There's also a special romantic dinner the hotel puts on down at the beach. It's only for one lucky couple, but since we were the only couple, we won the prize! They set up a table at the beach, and have a lavish seafood barbecue meal prepared by your own chef and served by your own waiter. Of course it's dark so you don't really get much benefit from the ocean, but it's still very nice. Then at the end of dinner they make a big thing of saying they're leaving, and we should go skinnydipping in the pool, plus they laid out a special love nest, pictured here, strewn with love petals. I guess the general idea is you're supposed to have sex after dinner, which was awkward on many levels, so we skipped this part of the evening.

Somchai also got a special massage while at Amankila. He opted for some rigorous sports massage, but the hotel doesn't have masseurs on staff. Instead they called in the witch doctor from the local village, who's about one hundred years old and came dressed like Hollywood's version of a witch doctor. He did some massage, but mostly it was chanting and waving things around, which supposedly cured all his ills. Since he didn't have any ills to begin with, it was difficult to gauge the doctor's success.