When I was working for this London-based media company, I heard that what my female colleagues liked to do on holiday was to fly to this resort in Koh Samui to detox. I thought it odd that they would travel all the way from Europe to Thailand, essentially, to starve.

After I left the company in 2002 and got into yoga and was trying to embrace the lifestyle and be all healthy and yogini-like, the idea of detoxing in Samui started to appeal to me. At the end of October 2003, I did Vipassana, a ten-day meditation course. I knew that, while there, I would subsist solely on a vegetarian diet, so I booked the detox for right after that so that my time at Vipassana could serve as the pre-detox detox that was required.

Rosan decided to join me on my fast and, later on, so did my boyfriend, Nicolas.

Predictably, in that short gap of time between Vipassana and our arrival at Spa Samui, I managed to fully retoxify myself. We couldn’t even lie about doing the pre-detox detox as we showed up at the resort with ice cream stains on our shirts. (It was hot and there was ice cream at the airport!)

From the start, Nicolas was skeptical about the whole thing and, as soon as we got there, he eyed everyone in fisherman pants with suspicion. Cultists, he called them. Rosan and I were in heaven. We did Chi Gong and yoga, had massages and joined San Bao, the Chi Gong master, in his tea ceremony.

Since I had just undergone ten days of Vipassana which, in itself, was a detoxification of the soul,and was purged of negative energy, despite the lack of food, I felt fine. Nicolas and Rosan, however, were plagued by headaches. And Nicolas wasn’t too happy about it.

When we visited Spa Samui’s sister resort by the sea, a much older and run-down joint with its A-frame huts and fisherman pant-clad backpacker crowd, Nicolas had had enough.

“Enough of this shit,” he pounded on the table before he stormed off. “You can do whatever you want but I’m renting a car and I’m going to dive.” Rosan and I nearly choked on our liver flush drinks.

If I hadn’t just gone through Vipassana, that would have been the beginning of World War III. But I sat back, waited for him to calm down before approaching him…

With emotional blackmail.

“But you promised,” I cried. He relented – too easily which made me suspect that it had already occurred to him that he was being silly and was grateful for the opportunity to make amends. He hugged me and apologized. He promised to stick to the detox but that he was still renting a car. Rosan and I rejoiced.

For the next two days, we drove around Koh Samui. We visited Paul Dallaghan’s shala at Yoga Thailand and met his wife, Jutima. We visited temples where, while Rosan knelt and lit incense, Nicolas asked me worriedly if I would be joining a cult too. (I assured him I wouldn’t.) We went shopping for Thai cushions. We went on elephant rides. And we tortured ourselves with the smells coming from roadside eateries. We wanted to hang out at the bars of plush resorts but since we couldn’t order anything but water, we never stayed for very long.

Rosan, in NON de rigueur wat wear, ironically, pays respect. (Photo c/o Rosan Cruz.)

We had only signed up for the three-and-a-half day fast, yet we were probably more difficult than the ones fasting for a week. Rosan only wanted to have coconut water, and would scrape off the coconut meat with her straw and suck it in, until she was chastised. “It is supposed to be a fast after all,” she was told. I didn’t like the vegetable broth that we were supposed to have twice a day. It tasted like dishwater so I refused it. Later I was told that I had to take it as it contained precious electrolytes that my body needed. Phooey.

But once we got used to the routine – yeah, like all three and a half days of it – it became pretty easy.

On the day we were to leave, Nicolas practically leapt out of bed. He felt ten years younger and energized. He had also lost ten pounds and was happy. “We have to do this every year,” he exclaimed.

Of course, as soon as we left the resort, he gorged on everything he could find. At the airport, along Bangkok’s alleyways… Soon, he was sick and had to stay at the hotel. Rosan and I made our way to a mall, supposedly to shop but, right after we had something to eat, she too got sick and had to run back to the hotel.

Rosan got sick shortly after we had this photo taken in Bangkok. (Photo c/o Rosan Cruz.)

I seem to have an iron constitution. I’ve never gotten sick after a detox. I’ve even drunk the water in India and still didn’t get sick.

But that night, even with queasy stomachs, invited by some friends to dinner at Eat Me, Nicolas and Rosan got right back into the business of eating. They weren’t even above refusing the champagne offered them.

The best thing about detox, after all, is the retox that follows.

The next year, Nicolas and I returned to Spa Samui on our own and broke our fast in style at the Sukhothai Hotel’s Sunday brunch with champagne and foie gras. True to form, Nicolas got sick soon after.

We didn’t get around to detoxing again until 2008. By then, the Spa Samui Resorts were known as The Spa Resorts and had franchises. We decided to try the one in Koh Chang and signed up for the seven-day Candida fast.

The Spa Koh Chang is probably the loveliest of The Spa Resorts. (Take note of those nasty pills.)

That was brutal. The seven-day fasts involve two colemas. The basic fast only utilizes coffee. The Candida fast has one with coffee and one vinegar. Even some of the resort’s part-time staff agreed that the Candida fast was too extreme.

Nicolas and I had horrible mood swings and, even though it was fully expected, we still didn’t know how to handle ourselves. First, he would snap at me and I would try to be patient, and then my patience would run out just as he was feeling better. Soon, we were just grouchy all the time. We wisely kept out of each other’s way and barely saw each other.

At the end of it, we were tired and miserable. We should have just stuck to the three-and-a-half day fast or the basic seven-day fast.

As usual, as soon as we got back to Bangkok, we hit the first hotel buffet we could find. We bought some pastries from Lenôtre afterwards to have later on. Nicolas took them back to the hotel while I met up with some friends at Siam Paragon.

My friends were all compliments when they saw me. They said I was glowing, as I wolfed down a roti at the food court.

Hanging out with SFO BFF, Alan Montelibano, no, not at The Castro in San Francisco but at a shop called Castro in Bangkok. (Photo c/o Alan Montelibano.)

Later, when we went back to our hotel to pick up Nicolas, we found him sick in bed. Beside him was a now empty bag from Lenôtre. I left him to rest and went out with my friends. We had a huge dinner somewhere in Chinatown, then went clubbing. Our Bangkok-based friends joined us (the same ones at dinner at Eat Me) and, later, invited us back to their flat where they popped open their last bottle of Iron Horse which, we were told, was the same champagne served at the White House during Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Less that 24 hours after I left Spa Koh Chang, I had achieved full retox.

The remnants of our meal in Chinatown. (Left to right: Fresh out of detox, me, Carlo Cajili, Ricky Yusay and Stephen Matti. Photo c/o Alan Montelibano.)

Tonight, Nicolas and I are off to Bangkok, then Chiang Mai tomorrow afternoon. Since Nicolas hasn’t been to Chiang Mai, I’d like him to experience the Sunday market. Then we’re detoxing the morrow after at The Spa Chiang Mai which is about 40 minutes out of the city.

I’ve promised myself that I would skip the retox and go straight into the Paleo diet right after the detox, but maybe I’ll just take it one day at a time.