The resort’s inaugural ‘Passion for Perfume’ programme in April was such a success, the resort says, that it will repeat it in August, with two two-day courses, on August 19/20 ad 21/22.

As in April, ‘Passion for Perfume’ will be hosted by perfumer Stephen Dowthwaite, founder of Perfumers World in Bangkok. “Over the two days,” the resort explains, “guests will experiment with fragrances and understand the connection between scents and emotions. In the end, couples can create their own signature perfume, a pheromone-sparking fragrance that sets pulses racing and sends a shiver down the spine.”

Steven Dowthwaite of Perfumers World in Bangkok will teach the courses.

Each day the ‘Passion for Perfume’ programme will consist of a two-hour morning session followed by a three-hour practical afternoon workshop.

Day 1 – In the morning, guests will be introduced to the ABCs of perfumery, learning the basics of blending and beginning to identify a fragrance’s key notes. After lunch, using their newfound knowledge, they will reproduce their favorite perfume using a selection of 26 base fragrances.

Day 2 – In the morning participants blend their own perfume to convey a feeling, place or atmosphere, and in the afternoon, once they understand the senses-stirring ability of essential oils and natural extracts, they will create their own personal aphrodisiac.

Along with a bottle of their signature scent, at the end of the two-day escape couples will receive a 40-page guide to perfumery and a certificate.

The price for the two-day programme, which includes lunch and snacks on both days, is B7,000 per person (about US$260), plus tax. For more information or to book, go here.

If you can’t make it this time around, the course will be repeated in October.

Shake those abs - photo by Boris van Hoytema.

Ladies: Suffering from jelly belly? All you need is a pair of bike shorts and a scarf around your hips and you’re good to go at Royal Phuket Marina for the belly dancing course that starts there on June 6, finishing at the end of August.

The course consists of ten lessons in the following two months, covering “Techniques” and “Choreography Structure”. Giving the lessons, we’re told, will be the “famous” Malika.

The course costs B600 per lesson, or there’s an “early bird” price of B500 for those who sign up before May 30. To sign up, or to get more information, call Murat at +66 (0) 8 1797 3364 or email him here.

The lessons will take place in the RPM gym from 12:30 to 2pm every Sunday.

Tetsuo Suse is bubbling over with excitement.

Japanese musician and resident of Phuket, Tetsuo Suse, has scored a countrywide first for the island with his new microbubble spa. In fact, he may have scored a world first with the two microbubble steam rooms he’s installed at his MB House spa, which opened in January.

Microbubbles are the next big thing in spa treatments. Unlike ordinary bubbles that quickly float to the surface and burst, microbubbles are very small – typically one-fifth of the diameter of a human hair, and stay in the water, gradually getting smaller until they collapse in a tiny burst of energy.

If it sounds as though it might be a little weird to sit in a tub full of tiny explosions, out guinea pig assures us that you won’t feel a thing. We sent him in to do the treatment: shower (with microbubble water); steam room (with microbubble steam) followed by a cooling soak in a goemon tub (full of – what else – microbubble water).

The 'friends' goemon tub.

A goemon tub (pronounced “go-eh-mon”) is, for those who’ve never come across it, a circular tub just big enough for one person – about the size of a cartoon cannibal cooking pot. Suse has also broken with Japanese tradition and built a larger goemon so that two or three friends – close friends – can soak together.

The guinea pig said the experience was, at least, a great deal more relaxing than his last job, testing the slides at Splash Jungle. And he reports that his nose did indeed feel smoother and his fur was shinier after the treatment.

Wild claims are already being made in various websites for the therapeutic effects of microbubbles – they produce ultrasonic waves, bursting at high speeds that massage deep into your skin and muscles; they can reduce stress and fatigue and even help you to lose weight.

The massage room upstairs, where microbubble therapy continues.

Suse makes no such claims, but he does firmly believe that they can deep clean the skin, removing dead particles and leaving one scrubbed and with a smooth, white, healthy skin. This, as anyone who has seen all the commercials for skin whitener on Thai TV will know, is potentially a big, big winner.

He does note that people from cold countries, with their generally paler skin, get whiter faster. Stands to reason. Thai skin, he says, takes longer before it is noticeably paler.

For those who can’t spend all day everyday getting smoother and whiter at MB House, Suse is the exclusive agent in Thailand for Neola products, the only full-on skincare products made with microbubbles. Nivea does apparently make some microbubble products, but Suse is dismissive of these. “They only use a very little microbubble water, so it’s like milky coffee. Neola’s like espresso,” he says.

The steam room and goemon baths are in the garden behind the main reception area at Suse’s home, sharing the shade with a pool full of doctor fish. Stick your feet in the pool and they’ll nibble off any dead skin. Actually, Suse himself is not keen on the fish – they tickle too much, he says. But they are popular with customers.

Upstairs from the reception area is the massage room, with traditional Thai massage, foot massage and aromatherapy massage. And yes, the oils used also contain microbubbles – although normal water and oil don’t mix, microbubble water and oil do, apparently.

Feed your feet to the fish; let these cute chaps cure your cuticles.

Apart from the Neola products, Suse can sell you an MB shower head or a full-on MB generator. He’s also rather excited about upcoming technology from Japan that will use microbubbles to clean the grey water from your bathroom or kitchen. “I was in Shanghai recently to demonstrate the MB generator, and the water in the taps in that city is pretty smelly. But after I treated it with microbubbles, the smell disappeared,” he says.

Some wild claims about the benefits of microbubbles cam be found on the Internet – that they produce ultrasound when the bubbles pop, which can make a five-minute MB bath as effective as a one-hour massage; or that they can ease the pain of arthritis, or can even reduce excess blubber.

Suse makes no such claims – just that you’ll come out of a session at MB House with a clean, smooth, paler, healthier skin.

And we did have to ask: do microbubbles cure hangovers? Sadly the answer is no, but a good steam and soak, we reckon, could ease the pain.

MB Hose is a bit off the beaten track, on the right of the road about 7km east of the Heroines’ monument, along the road to Pa Khlok, Bang Rong and Ao Po. Call +66 76 352 014 for an appointment (it’s busy on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays). The website is here.

Down the plughole backwards - the Superbowl swallows another victim.

The Observer was invited to the official opening today of the shiny new Splash Jungle water park at West Sands, next to Mai Khao Beach and the airport. We hired a guinea pig to test out the rides. Here’s his report on the Big 5 rides:

“Being short and furry (cute, too), I opted to start on the lower level, about four miles up. Well, that’s what it feels like when you’re short and furry. A lot of steps. There are three chutes on this level, each twisting this way and that.

“The beige-coloured one is tackled while sitting in an inflatable ring with two solid handles for white-knuckle gripping. It’s a bit like how I imagine bob-sleigh would be. Ever seen that on TV? When they take a bend too fast and disappear over the top, followed by an explosion of snow? I’ll swear I came that close. Oo-er.

“Up the steps again goes your intrepid guinea pig. This time the nice chaps take away my bob-sleigh for the next ride in the green chute. I’m told I have to go down feet-first, forearms crossed on my chest. What you might call the coffin position.

A tough job, but someone's got to do it: two of the Splash Jungle lifeguards demonstrate how it's done.

“This one’s more like luge, without the luge. It’s impossible to stay in line while slaloming  round the bends, and I suspect I take a couple of curves with my head bumping along the bottom of the channel and my feet sticking way up the air. In the last millisecond, everything straightens up, however, and I exit into the pool feet first, which means my nose gets a high-pressure clean-out.

“Your fearless guinea pig now climbs up a lot of steps again to the blue chute. This one’s completely enclosed. A pipe. A big drain. A big Black Hole. How do they know there’s nothing in there? Rocks? Missing persons? The Starship Enterprise? Things that eat guinea pigs? Oo-er. But I’m being paid the big bucks, so once again I assume the coffin position, which seems particularly appropriate for this descent into night, and plunge in.

“I cross the event horizon. It takes milliseconds. And hours. But once again I exit, astonishingly in the same universe, and get my sinuses cleaned out again. I’ll swear I was upside down a couple of times. Impossible to tell when it’s completely dark and you’re traveling at just under light speed. Phew.

“Now it’s the biggies. The top of the tower (a lot more steps). Here, at roughly the same height as Mount Everest, there’s a choice: The Boomarango, the Superbowl or back down the stairs. But the boss is standing behind me with a cattle prod, so the stairs are out.

“Once more into the ring with the white-knuckle handles. Once more into a dark tunnel that slopes down at roughly 90 degrees. Yes, I’ll swear it’s vertical. Then out into the sun on a wide runway that curves skyward. So this is the Boomerango.

The plumbing at Splash Jungle, with the Boomerango at left.

“They told us that it’s impossible – impossible – to go off the end of the chute. Now I know they were wrong. Here’s me. Here’s the end of the chute. About two millimeters to go and I’m still going waaaay too fast.

“Then I stop and start sliding back. They were right! But now I’m travelling backwards at warp speed. I can’t see where I’m going. What if I hit something? I have no control! But let’s be realistic – when was the last time a guinea pig was in control of anything? I splash down safe again. Phew.

“More steps. And more. Back up to the top again. Climb back into my ring. Enter another black tunnel. Superbowl time. Out of the tunnel into the bowl. Round the rim at a speed guaranteed to turn the hair white. Round again, and then backwards down another black hole. Down the plughole. And splashdown.

“I’m alive! I’m alive! I’ve done the big five! Can I get paid now, please?”

Okay. Five lettuce leaves, wasn’t it?

No, you cheapskate. It was ten… That’s more like it. Thank you. Don’t call me – I’ll call you. Not.

Entry fees to Splash Jungle until April 30 (including taxes) are B2,100 for adults and B 1,229  for children (height 100-130 cm). Children under 100cm tall get in free. For Thais and foreign residents the prices are B1,755 for adults and B1,229 for children between 100-130 cm tall. Shuttle buses from various points in Phuket are included in the ticket prices.

For more information or reservations, call +66 (0) 7637 2111

Multiple slides and tubes at Splash Jungle with, over to the right, the Superbowl.

You’d think that a holiday place like Phuket would have had a water park long ago. The fact that it hasn’t was not for lack of trying. Several plans have been put forward, including one for tourist epicentre Patong, but for one reason or another – investment, permits, shareholder disagreements – none of these plans ever came to fruition.

Now, however, Phuket is to see the opening of not one, but two water parks in the next four months. In April, appropriately around the Thai water-fight festival of Songkran, the Phuket Waterpark is scheduled to open in Kathu, in the centre of the island. We’ll bring you more on that soon.

For all the family: The Aqua Play Pool.

But first, on January 29, the Splash Jungle water park at the West Sands property development, next to the airport, will be opened by Thailand’s Minister of Health, Jurin Laksanavisith.

Splash Jungle will have five big attractions:

The Lazy River: 335 metres of water meandering through seven “parts of the world”, from Asia to the North Pole.

The Wave Pool: Hours of enjoyment for all ages, simulating the currents and waves of the sea, but  in safety.

The Boomerango: Starting with a thrilling drop through a tube, followed by a high back-and-to ride ending in a splash pool.

The Super Bowl: Starting with a drop through a tube, riders are launched into the Super Bowl, with centrifugal forces keeping thjem high on the wall for several turns before they exit into a splashdown pool.

The Aqua Play Pool: Aimed at whole families, this has multiple water features including slides, a giant tipping bucket and water cannons.

In addition, there’s an aquarium and a children’s slide pool, and escape for parents in the Igloo Sauna or Hot Spring Pool. There are three food and drink outlets serving up full meals, sandwiches or snacks.

Costing 500 million baht (about US$15 million), the Splash Jungle covers 2.2 hectares (14 rai) and was built by White Water Industries, the biggest name in the game with more than 4,000 projects completed and rides created in Disneyland and Sea World.

The park will open to the public on January 30. Entry tickets will cost B1,795++ per adult, and B1,050++ for kids from 100 to 130 cm tall. Kids under 100 cm in height get in free.

So people – practice shrinking, Now.

Down the plughole: One of the rides at West Sands will be the scary Super Bowl.

You’d think that Phuket, with its beautiful warm weather and its reliance on tourism, would be a natural place for a water park. You wouldn’t be the first to think so; at least two consortia have tried to establish water parks in the island’s tourism epicentre, Patong. Neither got very far.

Then there were the posters that went up all over the island announcing the imminent arrival of a water park on the roof of a building in Phuket Town. But when the Observer tried to find out more, we were told, “No comment just now.” Since then, the posters have disappeared.

Now at last, however, the island is to get a water park, on 14,000 square metres of the partly completed West Sands property and resort development, the private plaything of Sir Terry Leahy, boss of international supermarket chain Tesco.

West Sands Water World will open to the public in November. It is designed by Canadian company Whitewater Industries, one of the world’s leading water equipment makers and water park designers, with 3,000 installations under its belt over the past 25 years, including parks at Disneyland and SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida and another, appropriately, at Niagara Falls.

The interactive water play structure will include a 335-metre “Lazy River”, a wave pool, an “Aqua Play Pool”, Super Bowl and Boomerango rides (the latter won an industry award last year for best new ride), a spa area and numerous waterslides of varying heights and speeds.

Claude Baltes, Resort Director, is clearly looking forward to testing the rides. He remarked, “We are highly confident that West Sands Water World will take little time to become the new major attraction and must-do activity for travelers who have landed in Phuket.”

The Water Park, which is costing 500 million Baht (US$14 million) to build, will have a capacity of 2,500 people.  Phuket’s first water park at West Sands will open at the end of January, 2010

A crab-eating macaque takes a break in the branches of a mangrove tree.

Everyone knows about coral reefs in the waters around Phuket, and the gorgeously coloured fish, starfish, crabs, prawns and anemones – even worms – that make a living in or on the coral. Certainly, anyone who has not dived or at least snorkeled around the reefs is missing a great deal of the wonder of Phuket.

But far fewer people know about the mangrove forests that are inextricably connected to the reefs, and which are just as important to the marine ecology as the coral.

Mangroves, those odd, smallish trees with weird roots that grow along most of the muddy east coast, lack the grandeur of other species of trees. They don’t put out great cascades of flowers, or perfume the night air. They are, frankly, a bit like that nondescript fellow you meet in the bar, who doesn’t have much to say that’s interesting, and whose name you can’t recall when you meet him again.

But any local fisherman will tell you that without the mangroves, the sea would be barren, devoid of fish, crabs, lobsters and prawns – and thus of all the species higher up in the food chain. Mangroves are the nurseries for many of the reef species. Reef fish and other animals lay their eggs among the mangroves. The hatchlings are washed out to sea by the floods in the rainy season. Those that make it to the reefs get a chance at life.

The mangrove forests are also the permanent habitat for many species, with crab-eating macaques – a rowdy, curious species of monkey – being top of the chain.

Trees really shouldn’t survive in sea water – there’s too much salt. But mangroves have adapted to this marginal niche that no other tree would consider. The tangled stilt roots of the world’s mangrove forests form a massive desalination plant unrivaled by man. By the time the sea water gets into the trunk of the tree, 97 percent of the salt has been extracted. Some trees excrete it through their leaves. Others have rootlets that stick into the air, through which the salt is squeezed out.

They can also limit the amount of precious fresh water lost to the air. They can vary the size of the pores in their leaves and can orient their leaves to reduce the sunlight hitting the surface. They may not look too exciting, but these are very special plants.

The weird stilt roots of the mangroves.

By colonizing silty coastlines, they create new land. So while most of the west coast of Phuket is being slowly eroded by the annual monsoon storms from the southwest, the mangroves are slowly extending the east side. Phuket, in effect, is gradually moving east.

They also form a protective barrier. After the 2004 Asian Tsunami, it was noted that communities behind mangrove forests suffered less damage than those that were not protected.

Kayak tours of the mangroves can be booked though John Gray’s Seacanoe, or PaddleAsia, or by electric boat with River Rovers.

Buy some bread and hand-feed the fish.

Yes, you can go snorkeling around Phuket, or diving, or canoeing. But there’s only one place where you can go Powersnorkeling: Banana Beach on Koh Hei, or Coral Island.

Powersnorkeling is a sort of cross between snorkeling and diving, and requires about 30 seconds training. Swimmers on mask, fins and a weight belt, and are then tethered to a floating, battery-driven air pump with a ten-foot hose and a mouthpiece.

Thus equipped, they no longer have to stay on the surface to breathe, but can sink gently to the sea bed (we’re not talking deep here) for a closer look at the coral, tropical fish, moray eels, starfish and all that ridiculously multicoloured wildlife you see on Discovery Channel.

The man behind this is Aussie Steve Anderson. He’s got lots more good stuff to do, and all the equipment for it. You can go conventional snorkeling, try full-on scuba diving, paddle around in a clear plastic canoe that gives a great view of all that sea life without the need to get wet.

Steve’s crew can also organise all sorts of other activities including beach volleyball, fireside beach parties in the evening, parasailing or a relaxing Thai massage. There’s a variety of packages to choose from.

Contact Steve at FreePhone  1800 – 468 5463 or (not free) +66 (0)-7638-3796. Or take a look at the website here.