02 May 2024

Thailand

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Lissom with mother

For Bel Mooney and her daughter Kitty Dimbleby , paradise was having body and soul toned and pampered in a Thai luxury retreat with not so much as a mobile phone to spoil the mood.

1 Chiva Som 2 Relax in the spa 3 Tone your body

HOW DO YOU DEFINE PARADISE? For hyper-busy people it might just be an evening in with a bottle of wine. But the imagination usually leaps to the sun, sand and nothing to do for a week… except perhaps a bit of pampering, with a few palm trees thrown in to dress the set.

Most of us would say we’d like to be with our favourite person - friend, lover or family. Well readers, I can report that I found Paradise. What’s more, having experienced the Mother and Daughter Retreat at Asia’s most famous spa resort, I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.

It happened like this. Kitty, 24, was taking six months between jobs to travel in Australia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and suggested I fly out to show her a good time in contrast to the backpackers’ hostels she’d been staying in.

Naturally every traveller needs a mum with a credit card. And she had been missing me too! We’re very close, so to be parted for months was strange. And for me, I’d just moved house and badly needed de-stressing. My daughter and I had an excited reunion at Bangkok airport, spent three days in that noisy, wonderful metropolis, and then were picked up from our hotel to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive south to Hua Hin.

This small tourist town, long the site of the Thai royal family’s summer residence, has now awakened to the international tourist trade. But to talk of ordinary tourism in the same breath as Chiva-Som is misleading. You can get a massage and a facial at most good hotels all over the world, but Chiva-Som offers far, far more.

Haven of life

The name translates as ‘Haven of Life’ and that’s exactly what it is. The three-part logo stands for Mind, Body and Spirit; this is a holiday which aims to treat the whole person. And ‘treat’ can be interpreted as you like.

With only 57 rooms and a ratio of four staff members to every guest, Chiva-Som is the epitome of exclusivity. Yet it isn’t ‘smart’. The place has a sublime, calm beauty expressed in the wonderful statues of Buddha that greet you at the entrance.

It communicates itself through the bookmarks they put on your pillow (with an orchid) every night, each bearing a different aphorism, such as ‘uncertainty is part of the overall order of life’ and so on. You are reminded that you are an individual - they even ask you whether your hair is dry, oily or normal so they can put the right shampoo in your shower.

It delights you with detail - for example, the moment you first lie face down for your daily massage and notice that you are looking at a glass bowl on the floor, filled with floating flowers illuminated by a candle underneath. It’s an inspired touch.

Each morning they cover the surface of the cool plunge pool with fresh petals. After two days or so you enter a state of profound relaxation. Kitty and I were left in no doubt as to what a spa holiday really means. On the first afternoon we met Alison, one of the health and wellness advisers.

This is a key beginning to every guest’s stay. She tried to discover what we wanted from our seven nights at the spa and we found ourselves being very frank about all our problems. The Mother and Daughter package includes a range of treatments, but Alison suggested we add a couple of holistic therapies. There is a whole range to choose from, including iridology (having your health analysed through your eyes) and Bush flower remedies.

I was up for anything and everything. It may sound pretentious but part of the Chiva-Som philosophy is ‘transformation’, encouraging you to think carefully about where you are in life and how you want to change. It didn’t take long for perceptive Alison to ‘read’ me and Kitty pretty accurately, and we all agreed we really needed this MOT for body and soul.

Stress free paradise

Looking after yourself can sound selfish. When you’ve brought up a family and looked after a husband, a home and a career, you can be used to giving all the time without expecting much back. Many women feel that to have, say, a facial once every six months is the epitome of self-indulgence.

And why am I just talking about women? Men need looking after too - and I should point out that Chiva-Som offers a Father and Son package, as well as others for golf lovers, executives and so on. The statistics about stress (in both sexes and in all walks of life) are forever making us question the way we live, while the truth is that for many people holidays are often the most stressful times because of high expectations. And let’s be honest, family pressure too.

There are no small children at Chiva-Som, no mobile phones, no noisy bars (wine and champagne are available only at meals), no blaring music, nothing naff, nothing unharmonious. But, as well as the amazing spa treatments, there is a stunningly beautiful environment, wonderful food, delicious healthy ‘mocktails’, walks along the beach, dance, cookery and flower arranging classes, plus DVDs and CDs to borrow and a library with good thrillers to read by the pool.

We were due for a Pilates lesson as part of our package when I spotted a famous face at the spa area reception - the British Pilates guru Lynne Robinson, who runs occasional retreats at Chiva-Som and whose books and videos are sold worldwide. I nobbled her and begged

her to take our session. She agreed, and Kitty concentrated hard while I (with experience in this gently effective exercise) showed what I knew.

The tables were turned in our cookery lesson, because Kitty had done a week’s cookery course in the north of Thailand so knew all about the amount of chilli that’s bearable, and how to cut vegetables into the pretty shapes beloved of Thai chefs. Paisam, the hotel’s sous chef, beamed at us as we tasted our creations.

On other days we had our hair treated with freshly mixed unguents, experienced foot treatments with hot stones (oddly soothing), and a Thai manicurist even managed to make my stubby nails presentable. It was - yes, the cliché springs easily to mind - paradise.

Re-energise

It’s true that a holiday like this is very expensive. But as the TV commercials say, ‘you’re worth it’. I was thinking that if the lady of the house was coming up to a special birthday there could be no better present than to dispatch her to Chiva-Som with her darling daughter to have as amazing a time as we did.

I tell you, it does you more good than gold. But I can hear a retort from the single or independent-minded that they don’t need to wait for a man to treat them to a restoration of body, mind and spirit. After all, you could be waiting for ever.

Lots of men and women go alone to the spa to re-energise, and one of the Australian therapists told me that in many cases wives have dragged their husbands along only for the men to protest about not having a beer with lunch, etc, etc.

But at the end of the week it is those men who want to come back. They get into the Thai boxing, or any of the other fitness options, and decide that their midriffs can easily lose the beer!

I think the whole point is that once you get into the spirit of the place, and let it affect you, you realise that there are always ways in which we can make our lives better.

You look deep into your soul and reflect that we are on Earth for such a short time that we owe it to the universe to make the most of it. Of course people experience great sorrows but we all are born with the capacity for joy and the great task we have is to unlock that within our souls. It was bad enough to leave Chiva-Som; harder still to leave Kitty in Bangkok for the next leg of her great adventure and fly home alone.

Before you ask, I did drink wine on the plane - but also vowed to drink more healthy herbal teas than builder’s brew and coffee, to drink less alcohol, to take more exercise and, simply, to chill out more.

And so far - Buddha be praised - I am succeeding.

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