Thailand has kind people and a vast history of traditional wellness. But can it cure a tired Millennial? Adam Bloodworth finds out
A textbook Bangkok afternoon: the sun is doing its darnedest to incinerate anyone who dares go outside, but luckily I’m indoors, laying in a bath with a towel covering my modesty. Chernkwan, a local, is covering my chest with water, leaning in and checking she’s splashed every part of me like a doting parent taking care of their newborn cherub.
It’s slightly awkward, but I’m committed. She’s swishing around cloth bags in the bathwater filled with local medicinal herbs and foraged plants. She’s a master timekeeper: every ten minutes Chernkwan points to the steam room where I intermittently sweat between long, unnerving bathes.
Rakxa – where rooms cost £3,718 for five nights – is the poshest wellness retreat in Thailand. Within the Phra Pradaeng District, the ‘green lung’ of Bangkok, a natural expanse on the south-eastern outskirts of the capital, there are panoramic views of the hedonistic city 20 kilometres to the north, but silent Rakxa taunts the stressed-out workers with its pindrop-calm.
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Chernkwan grew up on the other side of the mud-brown Chao Phraya River separating Rakxa from the bright lights. Her mother taught her traditional Thai medicine when she was in single digits and now she harvests vegetables from on-site gardens to perform these rituals, helping stressed out Westerners decompress. Ever since backpackers forged the trail in the 1960s, Thailand’s reputation as the Far Eastern wellness destination has become so entrenched that it’s a cliche. Baz Luhrmann’s film The Beach bolstered the ‘find yourself’ narrative for the early 2000s, and the explosion of gap year culture and the mainstreamisation of the once remote place means spiritual pilgrimages can these days involve getting robbed on a touristy beach. McDonald’s is the first sight you see as you arrive by boat to the party island of Koh Phi Phi, the location of Luhrmann’s film.
Still, the lure of Thailand needs no explanation. Even in the popular parts, if one beach is a tourist hellscape you tend to walk round the corner and find the next one absolutely deserted. I had wanted to see what the God tier of Thai wellness looked like, so I checked into the Rakxa Thai-run wellness facility as an embarrassingly predictable patient. I was jet-lagged and had a cold, probably because I’d been burning the candle at a local music festival in the hours before I arrived. (You might like the idea of going to the Far East to relax, but the reality is wanting to squeeze as much out of a longhaul trip as you can.)
Rakxa is part of a trendy new cohort of ‘integrative wellness’ retreats using traditional and modern techniques to get you fighting fit. The idea of integrative wellness began in the Western world with destinations like Clinique La Prairie, the Swiss clinic that opened in 1931, and these days the industry’s business-end is bio-hacking, with clinics including Mayfair’s Hooke attempting to keep you alive for longer at an eye-watering cost. Cough up almost £4,000 and state-of-the- art tech will assess your balance, suspension exercises examine your neuromuscular activation, hyperbaric chambers measure your breathing.
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Acupuncture, massage, breathwork and tai chi are the counterbalances, suggesting you needn’t have been born in the modern age to be fighting fit. But really it’s about being in Thailand, isn’t it? At Rakxa, most guests enter the resort and don’t leave for anything from five to twelve days. A pristinely manicured expanse of private villas and treatment centres are designed in traditional Thai styles. Winding paths take you through trees, past swimming pools, and along boardwalks. It might not be that big but it feels like its own little state. It’s a recognisably swanky Far Eastern resort, only there’s the word ‘hospital’ above one building. And there’s no booze.
I’m given a push bike as the main method of transport. Bikes are instantly nostalgic: they remind me of being a kid, of transporting myself to the den I made in the forest at the end of my road in the halcyon days when that was the most important journey I’d make. It’s all part of the shtick. Careering around the site on two wheels, you get a smug sense of self importance as the staff bow to you and smile broadly. “Sawadi-ka!”
The Rakxa staff pull you into their way of living. Have I ever smiled this much at anyone? It’s true what they say about working out your mouth muscles: it does wonders. My apartment looked like a CGI mock-up someone would create but never actually make. It had floor-to-ceiling windows, great feng shui with massive sofas and a dining table in the living room (which in itself was as big as my London flat), a bathtub big enough for a walrus to luxuriate in and sliding doors out onto my private lawn and swimming pool. Behind that was the monitor lizard-laden lake with loungers from which to watch the amphibious fellas shimmying across the surface.
It’s a hard life. But I had busy days of meetings and, like a good school boy, I cycled to them. The first morning I had the best massage of my life, which involved an incredibly tender caressing of the scalp that sent me to sleep, followed by tai chi on a boardwalk overlooking the water. Sometimes I struggled to concentrate on the activities (it’s hard to fire your brain up when you’ve just spent four hours around an infinity pool) but the lure of the skyline brings you back to a state of focus, a constant reminder of the purposeful silence and stillness at Rakxa, how it contrasts with ordinary life.
There was one poisonously judgemental lady from LA but I just went in the other direction when she came near me, like one of the lizards dodging a pushbike
Later I sat in a Joey Tribbiani lounger with an IV drip in my arm feeling like I was having a very expensive breakdown. Many people here probably are. On the water, the monitor lizards poke their little heads above the water. It takes a few minutes to see one haul itself from one side of the lake to the other as a load of complicated things to do with immunity poured into my arm.
On the first few evenings, Bangkok was tempting. Khao San Road! Night markets! Booze! It’s made more tempting by the fact that dinner is typically over by around eight, with the restaurant closing at nine. But by day four you have the sense that the whole world has become Rakxa and that nothing else worthwhile exists. All that matters is the morning pilgrimage to breakfast, the earnest greeting I have with each of my practitioners, my daily meetings (I must attend them all! I didn’t. I missed one, inevitably) and the cycle back home to see the sunset. I also snuck out on the last night, which thrilled my inner teenager, but don’t tell anyone.
One thing you certainly won’t see is an abundance of other guests. Rakxa makes sure there are never too many people on site at once. During my five-day trip I became well acquainted with a lovely retirement-age lady from the States who said she’d arrived struggling to walk and now was back on two feet. The way she explained the story made me believe her: it wasn’t all woo-woo, she’d really found solutions here. We spoke about finding joy. “I’m trying to fit some of that back in,” she said. Most guests were in their sixties and seventies and working on a sort of reverse hedonism. There was one poisonously judgemental lady from LA but I just went in the other direction when she came near me, like one of the lizards dodging a pushbike.
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Some crazy things started happening. I started to feel relaxed. One morning, this lifelong night owl felt excited to get up and watch the sun rise. I learned about the sense of control that comes with rising early as I rode my bicycle to my treatment centre and enjoyed the synchronicity of three or four employees lining up at an entrance to welcome me. Mealtimes, sometimes with my new friend, were incredible technological feats. There’s no scrimping on portions, which are hearty: the idea is you’re full enough you don’t need to snack (I did ask for double portions of in-room cookies. One thing at a time).
Each night the three-courses offered fresh new perspectives on Far Eastern cuisine. Local seafood, colourful papaya salads, properly tart kombucha served in cocktail glasses with little decorative flowers. It all tricks your mind into thinking you’re having something hedonistic, and makes you realise how needless the poison really is.
At first I thought there could be activities in the evenings, as it’s dark by seven in Thailand all year-round. But maybe I’m programmed to be afraid of doing nothing at all, facing the reality that is actually winding down. But by night two I was already thankful for the glorious stretch of nothing that had become my nights. There are other things to do first in Thailand: the retreats of Koh Phangyang will be less engineered luxury and you’ll meet more people, but Rakxa really is something else.
There’s a potency to the pristineness, the landscape and hospitality that feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. It’s almost too many good things all in one place. This is Thai wellness, a concoction spurred on by some of the nicest people in the world and totally unlike anything else. I am in my own little Truman Show, and that’s rather lovely. Just one more lap around the place on my bike before I go: it might not be real but it feels great.
Adam experienced the five night Rebalance programme at Rakxa Thailand, from £3,718; rakxawellness.com