Thai Massages: They're Dandy, I ain't Lying

It will feel good, they said.  It will be awesome, they said.  They are trained to find where you keep your stress and they will help work it out, they said.  It will get all that stiffness and kinks from the long airplane flight out of your body, they said.  Thai massages are world famous, they said.

According to our guide, Thai massage is one of the ancient gifts to the Thai people and the king provides schools and training to the Thai people so that they can perform this craft.

So, after a morning spent going through temples and the Grand Palace in Bangkok, I was heading off to get a Thai massage.  I should mention that it was my second day in Thailand, it was 90 degrees already and to go through the Bangkok temples and the palace one was required to dress in long pants and with sleeves. Back home it was 20 degrees and snowing.  I was not adjusted to the temperature yet and was sweating like a hairy biker during Bike Week.  And the pants I had were special moisture wicking pants that I’d bought specifically for the trip—unfortunately, I’d bought them six months earlier and they were too big.  They were designed to roll up into capris, but they rolled up into regular pants and the thighs of the pants had enough extra space that I could have put both legs in one side and still had extra room.  So I was kind of uncomfortable.

Driving through traffic from the Grand Palace through streets lined with buses that had hauled crowds and crowds of Chinese through the narrow streets of Bangkok—hey happy Chinese New Year, guess what, there are a LOT of Chinese people on the planet.  Anyway, our guide tells us that the drive is about 45 minutes, depending on traffic.

As we turn a corner, we encounter our first traffic hang-up.  There’s a guy who stopped in the middle of the street, dropped trou and was dropping a deuce right there on the median line of the street.  There was a street dog standing on the sidewalk staring with a “What the hell” look on his face.  The traffic just flows around him.  There’s no road rage in Bangkok despite the traffic.  The traffic flows around the pooper and keep going.

The guide doesn’t quite know how to react.  She’s amused and she clearly doesn’t want this to be the impression of her country to the foreigners in the back seat of the car—and she sees that I have seen what we just passed.  She laughs it off.  Miki is a great guide, full of energy, excited about her country and proud of it and excited to share it with people who want to know more.  “Well,” she says laughing, “I guess now you can say you’ve seen everything in Bangkok!”

I laugh with her and chug water while Nancy, blissfully unaware, snaps pictures of the palace through the car window, having missed the “squat and drop” completely.  I was blissfully unaware that this was an omen, a cosmic commentary on my near future.

Soon I see the signs for Wat Pho.  Wat Pho is the home of the famous reclining Buddha statue and it’s on my list of one of the things I really really want to see.  Like most of the wats in Thailand that we visited—there are thousands of wats and temples and places to worship everywhere you go and it would take a lifetime probably to visit them all—Wat Pho is more of a complex than a single building.  Each wat seems to have at least few buildings with shrines and Buddha statues, housing for the monks, and a school for the monks.

So we are dropped off and go through the line that says “foreigners.”  All Thai people get into the temples for free.  Seems kind of right to me, somehow actually.  If you want to take pictures and gawk at our religious icons, then pay us for it.  If you want to worship and drown yourself in your cultural and spiritual history, then by all means, come on in. 

Anyway, we walk in and our guide points out the restrooms.  So, yeah, we’ve been drinking lots of water all day and we’re about to get a massage.  Restrooms are in order.

I go in.  At first glance it’s not unlike the restrooms at roadside rest stops or national parks or campgrounds.  A line of metal doored stalls.  The concrete floors are wet.  The place smells vaguely of stale pee in the heat.  I go into an empty stall.  The seat is soaking wet.

There is no toilet paper.

There’s a sprayer on the wall.

What in the hell is that sprayer for?  Cleaning?  The restroom actually doesn’t look that dirty except for the smell.

Not only is there no toilet paper, there was never any toilet paper.

There’s no empty roll.

There’s no toilet paper dispenser niche or rack on the stall wall.

It’s a metal box with a wet floor, a wet toilet and a kitchen sprayer on the flipping wall in a holder.

I have to pee.

No moving between stalls.

I pee.

I do what guys do – the wiggle and shake.

I wash my hands.

I go outside to wait.

Nancy emerges a few moments later.

She looks at me as the guide starts to lead us to the place where we’ll get our massages.

“Did you notice there was no toilet paper?” she asks.

I nod.

“Thank goodness I had some Kleenex with me.”

I nod.

“Not just in my stall.  There was no toilet paper in ANY stall,” she says, seeming to want a response.

I nod again.

I’m not talking about this.  (call this foreshadowing for future blogs)

We go to a building.  It’s air conditioned.  It’s filled with beds and Thai massage therapists walking on top of Western tourists.  The “therapists” seem to be enjoying themselves.  Nancy is handed off to some cute little perky girl.  They hand me off to the only Thai person in the country who is taller than me.  The guy grins at me.  His eyes sparkle.  I want to believe he’s amused by the fear in my eyes, but in retrospect, I’m pretty sure he’s a sadist.

The room is long and narrow.  There are four double sized mattresses across the room, two on each side of a center aisle.  It’s shaded from the bright harsh light outside, that combined with the air conditioning might have been comforting if it weren’t for all the people lying on those beds being twisted into pretzels by Thai “professionals.”  I take off my shoes, I’m instructed to put all my stuff into a small box at the head of the mattress that has been designated as mine.

Nancy has the spot across the aisle.  There’s a woman on the mattress next to mine.  Her eyes are squeezed shut; her mouth is twisted in a grimace.

My first impression of this stranger:  wimp.  I’m judgmental like that sometimes.

Sadly, I’m in the land that karma calls home.

The first thing he does is stretch my hamstrings, by kneeling on them.  Oh, they’d cramp up if it weren’t for the unrelenting pressure.  Then the soles of my feet are gouged with knuckles.  My arms are stretched behind my back.  My knees are twisted until they touch the back of my head.

“Are you okay?” the guy asks.

I look over at Nancy.  Through the tears welling up in my eyes, I see her eyes are closed and there’s a blissful look on her face.  “I’m fine,” I say.

Oh and our guide wasn’t kidding about them being trained to find the stress spot.  A while back, I had a bulging disc in my neck.  It presses on a nerve and makes my right hand go numb.  Back then I went through 12 weeks of traction and therapy and drugs to get it right again.  Now, I have exercises to do when my hand starts to go numb.  And it was, the 24 hours on the plane did it.

But I didn’t need to do my exercises, because my wonderful massage therapist decided to apply traction with his hands—or he was trying to pop my head off like we used to pop off the flowers of dandelions when we were kids.  He had really strong hands.  With his knuckles on my shoulders and his thumbs on the base of my skull, he tried to decapitate me.

Ever have something hurt so bad that you really couldn’t make a sound?

Yeah.

It was like that.

He didn’t let up. 

Someone came by and said something to him in Thai.  He replied. 

I don’t speak Thai, but I’m pretty sure he said, “Momma had a baby and its head popped OFF!”

Finally it was over.

He walked away.

Someone handed me a mineral water.

The Thai drink a lot of mineral water.  Apparently this is allows them to lower the pressure on the toilet kitchen sprayer.  (more foreshadowing).

We walk out. 

Miki is waiting.  “How was it?” she asked.

Nancy speaks first.  “It was wonderful!  I feel so good now.”

“I think I’m bruised!”

Miki laughed.  “Did it hurt?”

“Yes!”

She nodded.  “They won’t let me back to get a Thai massage.  I scream.”

Long story short.  I had bruises.  My shoulders and the base of my skull was tender for three more days.  Every time I turned my head I was aware of the tender spots.

Okay, my bulging disc was back in place.

I think that guy was proud of himself for damaging a fat, aging foreigner.  He grinned too much.  Never trust a man who grins too much.  Never trust an Asian who’s taller than you and has hands that look like they might be able to hold a basketball without much effort.

And start screaming before you can’t make a sound.