An intimate look at Frankie Tan’s quiet legacy and the spa that holds a town’s trust.
There’s a particular kind of town where strangers don’t stay strangers for long. Where you wave before you know a name. Where someone tells you the best massage of your life isn’t at a luxury resort, but behind a modest facade a couple blocks from the Berkeley Springs gazebo.
That’s how people talk about Atasia Spa in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Ask around town, and you’ll notice a funny thing. Everyone seems to know someone who’s been to Atasia, not because of aggressive marketing, but because the experience lingers. The mechanic mentions it when you pick up your car. A server at the local diner says, “Oh, you’ve got to book with Atasia.” Word spreads the way good things do here: one quiet, sincere recommendation at a time.
The Long Way Home
Frankie Tan didn’t come to West Virginia on purpose. In 1988, he moved from Malaysia to Los Angeles. Like so many others, looking for work took him across the country when he saw a job listing in the Washington Post—massage therapist needed at The Country Inn in a small West Virginia town of 600. With his background and training in Thai Massage, he got the job.
Berkeley Springs was very different than his upbringing. Coming from the capital of Malaysia, home to millions and where the heat never apologizes, this mountain town moved like a whisper. At first, it was all unfamiliar—slow days, open smiles, the hush of trees instead of traffic. But slowly, things shifted. People waved. Faces became friends. And ten years—plus ten thousand massages—later, Frankie decided to stay in Berkeley Springs and open his own spa, Atasia Spa.
The World Slows Down at Atasia Spa
There’s a rhythm to a place that understands relaxation as a ceremony, not a transaction. At Atasia, that rhythm starts before the massage even begins.
You’re not rushed through a clipboard and a chair. You’re welcomed. Given a locker. A robe. A place to shower. You ease into a whirlpool—not for novelty, but because warmth loosens more than just muscles. And only then, when you’ve begun to unspool the tightness of everyday life, do the hands that have practiced thousands of sessions begin their quiet work.
Frankie built that experience on purpose.
“Massage should be about helping people feel whole again,” he says. “You must give them space. Let them breathe.”
It’s this ethos—less like a business, more like a sacred ritual—that’s kept Atasia not only alive for 27 years but deeply, genuinely loved.
When Frankie’s not at the spa, he gets in his car and drives up to Sleepy Creek Mountain. To where the trees part and the valley opens wide, and Berkeley Springs looks like a scene on a postcard. There’s a lake up there too, still and bright, the kind of place where your shoulders drop before you even realize you’re holding them tight. He doesn’t go for inspiration or clarity. He goes because it’s beautiful. And beauty, he believes, is its own kind of medicine and encourages his staff and patrons to embrace beauty.
When he arrived in the late ’80s, Berkeley Springs had one restaurant. Now there are more than ten. Shops have filled in old corners. Galleries hum with local color. Events fill the weekends. Berkeley Springs is growing. And through it all, Frankie stays—not because it is easy as a business owner, but because of the beauty of Berkeley Springs and it is home.
“There weren’t many people who looked like me when I got here,” he says. “But people saw me. Waved. Let me in.”
That kind of belonging doesn’t arrive in a day. It’s built with every small kindness. Every moment, someone chooses to remember your name. And that’s what Frankie remembers most—not the struggle of being different, but the generosity of being accepted.
Atasia Spa Is More Than One Pair of Hands
Over the 27 years, Atasia Spa has grown, and Frankie will be the first to tell you Atasia isn’t just his story, but a story of people. It’s 16 people now—practitioners, staff, caretakers of calm. They’re the ones who fold the towels, heat the stones, remember that you like eucalyptus in your room, or need extra pillows for your knees.
“I wouldn’t be here without them,” he says. “They’re everything.”
There’s no grand awards wall at Atasia. No plaques or photo ops. What you get instead is something even more rare: a team that believes in care. Not customer service. Not hospitality. Care. The kind that doesn’t flinch when you show up anxious, or sore, or sad.
Step inside Atasia Spa, and the outside world fades a little. Not entirely—it never does—but enough. Enough to notice your own breath. Enough to stop counting minutes. Enough to remember what it feels like to be in a place built around slowing down.
Frankie doesn’t need to say that. It’s in the way the light hits the water. In the soft weight of the robe. In the warm smile that greets you by name, even if it’s your first time.
Because in a town where people wave without needing a reason, and where a man from half a world away built a life by helping others pause, maybe the most incredible luxury isn’t the massage.
Maybe it’s being known and accepted.
