The Botanical Rituals Worth Traveling Across the World For
The first thing you buy in Fiji, if you're doing it properly, isn't sunscreen. It's half a kilo of dried yaqona root from a market stall, bundled up for somewhere around 30 to 40 Fijian dollars. You'll hand it to a village spokesman, who presents it to the chief with a short speech you won't follow, and only then are you a guest.
That bundle of root is a better introduction to a place than most spa menus. Some of the most rewarding wellness travel right now is built around a single plant and the people who've prepared it for centuries. Here are four worth planning a trip around.
Kava in Fiji: the ceremony you enter by bringing the root
Kava is the ground root of Piper methysticum, a pepper plant, mixed with water in a carved wooden bowl called a tanoa. In a village, the sevusevu ceremony is how visitors ask permission to be there at all. Tourism Fiji's guide to drinking kava lays out the etiquette: clap once with cupped hands, say "bula," drink the coconut-shell cup in one go rather than sipping, hand it back, clap three times, and finish with "vinaka."
The drink looks like muddy water and tastes faintly of pepper and wet earth. Nobody expects you to love it. They do expect you to sit where you're shown, stay below the chief's eye level, and never walk in front of the tanoa.
Most resorts on Viti Levu and Vanua Levu run their own kava evenings, and those are fine. A guided village visit, arranged through a local operator so the sevusevu reaches the right people, is the version worth the flight.
Matcha in Uji: where the powder starts
Uji sits a short train ride south of Kyoto, and it's where Japanese matcha took its modern form. In the 16th century, farmers there developed the practice of shading tea bushes under straw or reed mats for the final weeks before harvest, which deepens the leaf's color and its savory, almost brothy taste. The shaded leaf, steamed and dried without rolling, is called tencha. Stone-milled, it becomes matcha.
Kyoto's tourism board lists tea houses in the region where visitors can turn a granite mill by hand and watch the powder gather at what feels like a geological pace. It's the best way to understand why good matcha costs what it does. The shaded tencha is still picked by hand, once a year, so a May visit puts you there for the harvest.
The formal tea ceremony, chanoyu, is easier to find in Kyoto proper, where several tea houses run sessions in English. Uji is where you go to understand the leaf.
Cacao on Lake Atitlán: a ceremony that's newer than it looks
Lake Atitlán, in Guatemala's western highlands, has become the global capital of the cacao ceremony, and it helps to know how recent that is. Cacao carries thousands of years of Maya history as an offering, a drink, and even a currency. But the format most travelers book now, a circle of people sharing cups of thick unsweetened cacao with guided intention-setting, took shape in the early 2000s on the porch of an American expatriate named Keith Wilson in San Marcos La Laguna.
That doesn't make the modern version empty. It makes the choice of host matter. Look for ceremonies led by local Tz'utujil or Kaqchikel guides, or cacao bought from Maya-run cooperatives around the lake, and you'll come away with something closer to the region's own traditions than to a wellness franchise.
Kratom tea in southern Thailand: back after a 78-year ban
Kratom is the leaf of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree in the coffee family that's native to southern Thailand. For generations, farmers and laborers in the south chewed the fresh leaf or brewed it into a bitter tea during long working days. Thailand banned the plant in 1943 and kept it on the narcotics list for decades. It was removed in August 2021, and the Kratom Plant Act that followed in 2022 set rules for selling the leaf and using it in food and drink.
What a visitor finds now is an old habit back in the open: brewed kratom tea sold at stalls and village shops in the south, earthy and bitter, closer to a strong green tea than to anything sweet. It's a small, local tradition, and that's its appeal.
Recreating it at home is a different story. Fresh leaf doesn't travel, so US vendors sell dried, milled leaf powder, and quality varies a lot from one bag to the next. If you're shopping for kratom online after the trip, the most useful filter is whether each batch comes with a published lab report.
Before you go
Ceremonies are hosted, not booked like a massage. Bring the gift and follow your guide's lead. Ask before photographing anyone, and in Fijian villages, dress a little more formally than you would at the resort: shoulders and knees covered, no hats.
Then check the rules back home. Kratom is legal in Thailand but banned in several US states, including Kansas as of this July, and carrying plant material across borders is a separate question for customs. Kava has a history of import restrictions in parts of Europe as well.
The plants are ancient. The paperwork is very current.
Statements in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
