Healing Adventures - Wellness Getaways for Health & Happiness

Chapter 1 - Thailand, Australia and the Pacific

Health is our goal – it is where we want to be. Healing is a process – it is how we get there. Happiness happens when life comes to us in ease, joy and glory. Here are four starting suggestions for this journey:

1. Set your intention. When you plan to find health, healing and happiness there is a much greater chance that you will succeed.

2. Know where to look. We will show you where to look, and when you do, wherever you are, you will find a healing adventure there.

3. Have a guide – like this book – one that gives you the information and the inspiration you will need.

4. Capture the beautiful moments. Learn how to illuminate your best memories and continue to enjoy and use them for your health, healing and happiness.

It has been our privilege to write about healing ways and places in my column The Healing Adventure. Places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef or Thailand’s Land of a Million Rice Fields can fill the horizon, but, when you explore them with a sense of adventure, you will find new ways to wellness there. Once learned, these skills can be used everywhere.

In my earlier book, The Best Guide to Alternative Medicine I reported on the natural healing systems of eastern and western cultures. These included the ayurvedic medicine of India, traditional Chinese medicine, and the bright future of western integrative medicine. I am happy to say that these great ways to thrive can still be found.

This new book will bring us the health secrets of an around-the-world journey of discovery. It is filled with new ways to wellness, and tips that show travelers the best ways to get there. Join us as we circle the world to discover new healing adventures.

The noted travel writer Paul Theroux urges us to revisit places that are important to us to gain a new perspective, and discover how they have changed since the previous visit. We have followed his advice, and Paul Theroux – A Legendary Traveler and the Literature of Re-Visitation is one of the stories in our second chapter. We will begin our journey in Chapter 1 with the exotic and beautiful Kingdom of Thailand, and the health secrets of the Four Seasons Resort at Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.

Thailand

Thai Healing Adventure: It’s the food! Ask for a bed of brown, unpolished rice, long grains the color of mahogany. Add your entrée of seafood, poultry or vegetables. Coconut, lemon grass, and prai root (a form of ginger) are used as spices and also for therapy at the spa. Spa treatments include a variety of Thai oil massages, the best being the summa prai massage infused with warm steamed prai root. Thai foods and spa treatments are now available worldwide, but are at their best in Thailand.

The Four Seasons Chiang Mai Resort & Spa

Welcome to the Kingdom of Thailand, said the flight attendants of the Thai Airlines jumbo jet, as they woke us with hot towels and tea. Looking out the window at the golden temples and palaces of Bangkok, it did seem that we were arriving in a fantasy kingdom. A transfer to the nearby domestic terminal, and a one hour flight on Thai Airways, brought us to Northern Thailand and the city of Chiang Mai. Jade green rice fields stretched to the horizon, where they were met by misty mountains. This was the ancient Lanna Kingdom, known as The Land of One Million Rice Fields. From the airport a tour guide drove us 30 kilometers north to our destination – The Four Seasons Chiang Mai Resort & Spa. Set on twenty exquisitely landscaped acres enclosed by a wall, the Resort has its own rice fields, gardens and tranquil pools. At night the paths were lit by candlelight, adding to the dreamlike atmosphere. The nights were soft, with brief rain showers. In our luxurious suite there was no need for air conditioning, only the large ceiling fan that whispered over the king-sized bed.

A Spa Fit for a King

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and tropical fruits, we walked to the Lanna Spa, which is located in a beautifully designed three-story building, and is surrounded by a wall topped by a golden snake, a protective symbol in Thailand. Inside the décor was of royal purple and metallic gold. My kind therapist, Suwaluck, invited me to change into a robe and enter a room filled with steam and the herbal aroma of prai, a member of the ginger family, but darker of root and woodsy of aroma. I left the robe at the door, carefully breathed the hot, humid air, and began to perspire profusely. The purpose of the steam room was to remove toxins through perspiration, and it worked. When I came out, Suwaluck had cool drinking water ready, and I took a warm shower.

An Herbal Bath and Traditional Thai Massage

Wrapping a bath towel around my waist, I emerged from the shower and walked with Suwaluck to a garden room with a large sunken tub. On the surface of the warm water there floated slices of kaffir lime and its leaves, along with lemongrass, pandanus, sliced ginger root and sliced prai root. I lowered myself into the bath, where Suwaluck placed a rolled towel under my head and told me she would return in 25 minutes. It was as I lay in the herbal bath, in the exotic surroundings of the Spa, that I realized I was living a fantasy. When Suwaluck came to get me I dried off, and slid beneath a light covering, face down, on her massage table. She asked me to tell her if I had any aches or pains, and if I wanted the massage to be soft, medium or hard. I chose hard because I wanted it to be memorable. She began on the lower and upper back, pouring warm prai oil from a little bowl and massaging it in with long strokes of her strong hands, followed by her forearms, with the weight of her body on top of them. When I rolled onto my back she carefully massaged the abdominal area, stimulating the internal organs. As she went on to massage my face, head and neck I had a tactile awareness of my skeleton and bones, and especially I was conscious of my skull, and its place within my head. It was as though I was looking at an x-ray of my body in three dimensions. Finally, Suwaluck asked me to sit on the massage table. She draped a bath towel across my shoulders and began to massage the shoulders, neck and arms through the towel. I had the distinct impression that I was being sculpted and molded like a statue, perhaps a statue of myself in more perfect proportions. I visualized the marble and bronze statues I had studied just a week earlier on the Acropolis of Athens.

Two hours of careful Thai treatments had given me the gift of insight into my own living anatomy and physiology. What is more, they had given me a vision of the person, the body that I could now become. I thanked my kind and wise therapist, gave her a little gift, and walked out into the green and pleasant Land of One Million Rice Fields.

Dining Like Kings

When it was time for dinner, we followed the candle lit paths to the resort’s Sala Mai Rim restaurant, where the service was as exquisite as the Thai cuisine. Our server appeared, smiling and holding two rice bowls. In this hand, he said, I have steamed white rice. In my other hand I have unpolished brown rice with all of the vitamins and minerals still in it. We chose the brown rice, with its long dark grains, and it was the most delicious we had ever tasted. We used it as a bed for the honeyed duck, which was marvelously moist and tender. The Four Seasons Chiang Mai Resort & Spa has been awarded the top position in Asia for Best Restaurants by the readers of Travel + Leisure. The healthful food, the rejuvenating spa treatments and the unsurpassed beauty of the resort made this a healing adventure to remember.

Getting There

From Bangkok take Thai Airways to Chiang Mai, about 55 minutes. For more information email reservations.chiangmai@fourseasons.com, Or visit www.fourseasons.com.

Australia

The Healing Waters of Australia’s Rain Forest

Queensland, Australia. Traveling south from Bangkok, we stopped at Singapore, and from there took a night flight over the Java Sea to Australia. Our Singapore Airlines flight lived up to that carrier’s high reputation for efficiency, safety and outstanding cabin service. We flew straight across Australia, crossing over Alice Springs in the heart of the great Outback. From our view it appeared as a vast red desert, reminiscent of photos sent back by a Mars orbiter. Here and there a watercourse allowed a pencil line of vegetation to take root. Large dry lakebeds appeared, looking like Bonneville in Utah. By heading east we were rushing to meet the Sun. Our first port-of-call on Australia’s eastern sea coast was Sydney, a city that boasts one of the world’s great harbors. From there we boarded a Virgin Blue flight to our final destination, Queensland, and Australia’s wet tropics. Like America’s Jet Blue, Virgin Blue cuts costs by having passengers buy any food and drink items they might want on the journey. For our short flight, all we needed was a glass of orange juice. We chose our destination, the port of Cairns on the Coral Sea, because of its proximity to the both the Great Barrier Reef, and to the mysterious Daintree Rain Forest.

Silky Oaks Lodge and Healing Waters Spa

At the invitation of Spa manager Deborah Turnbull we traveled about two hours north of Cairns to the Mossman River Gorge. The Silky Oaks Lodge is located on the river, about 5 kilometers from the sea, and within the oldest living rain forest on the planet. We found the Lodge perched above the river like a welcoming, open-air treehouse. There are 45 Treehouse suites and 5 Riverhouses all with private balconies, air-conditioning and private spa baths. To help guests leave the outside world behind, there are no TV’s in the guest rooms. A tropical breakfast and four course dinner daily are included in the room rate. A short walk from the main lodge took us to the Healing Waters Spa, set in lush tropical gardens. Deborah welcomed us, introduced her two therapists, and gave us a tour of the small but elegant Spa. She explained that the treatments at the Spa celebrate water as a renewing and life-giving force, and are based on a tradition of healing that is centuries old. The treatments have evolved from the landscape. The river’s mineral rich water and the herbal essences of the living rainforest are distilled into therapies designed to heal the mind, body and spirit. She introduced us to a type of therapy called Li’Tya (L-dee-a) a word used by the Aboriginal people of Australia to mean from the earth. It is also the name of the healing and beautifying products used at the spa, which are based on the indigenous plants, fruits, earth minerals, desert salts and sea plants of Australia.

A Rainforest Spa Treatment

room where, for about 30 minutes, I perspired freely and well. Coming out I showered and entered a wet treatment room with view windows to the rain forest. I lay face down as Deborah gave me a massage with aromatherapy essential oils. The oil of lemon myrtle was to stimulate the immune system, the native mint was to improve the circulation, and the juniper was used as a cleansing herb and a diuretic. After the oil she added coarse salt from the Australian desert. It was this Li’Tya element that gave the treatment its name. The salt acted as an exfoliant, removing dead and dried skin, and played its part in this detoxifying treatment, along with the oils, which were used to restore energy and stamina. Granite stones from the Mossman River, some weighing several pounds, had been kept in a freezer, and were now brought out to be used in the therapy. The six chilled stones were placed on my back over energy centers. The largest stone was on my lower back, with progressively smaller stones leading up to my neck and shoulders. The cold stones were also stroked along energy meridians on the back. A tropical rain shower then poured down from six showerheads above me. The therapist could direct the flow from above and also from a hose sprayer. The rain shower was repeated with me lying face up. Deborah got nearly as wet as I did by giving me this very extensive and unique treatment. After I toweled dry and put on a robe I felt