the reception sala for invigorating hot ginger infusion drinks.
The ginger could have come from the jungle; we passed some growing
along the pathways. In the deep lotus pond, Japanese fancy carp,
painted in splotches of orange and white, or red, black, and white
cruised the clear water. There was something majestic about the
fish, yet their colouration patterns reminded me of dairy cows.
The receptionist, seeing our enthrallment, offered us a plastic
jar of fish food. We spent the next few moments like little children,
stirring the carp into a frenzy of shark-like proportion, drawing
a stern warning from the receptionist.
Soon enough, our masseuses, or massage doctors, as they're called
in Thai, arrived and saved the fish from gorging themselves to death.
We had ordered the "Koo Rak" (loving couple) treatment,
beginning with a flower bath, then a body scrub followed by a massage.
Our good doctors led us to the Bird Of Paradise pavilion and directed
us to the bath, then left us to our privacy. The treatment room
and toilet were inside the thatch-roofed building; the waterfall
shower and the separate, oversized bathtub-for two-were out in the
veranda, surrounded by a tall bamboo fence. A couple of rain drops
fell as we walked to the pool, the surface of which could have been
taken from a scene in the movie "American Beauty". Here
we soaked for thirty minutes, all the while throwing rose petals
up in the air just to watch them curl down like heavy snowflakes
and cover our skin again and again.
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Next came the body scrubs. I had chosen the "Thai Cooling
Scrub," in which "Sesame acts as the main exfoliating
ingredient; sesame seeds and honey explode onto your skin, moisturizing
with its natural humectant properties." My parner opted for
the "Ageless Thai Herbal Scrub" which combines "Thai
clay, rice, plai (like ginger), galangal, tumeric, and magroot (kaffir
lime)," many of which are common ingredients in Thai curries,
though not, thankfully, the clay. The menu says, "Apart from
refreshing, stimulating and tightening the skin, this also helps
to alleviate aching and tired muscles as well as lighten and refresh
the mind."
Sadly, I'm not as in tune with my skin as I might be; I didn't notice
the explosions and I am never really aware of when and how I "foliate,"
but that's why I'm the patient and she's the massage doctor. My
partner, on the other hand, has a much more intimate knowledge of
her skin and had been looking forward to this for weeks. She was
not disappointed. In fact, she considers the Pimalai scrub her best
one yet and we've visited some very big name spas. I also enjoyed
the scrub very much. It did feel cooling, a bit abrasive in a pleasant
sort of way and it smelled lovely. What a relaxing experience to
have someone slowly rub cooling paste all over your skin. I could
see the progression of our Koo Rak treatment: from the softening,
hands to the scrub, which was also a kind of a body rub: foreplay
to the big event.
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We showered our scrubs and our dead skin cells down the waterfall
shower's drain, then toweled off and lay back down for the main
course: the Asian Aroma Massage. "This massage is deeply relaxing,
using long, slow movements and strokes to help quiet your mind and
bring harmony to body, mind and spirit." Alternately, we could
have chosen the Royal Siam Massage or the Pimalai Sports Massage,
but neither of us wears a crown or gets as much exercise as we should,
and the notion of experiencing quiet and harmony seemed pretty enticing
after having driven for five hours. Combining techniques of Balinese,
Thai, Hawaiian and other Asian-Pacific massage, the treatment was
thorough and deep, more gentle than what I associate with pure traditional
Thai massage. My doctor used a good amount of specially blended
aromatic oil: not so much that I felt greasy, yet enough that her
work didn't pull out my arm hairs. I felt kneaded, yet not contorted;
I was not subjected to any shocking joint popping or back cracking.
In fact, I kind of nodded off, which conforms perfectly to the quiet,
harmony and relaxation objectives of this special spa.
It's interesting how you don't really touch your lover throughout
the loving couple spa experience, except for the thirty minutes
in the tub with flower petals. In fact, two other people are touching
you both quite a lot, yet you experience a certain level of intimacy
with each other. You are both enjoying the same treatment at the
same time. You can hear each other breathing, or in my partner's
case, she can hear me snoring. In a way, it's almost as if the massage
doctor, of whom you become acutely aware when her fingers and elbows
discover those knots and burrs in your muscles, is paradoxically
not present at all.
At the end of our treatments, we stepped out into a different world,
our breathing and thinking slowed, the healing oils continuing their
work on our skin, the stresses of driving and of work and of busy
Phuket as distant as the dimmest stars. The gardens now were bathed
in darkness, the cicadas were playing their evening symphony; there
was no sound of traffic nor glow of light pollution coming from
anywhere. We took each other by the hand, then walked in half-embrace,
one, the quintessence of Koo Rak, pausing before the waterfall and
looking up at Venus, the goddess of love, newly risen in the deep
blue-black sky.
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