Menla Retreat & Dewa Spa — Hotel in Town of Shandaken

I visited Menla for a retreat over July 4 weekend. My last night, I was awakened by noises and, turning on the light, was quite startled to see a bat in my small room. I tried to dress to escape, go down to reception, and await dawn, while the bat kept flying at me. Pretty scary. When I was about to leave the room, the bat flew into the hallway so I shut the door and put my bag along the bottom gap. In the morning, I reported this to the front desk agent, who just looked at me blankly and said nothing. I asked for the number for the department of health and she said she didn’t know what I meant, and when I asked for the “Ulster County Department of Health,” told me it was closed (it was Sunday; in retrospect they surely had an after-hours number). When I asked the agent if she was going to do anything to help me, she said patronizingly that she was trying to help me by keeping me calm. Ugh – and for the record, I was upset, but calm. A manager eventually came down and was indeed concerned, but also told me I was lucky to have seen a bat since bats were endangered in the area, whereupon I told him I certainly did not feel lucky.

After returning home, I spoke to 3 separate doctors as well as my local Department of Health, who all told me that the absolutely necessary and standard protocol when awakening in a room with a bat was to get rabies prophylactic treatment since there was no way to be absolutely 100% sure the bat did not bite me and rabies, which can take a long time to show symptoms, is 100% percent fatal. Doctors do not carry the vaccine in their office since it is too rare and too expensive, so I had to go to the ER. To date I have had 5 shots (total 6 required) over 3 ER visits (total 4 required).

By far the worst part is that the hotel in fact found the bat and released it, citing among other reasons, again, that bats are endangered. This is a serious violation of protocol since per the hospital and health department, in this situation the hotel was required to not release the bat and instead send it for rabies testing, which would have in all likelihood obviated the need for me to have the multiple shots. The hotel appeared aware of this requirement since they gave me various reasons why they released the bat when I asked if they had found it.

By the way, another woman on the retreat was also visited by insects that entered through gaps around the a/c – she said she had freaked out, but when she heard my story, considered herself fortunate.

I understand the urge to not call health services for help in trapping the bat, calling attention to the situation and bad publicity. But if the hotel didn’t know how to trap the bat or were not willing to do so they should not have gone looking for it and instead should have gotten help so as to comply with health requirements. As both the hospital and health department said, I would not have had to go through any of this had they followed correct procedure.

Menla,...

I booked a Menla weekend retreat for my 50th birthday. By far, one of the worst experiences I have ever had.  I would NOT recommend Menla.  The cost of a weekend getaway for two people was over $2500. At very minimum, I would expect a clean room free of bugs and mice droppings.

The location of the facility is beautiful, nestled in the mountains and we went at the perfect time of year because the foliage was changing color. The inside of their facilities was a different story. The room we booked had a colony of lady bugs. We reported the situation to the front desk, and they advised us that there was nothing they can do about the situation because the housekeeping team had left for the day. They offered to give us the room directly under the one we were in but after standing in the room for a few minutes, we noticed it had the same ladybug issue. It seems as if they were getting into to the room through a crack in the foundation of the building, especially by a window that was next to the bed. Don’t get me wrong, I am a nature lover and don’t mind a ladybug or two but there were hundreds.

There was a vacuum cleaner in the second room that was offered to us, so we brought it upstairs to the original room we reserved. We spent more than two hours vacuuming the ladybugs and the more we vacuumed, the more appeared. We finally resorted to other measures, we used alcohol and coffee as a deterrent at their point of entry, which made the situation manageable.

Since the ladybugs were so close to the bed, we decided to sleep on the pullout bed that was located further away from the window. To our surprise and disgust, when we pulled out the bed it was infested with mice droppings. It was already late, and we were exhausted from the drive and situation, so we opted to sleep closer to the ladybugs than the mice droppings. We were exhausted from the drive and the whole Menla experience.

The next morning, we reported the mice dropping issue to the front desk and they immediately issued a full refund. We decided to check out a day early since the weekend was not going as planned. We had spa reservations and asked the front desk if we could leave our stuff in the room while we went to the spa, and they happily obliged.  By the time we returned to our room, we had housekeeping knocking at the door asking us when we were going to leave; not to address the issues we brought up but to get the room ready for another occupant.  The...

I wasn’t going to recount my bad experience with Menla, Dewa Spa but when I saw them promoting fishing recently when they project themselves to be a place of spirituality with heavy emphasis on Buddhism, I felt compelled to say something. Basically, there are a lot of heavy misleading marketing and it is becoming clearer that this place is really about just capitalising on spirituality to make money.

Travelling from overseas I was very excited and very much looking forward to a trip to the spa, which was a treat from a dear friend. The cost was actually expensive however it was in return for the spiritually infused service and environment as it was said to be. The entry and the natural bush surrounds are beautiful and impressive – Unfortunately that the best of it.

It was hardly relaxing when there are so many not to subtle pressure to sign on to more packages. And I am quite cheesed off with a couple of people there who immediately took off their nice mask and blatantly showed disdain after I declined their attempts to push more packages onto me. In fact, I had to bear with their sarcastic jabs of being cheap etc and they weren’t even focused on doing a good job providing the spa treatment. So, if I don’t sign up more I am relegated to half-hearted services? After all those "spiritual opening speeches"? And when I attempted to highlight the unfair treatment to management, I was told they would get back to me but basically was given the run around until l left.

In short, I really wanted to love it being a spa junkie. Sadly, it was the worst as it wasn’t as how it promoted itself to be and quite an embarrassment to keep “not so subtly” dropping the names of Dalai Lama and supposedly famous Tibetan Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman (apparently very close student of Dalai Lama) to get more sales. If they really revered the Dalai Lama, one would think they would have respect for the Dalai Lama than to use his...