*miserychick is actually happy

Whew.  Finally my computer is somewhat workable, although I highly doubt that it will stay this way for very long.  But at least, tonight, I’ve got my two favorite things working together:  my computer and the Internet.  Lots of things has happened this past week… but where were we?

Oh yes, the detox. I was going to spill it.  Well, here is where we were, for a whole week:

So yeah, it was pretty, pretttty, nice.  The first three days, it was raining non-stop and we thought that it was gonna be one of those wet-wet-wet vacation.  The sun never came out and the rain wasn’t just showering, it was pouring out like someone tipped a giant bucket in the sky.  But eventually, I guess the gods heard our whining.

The Sanctuary is one of those new-age-health-freak havens.  It’s got a superb vegetarian and health food restaurant, nice bungalows overlooking the sea, yoga and meditation center, a spa, a steam room built into a natural bolder, and a wellness center that administers cleansing and detox programs.  All of it situated on a quiet hard-to-get-to beach on Koh Phangan, which itself is quite a distance.  You go there and you check out from the real world; all there is to do is get pampered.
 And it isn’t ‘fancy’.  It’s a bunch of huts built into the jungle and blend in quite nicely with the natural surroundings, unlike many eyesore high-end spa/resorts in neighboring Koh Samui.  Facilities are clean and the staff are ultra friendly.  There was nothing to complain.  The atmosphere puts your brain into this hazy i’m-in-paradise-and-i-don’t-care mode.

Our first full day there, we had to prep for the fast by eating only raw food from their “cleansing” menu.  Quite frankly, it’s the most delicious raw food I’ve ever had.  It is recommended that you prep your body in advanced, but it was pretty hard to do a no-flour, no-rice, no-sugar, no-meat diet in Bangkok.  Or any city for that matter, so most people get there and need a few days of prepping.  The center decides if your body is ready by doing a saliva test on a litmus paper.  Alkaline means good.  Acid bad.  We passed the test on the first day.  Yes, we good girls.

There’s two main things you take during the fast:  a “shake”, which is a mixture of psyllium husk with bentonite clay and water, and “herbs”, which are supplement pills of chomper and some other superfood complex to make sure you’re getting nutrients to the body.  You take either the shake or pills every 1.5 hours, alternating.  The psyllium husk, acts as a “brush” to clean your colon (the body can’t digest it, so it goes straight to the colon) and the clay picks up all the debris that the psyllium is cleaning out.  These two things help smooth the colonic process, which is done daily at 4 pm.

  

Now, I’d rather not go into the colonic part in detail, but I will say that, boy, I’m glad that we had to self-administer this process because I sure wouldn’t want to share the experience with any other human being.  Seriously.

We’re encouraged to drink fresh juice or tea during the day, in addition to a lot of water.  Some time in the afternoon, we get a drink called a “lymph flush” which is a blend carrot, cucumber, and ginger.  Then at night, all the fasters will sit together for a “dinner” of veggie broth, which restores electrolytes.  We also take a probiotic pill before bedtime (around 10 pm - because there’s not much to do and you get tired easily anyway).  The probiotic pill puts back the “good bacteria” back into the colon.  Or that’s what I’m told.

Besides the fast ritual, there’s a yoga class in the morning.  In the afternoon, there’s plenty of time to get massages or other spa services.  Then after our colonic session, we flock to the herbal steam room.  This whole cleansing program is such an intriguing sharing experience:  you end up talking to perfect strangers about your bowel movements with total ease, like it was the weather.

So actually the days are filled with activities, not much, but enough to pass the time and catch up on a good book in a hammock.  After 24 hours of no solid food, I experienced a slight lightheadedness and it lasted for the rest of the fast.  Energy level was low, but I could still do yoga.  On the third day, I was a little cranky and got sick after taking a wheatgrass shot, which I later found out it was too hardcore for an empty stomach.  But overall, the fasting was much easier and much relaxing than I thought it would be.

The best part is that first dish of one fruit you are allowed to eat after the fasting is over.  That bowl of papaya wasn’t even ripen all the way, but it was the best papaya I’ve tasted.  It was so refreshing, more than I’ve ever known papaya to be refreshing, and the sugar from the fruit put away that softly lingering headache for good.

There were no Thai client besides Jane and I. The fasting scene was dominated by mostly white Aussies and Brits, with a few American-accent Asians (which I guess we also count).  Most people were doing a full 7-day cleanse program, which we found to be rather hardcore, and more than a few of the people we met are returnees: they’ve been doing it every year or so.

The combination of facial, massages, body scrub, herbal steams, yoga, fasting, health food, and (yes, even this) colonics is definitely the type of vacation you go to disconnect yourself from the world for a few weeks. The toughest decision to make is which spa service you want. You don’t have to think about what your next meal is going to be, and most drastic of all: you don’t over eat. Your body feels much better afterwards.

I didn’t lose any weight, but I walk around feeling lighter and a bit healthier now.  It could be psychological, but hey, it worked.

Posted on Thursday, 20 November 2008 at 11:56 PST