T A B L E_T A L K If you could work from any remote location, where would it be? Discuss escape residences in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Man bites dog By Rolf Potts Koreans and Americans both love dogs -- they just have different ways of showing it (10/28/98) A tipsy tasting in Burgundy By The Surreal Gourmet It's not easy sipping 200 to 300 great wines a day, but someone's got to do it (10/27/98) Dancing with the dead By Gina Hyams Life lessons from Mexico's Day of the Dead (10/25/98) Rickshaws I have loved By Don George Lonely Planet founder and head Tony Wheeler talks about his new book, "Chasing Rickshaws," and the company's future plans (10/23/98) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (10/23/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		n a k e d _________AND IN HOT WATER _________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A proper Brit ventures to a clothing-optional resort and discovers that nudity offers more than meets the eye. B Y_.S I M O N_.F I R T H "Harbin Hot Springs -- that's the naked place!" said my brother-in-law. "Harbin's the only clothing-optional spa I've been to where even the people on reception were naked," a spa-savvy friend told me. "Really, you're going to Harbin?" another friend asked. "You?" Really. I was. It wasn't my idea. But my wife, Jennifer, had spent the entire summer working 14-hour days, seven days a week, to finish a book, and I'd promised her a trip to any spa in California when it was done. She chose the naked place. The nudity wasn't why she chose it. After a period of intense, desk-bound work she wanted to refocus her mind and get back in touch with her body. And that's what Harbin is famous for helping people do. Jennifer is a native Californian. She does yoga. She takes vitamins. She believes in massage. For her a good spa is a place worthy of pilgrimage -- a kind of modern Lourdes that, through a mixture of rigor and ecstasy, can cleanse you of the past and fortify you mentally and physically for the months ahead. I was brought up in England, where yoga is what the Beatles did when they went peculiar. Where vitamins are sneaked into breakfast cereal because no one will take them voluntarily. Where massage is a sordid euphemism on a par with "hand relief." To me, spas are places to be held in deep suspicion. But I had agreed to go. I especially had to go, I reasoned, because her spa of choice was going to be full of naked creeps trying to scope her out. I had to be there to protect her. She chose Harbin Hot Springs, she told me, because it's the very opposite of the chichi luxury hotel spa -- the kind full of people crash-dieting and recovering from cosmetic surgery. Indeed, from the brochure Harbin looked to be a British caricature of Californian New Age culture made manifest. What it offered went way beyond a hot tub and a facial. We could opt for shiatsu massage, acupressure, inversion therapy, workshops in Holotropic Breathwork and Initiating Your Dream Relationship, and the unique-to-Harbin Watsu treatment -- which seemed to be a sort of rebirthing massage done in warm water with both parties, of course, naked. Jennifer was confident it would be a kind of utopian secular monastery. I was convinced it would be full of men pretending to want shiatsu when what they were really after was sex. I had visions of pools full of fat guys and their unhappy partners pressuring us to join them so they could check us out while they tried to persuade my beloved to join them in mind-expanding sessions of group groping. Didn't it all happen before in California, and didn't it all go horribly wrong? I'd read all about it: Esalen, then EST, then the Kool-Aid Acid Test and then Charles Manson. I didn't want to worry her. I'd go. But I'd go prepared to get us out of there in a hurry. I knew what to expect. With the book finished and delivered, and after a beautiful drive to the Sonoma Valley and then over into the Napa Valley at Calistoga, we headed up into the surrounding oak-strewn hills. This was country carved from ancient volcanoes and the constant friction of the great continental plates. Despite months of summer drought, its valleys were still green, its fields and trees ever refreshed by streams of pure, mineral-laden water sprung from a vast network of fissures reaching deep into ancient aquifers miles below us. Just south of Clear Lake, halfway back into a high, winding canyon, is a place the local Lake Miwok people called eetawyomi -- the hot place. Here, at the end of the Civil War, white settlers came and tapped several of the area's many soda, iron and sulphur springs, renaming the place Harbin Hot Springs Health and Pleasure Resort. Some form of spa has been here ever since. Only slightly mollified by the beauty of the trip, as we arrived I was still nervous about what we'd find. To my relief the receptionist greeted us fully clothed. In fact, nearly all the people we saw as we checked into our rooms had some sort of clothing on. Perhaps we really weren't expected to be naked from dawn to dusk. N E X T+P A G E | Naked people by the dozen