Phuket Wellness Retreat

Phuket has plenty of resorts for doing beautifully nothing. STAY Wellbeing & Lifestyle Resort, in the island's quiet south, is the other kind — a place organised not around a beach but around you, and specifically around the version of you checking out a week later. I went for eight days in June. I came home with numbers to prove they weren't wasted.

Stay Phuket Wellness, Rawai, Phuket Thailand

The numbers

The week opens and closes in the clinic with a body composition session — ten minutes each end, and suddenly your goals are measurable rather than intentions. A dietician maps the week's eating. The quiet genius is that the plan is written in dishes that actually exist across the resorts cafe, restaurants and bars, several choices per meal rather than a set menu - which is why, for once, the plan survived contact with my appetite. No packed salads in the room fridge. Just a menu that had been considered on my behalf.

The training

The gym is 1,000 square metres over three floors, open around the clock, and equipped past the point of excuses. I arrived expecting to spend the week being spotted through heavy lifts by my PT; she had other ideas — natural strength and mobility work, the kind that leaves you moaning during the session, but moving better afterwards. I kept my own hours in the gym between sessions for deadlifts, squats and benchpresses, which is the point of a 24-hour floor: the program shapes the week without owning it.

The ring

Muay Thai, daily, with Coach Flo — technique-obsessed, tireless, and most importantly - enjoyable. The Muay Thai gym sits in its own building apart from the main floors, and it has the best view on the property: out across the water to Phuket's southern islands. I chose to do my sessions at 8am, before it got too warm. Sessions went for an hour, but honestly felt like half an hour. Whether you’re a seasoned professional, a beginner or have never stepped into the ring - Muay Thai is definitely something you should give a try. It activates every muscle in the body!

The ritual

By the third night it was non-negotiable: eight o'clock, the onsen. Thirty minutes of hot water and sauna at the end of a training day, muscles unknotting one by one, and — an unadvertised side effect I'll happily advertise — skin that started to glow. Every wellness property talks about recovery. STAY lets you build your evening around it. For me, the onsen and wellness centre is the jewel in the crown at STAY.

The cold

Cryotherapy, three sessions, a first for me. It is honestly an endurance event — a few minutes of profound cold — and that turned out to be why I liked it. By the third session I could feel my body meeting it differently and I was pushing the temperature lower and lower.

The quiet

There's a yoga studio onsite, with available group and private sessions. My own stillness happened elsewhere: by the pool, in the sun, with a book and simple self reflection. A good wellness week leaves room for that version of recovery too, and STAY never made it feel like truancy.

For the record

STAY is not on a beach — it sits in residential Rawai, with a free shuttle running to Nai Harn and Rawai beaches through the day. And a week like this returns exactly what you put in. This is the resort for arriving with a goal — or for finally giving one a week of your full attention.

The climb

One morning I traded the gym for the hill. The Big Buddha sits on Nakkerd Hill, four hundred metres above the island's south, and the walk up is honest work — around two kilometres with three hundred metres of climb, ropes strung along the steep sections, the heat arriving with the light. At the top: forty-five metres of white Burmese marble in serene contemplation, wind bells, and the whole of Chalong Bay unrolled below. Go early, carry water, cover shoulders and knees, and keep anything edible hidden from the macaques on the exit stairs — they've read the same guides you have. It was the only morning I skipped training. It may have been the week's best workout.

If it has a first chapter worth writing, we'll draw it. Begin here →