SINGAPORE - When Mr Roy Tay goes on holiday, he usually visits beach resorts in Thailand or Bali, or cities such as Bangkok. But last November, he took a vacation of a different kind, spending a week at a monastery in central Thailand's Sing Buri province where he slept on a straw mattress on the floor and woke up at 4am for prayers.

Instead of checking his phone every 10 minutes for text messages and e-mails, the entrepreneur and self-confessed workaholic limited his screen time to two 15-minute sessions per day to answer urgent e-mails and check in with his wife. As a civilian staying in the monastery, he was allowed to use his phone but chose to mirror the lifestyles of the monks there.