By HTE Founder, Erin Hughes
There are certain rituals that become part of the way you travel.
The coffee shop you return to every morning. The restaurant you book before you’ve even boarded the plane. The first swim after dropping your bags at the hotel. Small traditions that, somewhere along the way, become synonymous with being in that place.
For me, a visit to Spring has become part of almost every trip back to Bali and its surrounding islands.
I have been going to Spring for years. I’ve visited in Seminyak and Canggu, and Bingin is firmly on the list for the next trip. No matter which location I visit, there is a familiarity to the experience that I love. Beautiful spaces, thoughtful treatments and that unmistakable feeling, almost from the moment you walk through the door, that you can exhale.
But on a recent trip across to Nusa Lembongan, an island southeast of Bali, I experienced Spring in an entirely different way.
Somewhere between being driven up the hillside in a buggy, stepping into my private treatment room and looking out across that extraordinary expanse of ocean, I realised why I keep coming back.
It isn’t simply because Spring does spa treatments exceptionally well. It is because they understand how to make you feel cared for.
Before the treatment even begins
There is something about Nusa Lembongan that encourages you to slow down.
Life here seems to move at a different rhythm. The island is small, the ocean never feels very far away and the energy is distinctly different from Bali’s busier pockets.
Spring seems perfectly at home here.
Arriving at the spa is an experience in itself. You are driven by buggy up towards the individual treatment rooms, set high above the coastline. As you climb, the landscape opens up until suddenly there it is: that vast blue ocean stretching out below you.
Before the treatment has even begun, something has shifted.
This is something Spring does particularly well.
The treatment really begins from the moment you walk in. It starts with the welcome, the surroundings and the feeling that, for the next little while, the outside world can wait.
The elevated treatment rooms feel peaceful and private, but it is their connection to the landscape that makes the Lembongan experience particularly special.
You could be having a treatment almost anywhere in the world. Here, you never forget where you are.
Mother Earth
For my visit, I chose the Mother Earth Treatment, and even the treatment itself feels connected to the island.
Sustainability is one of Spring’s guiding principles, with nature central to its philosophy. For this ritual, Spring has partnered with local Nusa Lembongan seaweed farmers to cultivate Katoni seaweed used in the treatment.
It is a lovely detail, and one that feels particularly meaningful when you are lying high above the very ocean that has helped provide one of its key ingredients.
The ritual begins with Spring’s signature foot bath before a scrub of seaweed and pandan leaves, blended with virgin coconut oil, is worked across the skin. Next comes a nourishing wrap of Lombok honey and aloe vera grown in Spring’s own gardens, followed by a pressure-point facial massage using yoghurt and white turmeric.
There is something particularly wonderful about surrendering to a treatment like this when you are travelling somewhere tropical. Days spent swimming, exploring and being out in the sun are glorious, but your skin inevitably knows about it.
The Mother Earth Treatment felt less about adding something and more about restoring what the elements had taken out.
But what I loved most was how naturally it seemed to belong here.
Seaweed cultivated with local farmers. Aloe grown in the gardens. Coconut oil, pandan, honey and turmeric.
The island seemed to find its way into the experience.
Afterwards, there was the physical transformation, of course. Softer, nourished skin and that delicious heaviness that arrives when your entire body has finally stopped holding onto tension.
But what stayed with me wasn’t a particular ingredient or technique. It was the feeling of being completely looked after.
The people you remember
After visiting Spring in several locations over the years, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: the people.
The therapists don’t simply seem skilled at what they do. There is a sincerity to the way you are looked after, a sense that they genuinely enjoy what they do and that your experience matters to them.
Beautiful interiors can be designed. Treatment menus can be developed. Products can be sourced and techniques can be taught. Genuine warmth is much harder to manufacture.
It is something I have noticed at Spring again and again. Despite the different locations, that sense of care remains, while each spa still feels connected to its surroundings.
Nusa Lembongan might be one of the clearest expressions of that.
The buggy journey, hillside setting, individual treatment spaces and ocean outlook aren’t simply a beautiful backdrop. They are intrinsically part of the experience.
Some of the best wellness experiences I’ve had while travelling haven’t been the ones that make you forget where you are. They are the ones that connect you more deeply to it.
On Lembongan, the ocean is part of the mood. The island’s slower rhythm is part of it. Even the journey up to the treatment room is part of it.
Why we return
Travel so often encourages us to chase what is new.
A new hotel. A new restaurant. A new island. A new experience.
There is enormous pleasure in discovery. But I think there is something equally special about returning.
The first time you visit somewhere, you notice the obvious things. The design. The treatment. The products. The view.
Come back again and again and you start noticing something else.
You notice how a place makes you feel.
After years of visiting Spring, that is what has stayed with me.
Of course I remember the beautiful spaces and wonderful treatments. I remember leaving with glowing skin and that slightly dazed post-treatment feeling where speaking in complete sentences suddenly seems unnecessarily ambitious.
But more than any of those things, I remember being welcomed. I remember kindness. And I remember the feeling that the people looking after me genuinely cared about the experience I was having.
Perhaps wellness doesn’t always need to be about transformation. Sometimes it can simply mean stopping, handing yourself over to someone else’s care and emerging feeling a little better than when you arrived.
Eventually, of course, every treatment ends.
You become aware of time again. You remember your phone exists and that there is a world waiting outside.
At Spring Nusa Lembongan, though, the ocean is still there.
And for a moment, you can simply sit with it.
I arrived expecting a beautiful treatment in an extraordinary setting. I left thinking about something much simpler.
Perhaps truly memorable hospitality comes down to making someone feel that, for the time they are with you, looking after them genuinely matters.
Spring has made me feel that way in Seminyak. It has made me feel it in Canggu.
High above the ocean in Nusa Lembongan, I felt it again.
Bingin, you’re next.
Discover Spring Spa Nusa Lembongan for yourself. Click here
