Cleanse Thyself

Well it had to be done, and it will either make A: a lot of sense for our travel weary bodies or B: will make a bloody good party story.

Either way Ed and I have scampered across Thailand to the island of Koh Phangan to a little place on a beach called the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is all jungle, wooden bungalows with a kind of hippie vibe. There are people here with nose rings twirling fire sticks, earnest Dutch people who recommend re-birthing sessions and other folk wisping up the hills to yoga sessions. The Sanctuary is the perfect place to relax, get away from it all and indulge in the award winning, delicious sounding vegtetarian organic restaurant - yum.




Except there is one problem......Ed and I have signed up for the famous 7 day fast and cleanse program here. That's right, for seven days there will be no beer, no coffee, and worse of all NO FOOD - just a program of herbs, water, tea, thin vege broth for us. Oh and colonic irrigation.......... yes stop reading now if it's freaking you out. For those not in the know, a colonic is a 'hose up the bum, clean everything out' kind of situation - twice daily.

So far Ed and I have completed the pre cleanse menu, a diet of only raw vegetables and water. This was hard enough, we had to sit on the outskirts of the fabulous restaurant pecking at our plates of leaves and cucumber before running back to the hut to hide from all the people eating red curries, tofu burgers and drinking beer.

But today is the big one, today we start the fast properly, all overseen by our enthusiastic fast coach "Moon" a hyperactic Thai guy who is totally into the whole cleanse routine - "yeah yeah CLEAN YOUR BODY, your liver is the boss" he likes to yell, arms waving about. "Your body is like a shirt - you need to clean it, right?".

So stay tuned - it could be very interesting. My impressions so far? It is incredible how much food punctuates your day. Things happen "after breakfast" or "before lunch" and deciding on where to go to dinner and what to have is a nights entertainment. With no meals as such, the day is quite different, we are punctuated by a regime of pill popping and water drinking and that's it. I feel empty in more than just my stomach, it's like a major part of my life has disappeared overnight - I miss it.

But in the meantime our colonic session is waiting for us this afternoon - all we know so far is what is in our bathroom. Some mysterious looking hooks hanging from the ceiling, plastic tubing and bottles of something I haven't been brave enough to investigate yet - eeeek!