Kamalaya

Hello world, it's been a long time. My day job had me keeping some insane hours in the past few months, including a lot of transpacific travel. After a particularly bad month, I took a much-needed week off and treated myself to a detox retreat at Kamalaya in Koh Samui. While it's a tad pricey (ok, maybe a little more than a tad), especially for Thailand, it was exactly the rest, relaxation and restoration my body needed. It's one of those things that I can only imagine really justifying in Asia - if I lived a balanced, normal life like I generally did in the US (one filled with daily exercise, wholesome organic foods and nights and weekends to relax), then I wouldn't need to spend a week shelling out a lot of dough to eat only raw vegetables and do yoga. So while a detox retreat is a privilege, working in Asia, I kind of see it as a necessity once in a while as well.

I did a five-day detox retreat which involved daily yoga, detox treatments (such as lymphatic massage, colonics, infrared sauna) and a meat-free, soy-free, dairy-free, rice/wheat/grain-free detox diet that mostly consisted of raw vegetables and certain raw fruits. Surprisingly, I never felt deprived and everything was really delicious.


Pineapple "mojito" - detox style, made with mint, lime and pineapple. You are permitted as many fruit and vegetable juices as you want on the detox

Green vegetable soup

Raw maki made with water chestnuts (instead of rice) and served with a spirulina-wasabi dipping sauce. One of my favorites

Raw pad thai made with coconut tendrils

Raw banana blossom salad

Food rating: ****
Bang for buck rating: 3

The essentials:

Location: Koh Samui, Thailand