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SPA HOPPING Speaking Mandarin The décor at The Spa at the Mandarin Oriental NYC welcomes guests with its understated grace. The Mandarin Oriental Spa in Manhattan helps New Yorkers slow down and tune in, Asian-style. By Alison Singh Gee I'm reclining on a pillow-topped chaise in a room that could have once belonged to a 19th-century Shanghainese courtesan. Behind me sits a carved darkwood opium bed and before me, a delicate ceramic tea set that holds a hot, jasmine-scented brew and a small tray dotted with dried fruits resembling oval-shaped jewels. The tinkling of gamelan music softly punctuates the silence, as a small modern fireplace wards off the springtime chill. With its bamboo floors and textured grass-cloth walls, this 650-square-foot suite looks, smells and feels like Shanghai. But when I glance outside the generous 35th-floor windows of this Mandarin Oriental Spa, I see not that Asian city's bustling Bund and harbor lined with Chinese junks, cargo ships and European yachts, but New York City's Central Park, with its oldgrowth American elms and pines, hot dog vendors and, in the distance, a line of disco-loving rollerbladers. Introducing the slow-moving grace of Asian spa 24 DAYSPA | SEPTEMBER 2013 tradition into a city best known for its breakneck pace and multisensory overload is no easy trick. But if ever there was a lesson in how to bring the spa experience of another time and place into the limited space of a spa, the brilliant minds at the Mandarin Oriental are demonstrating it here. The spa opened in 2003, and 10 years later, even in this hyper-competitive world capital where uber-luxurious spas dot practically every corner, it has managed to remain one of most coveted destination spa experiences in Manhattan. Its secret? Judging from my experience, for clients whose schedules and budgets won't accommodate an actual trip to the Far East, this is a mighty fine shortterm solution. EASING INTO SERVICE Jennifer, graceful and lithe and dressed in a black, Mandarin-collared jacket, quietly appears and eases