Review: Bamboo Massage and Avocado Body Treatment at Angsana Spa

Here in Hong Kong, both avocado and bamboo are commonplace items. We are lucky enough to get avocados from southeast Asia year-round, while bamboo scaffolding is an aspect of daily city life. However, it is not often that you see them in the serene surroundings of a spa. That is, unless you are at the new Angsana Spa at Hotel Icon in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Angsana Spa is the sister brand to the world famous Banyan Tree spas, named after the Angsana tree, the national tree of The Philippines with rose-scented hardwood and beautiful golden flowers. It is the more modern sister to the Banyan Tree, and while Banyan Tree uses ingredients based more on spices and herbs, Angsana utilises fruits and vegetables as their main ingredients. Angsana Spa has outlets all over the world, including Morocco, Mauritius, Laos, India and Maldives. Here in Hong Kong, we have two branches, one on Park Island and the other located on the ninth floor of the design-oriented Hotel Icon in Tsim Sha Tsui, which is the one we visit one beautiful afternoon in May.

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Two of the signature treatments available at the Angsana Spa are the bamboo massage and an avocado body conditioning treatment.

We start with the body conditioning treatment: with summer and bikini season coming up, we all want our skin to be at its polished best. Avocado oil is often used in skin care, as it is high in sterolins, which are said to both reduce age spots, as well as to deeply moisturise. Avocados are also high in vitamin E, an antioxidant often used in anti-aging cosmetic products, as it is believed to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines, as well as reduce inflammation. At Angsana, the Avocado Smoothie body conditioning treatment is recommended for those with dry skin, which is all of us in the summer with the intense sun, coupled with swims in chlorinated pools and salty seawater.

After you have a shower, a mixture of avocado and yoghurt is applied to your skin. While the word “smoothie” and the inclusion of yoghurt may imply a cold mixture, it is actually heated to a warm temperature. Once the mixture is applied, you are swaddled like a mummy under a swathe of sheets and towels. The therapist then gives a soothing head massage while the mixture dries. After half an hour, there is a split second of chilliness as the layers are whipped off, but you are then quickly bundled off into a hot shower, which is already prepared and running, to wash off the avocado paste. Upon inspection of our skin in the shower, we found that while it was certainly smooth, it was not quite as smooth as if we had a scrub, so we would recommend the treatment for those lucky few who are already in possession of baby soft skin that does not require much extra exfoliation.

Moving from the outer to the inner, the use of bamboo is a long-standing tradition in the Chinese school of massages: hollow bamboo canes are heated up to room temperature or just above, and are used in place of the therapists’ hands. The theory is that muscles are then giving a deeper and firmer massage through the rolling movements of the canes. Bamboo massages are ideally suited for guests with persistent muscle pains and aches.

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Writers often describe a massage as laying out before a masseuse and getting worked like a piece of dough. During a bamboo massage, this feels much more literal as the bamboo canes are rolled up and down just like a rolling pin across the body. Sesame oil (one of the few essential oils that can be heated to a high temperature), is used in conjunction with the bamboo, as are the therapists’ hands as massage tools.

This is a good combination as while we found the canes (heated to the temperature of a hot teacup, which may be a bit too hot for some) were excellent at applying consistent pressure across larger surface areas such as the back and thighs, sometimes on less fleshy areas such as the top of the arms, it can be a bit tender when the bamboo is rolled over the bone. This is when the therapist’s intuitive hands are much appreciated. However, we must say that the bamboo sticks feel particularly good when rolled across the soles of the feet, as well as when the therapist moves them in a zig-zag motion across a knotted muscle, much like the jiggling of a hairbrush can untangle a particularly messy knot of hair.

After an hour and a half, we are returned to the world with the sound of three hits of a gong and a cool spray of neroli oil over our limbs. Whether it is due to the modern and practical environment of the spa (the blinds don’t do much to hide the fact that we are still in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui) or the stronger pressure of the bamboo massage, rather than feeling like a content sack of flour ready to collapse into a hammock, which is our usual post-massage response, we felt quite invigorated, leaving with a spring in our step and energised to take on another evening in the city.