SPA VILLAGE

I was sitting on my deck reading a book when all of a sudden I heard a banging drum grow louder and louder. I looked up and saw a large group of people dressed in traditional Malay costume slowly marching through the resort. When I realized it wasn’t a coup, I decided to follow the friendly crowd. They made their way into the resort’s spa, and performed a traditional ceremony (which I later learned takes place every day at 11:30 a.m.). It was beautiful -- as was the spa. In fact, this spa is so nice that in 2004 Conde Nast magazine named it one of the top 100 spas in the world! It offers relaxation and stress relief programs, based on Malay medicine and therapy. In fact, this is supposedly the only spa in the world that features all-Malay healing treatments. They have been handed down from generation to generation, and the resort’s spa consultant, Sairani Mohd Saad’s, comes from one of those exclusive healing families.

MY MASSAGE
Unlike at the KL Ritz, I was not asked to wear paper underwear (thank God!) Instead I was offered a colorful sarong to wear while walking from the open-air locker room to one of the four treatment huts (guests can take it home, too). I had a "Tauam Pasir" treatment, which took 100 minutes and cost 255 RM ($71). The first half included a Malay massage -- a relaxing, deep tissue massage with long, kneading strokes. The second half got really interesting. The masseuse took out miniature heated sandbags. They were so hot that at times I had to mentally trick myself into thinking they weren’t painful (it worked for me). She then applied these bags to different pressure points around my body to help with circulation. Fortunately, I can take hot stuff. But if you’re like one of my colleagues who can’t (he hated it), you should consider another treatment. Note: For women they don’t use sand. Instead they apply less-hot steel or stones. Even though at times my treatment was really hot, I loved it. In fact, I found it so relaxing I even fell asleep twice.