About Phuket Serenity — Why Trust Our Wellness Retreat Reviews?
The Beginning
About Phuket Serenity: Discovering Tranquility in Paradise
My name is Michael Hixson and my relationship with Phuket started the way a lot of love stories do — slightly by accident, decades before I knew it would become my home.
I honeymooned here in 1989. Back then Phuket was a different island entirely — quieter roads, fewer resorts, a sense of being somewhere genuinely undiscovered. I didn’t know it at the time, but that trip planted something. Over the next decade I kept finding reasons to come back to Thailand — for a few weeks here, a month there, always telling myself it was just another holiday. It never quite felt like just another holiday.
In 2020, I stopped pretending it was a phase and moved to Thailand for good. Two years later, in 2022, I made my way to Phuket specifically and never left. A few years on, this island is simply home.
Two Decades of Showing Up to the Mat
I started doing Yoga in 2000 in California and practiced on and off over the years. Since moving to Phuket, I’ve spent more hours than I can count doing yoga across this island and the wider country — and more time than I’d like to admit being prodded, steamed, wrapped, and pressed in Thai spas that ranged from genuinely transformative to forgettable. I’ve watched Phuket’s wellness scene grow from a handful of beachfront massage huts into one of the most serious wellness destinations in Asia, with retreat centers, longevity clinics, and training camps that rival anything you’ll find in Europe or the US — at a fraction of the price.
That long, unglamorous immersion is really the reason this site exists. I got tired of seeing the same surface-level “best of Phuket” lists written by people who flew in for four days and never set foot in half the places they were recommending. I wanted to build the resource I wish had existed when I was newer to all this — written by someone who actually knows the difference between a retreat that delivers and one that’s just good at marketing.
What Phuket Serenity Is — and Isn’t
Phuket Serenity is an independent guide to wellness travel on this island. I cover yoga and meditation retreats, Muay Thai training camps, detox and cleanse programs, and the newer wave of longevity and medical wellness clinics that have opened here in the past few years.
I am not a booking platform. I don’t operate any of the retreats, clinics, or camps I write about, and I’m not paid by any of them to feature here. What I do is research, visit, and compare these places honestly, then point you toward trusted booking partners — Klook, GetYourGuide, BookRetreats, and in some cases the retreats directly — when you’re ready to book. If you book through a link on this site, I may earn a small commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it’s what keeps this site running without resorting to intrusive ads or sponsored “reviews” dressed up as honest opinions.
You can read more about exactly how that works on the affiliate disclosure page. The short version: I only recommend places I’d genuinely send a friend to, and the commission never decides what makes it onto this site.
My Approach to Recommendations
A few years living here full-time, on top of decades of visiting, gives you a particular kind of perspective. I’ve seen retreat centers open with huge promise and quietly decline. I’ve seen small, unglamorous operators quietly become some of the best in their category because they never stopped caring about the details. None of that shows up in a five-day press trip or a sponsored Instagram post — it only shows up over time, which is exactly what I have the advantage of.
When I recommend somewhere on this site, it’s because I believe it offers real value for what it costs, the people running it know what they’re doing, and I would feel comfortable sending someone I care about there. When something doesn’t meet that bar, I either leave it off the site or I say so directly. That honesty is the entire point of an independent guide — without it, I’m just another ad.
A Bit More About Me
I split my time between the practical side of island life and the parts that brought me here in the first place — still showing up to yoga regularly, still curious about what’s new in Phuket’s wellness scene, and still slightly amazed that the trip I took in 1989 turned into the life I have now.
If you’re planning a wellness trip to Phuket and have a question that isn’t answered anywhere on this site, reach out through the contact page. I read every message myself.