I wasn t going to recount my bad experience with M...

I wasn t going to recount my bad experience with Menla, Dewa Spa but when I saw them promoting fishing recently when they project themselves to be a place of spirituality with heavy emphasis on Buddhism, I felt compelled to say something. Basically, there are a lot of heavy misleading marketing and it is becoming clearer that this place is really about just capitalising on spirituality to make money.

Travelling from overseas I was very excited and very much looking forward to a trip to the spa, which was a treat from a dear friend. The cost was actually expensive however it was in return for the spiritually infused service and environment as it was said to be. The entry and the natural bush surrounds are beautiful and impressive Unfortunately that the best of it.

It was hardly relaxing when there are so many not to subtle pressure to sign on to more packages. And I am quite cheesed off with a couple of people there who immediately took off their nice mask and blatantly showed disdain after I declined their attempts to push more packages onto me. In fact, I had to bear with their sarcastic jabs of being cheap etc and they weren t even focused on doing a good job providing the spa treatment. So, if I don t sign up more I am relegated to half-hearted services? After all those "spiritual opening speeches"? And when I attempted to highlight the unfair treatment to management, I was told they would get back to me but basically was given the run around until l left.

In short, I really wanted to love it being a spa junkie. Sadly, it was the worst as it wasn t as how it promoted itself to be and quite an embarrassment to keep not so subtly dropping the names of Dalai Lama and supposedly famous Tibetan Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman (apparently very close student of Dalai Lama) to get more sales. If they really revered the Dalai Lama, one would think they would have respect for the Dalai Lama than to use his name in vain.