I had a great plan.
I came to Thailand hoping to figure out the secrets of Thai massage. It’s not like Swedish massage or deep tissue, or even Ayurvedic massages where oil drips in a long stream onto your third eye/forehead.
It’s rough, dry, and there’s a lot of cracking because those ladies are not gentle. Sometimes they walk on the bottoms of your feet. Then they bend you backwards over their knees with your arms behind your head. Before that, they drive the bottom of their own foot into your upper thigh, rotating their foot from heel to ball to push across the thigh muscle while gently pulling back on your ankle and straddling your attacked leg.
Sound like torture? It can be. So I wanted to know the why and how of Thai massage and why a nation of people would subject themselves to it. Why no oil? Is it based on pressure points? Is cracking good? Are you supposed to torture the customer/patient? Is it supposed to be relaxing? I’d had a “Thai yoga massage” in Montreal once and left shrugging, wondering why I’d spent my money on someone pulling me through some strange yoga poses. I’ve done partner yoga that’s been more relaxing. But this was not yoga. And it was certainly not massage.
Obsessed with the potentially ancient wisdom of the art (I had really done no background research. Now I know that Thai massage is said to have been created by Buddha’s physician more than 2500 years ago), I decided I’d even take a Thai yoga class myself at the Wat Pho school.
That would be after a little first hand investigation, however: I had my first two Thai massages in Thailand while staying in Ton Sai. There, rockclimbers take them after long days of pulling themselves up rocks. There the head, neck, and shoulder massages are almost as popular as the traditional Thai massages, as the sore muscles do well with oil and the selected muscle groups are particularly in need of help. My first massage was fine. You lie on a mattress next to other people lying on other mattresses in a communal massage area. The women massaging you chat and joke as they poke and prod and squeeze. It’s not all bending and cracking. It’s also a lot of pressure and rolling over knots, which is incredibly painful…which is what the second massage was. Where the first hadn’t done much of anything besides leave me wondering what the point of Thai massage was, the second left me unable to stand up without pain. Any forward bending or movement involving my back hurt. The woman had found some bumps in my back and rubbed the life out of them, leaving me telling me it was too much, but too late. I was nearly crying. I was certainly not in a state of post-massage bliss. My friend lying next to me had a nicer lady masssaging him and had no complaints.
I also hated that you lay down and breathe on the same dirty pillow as the last person. That was Ton Sai, though—unhygienic.
So I had to give Thai massage another chance in Bangkok. There’s a massage place with blind masseurs. Apparently the government sponsors it as blind ladies could be better massage therapists since they would be more sensitive to what they feel in the body of the person they’re massaging.
Except I got lost. That’s the story of Bangkok, really: you’ll never find what you’re looking for, even with GPS or directions. Or if you do find it, it’ll be at least an hour after you thought it would be and you’ll be frustrated beyond belief. So I asked a man walking in the direction of where the blind masseurs theoretically should have been and were not, and he had no idea what I was talking about. But, he said, there’s a good massage place just down the road. He was heading to the good Thai restaurant across the street. Look for the big yellow sign. I couldn’t miss it, he said.
Oh ye of far too much faith. In the most amazing show of kindness, however, the man actually walked ahead to meet his dinner companion but then waited with him across the street from the massage place he’d described, and then waited for me to catch up to him so he could point it out and make sure I got there okay.
At this point it didn’t matter if the massage was good. Without an appointment, all I could get was a foot massage, which was given in a communal room by a woman who didn’t look at me once. It was pretty awful. No way could I have relaxed. Then she asked for a tip, which I thought wasn’t expected in Thailand. I watched some other people tip their massage therapists and asked the receptionist what was normal. He said you didn’t need to tip but 100 baht (for a 250 baht foot massage) was normal. That’s a 40% tip! I decided to come back for the 2 hour Thai massage (which at less than 500 baht was a steal) as another friend recommended it the next day when I told her about my Thai massage struggles. Apparently Thai massage should be at least 2 hours long to get through the whole sequence of rhythmic pushing and pulling.
But next I went to a strip of massage places near where I’m staying by the On Nut BTS skytrain station. On the recommendation of the front desk staff, I chose one at random and crossed my fingers. My woman wasn’t as cruel as the last had been, but she didn’t speak English, ask me where my trouble spots were, or ask if I was injured. And she was dialing it in—she looked away almost the entire time she was massaging me. I’ve felt more relaxed in rush-hour traffic.
I decided to give Thai massage one last chance before taking a five-day massage class. The Wat Pho Massage School offers relativley inexpensive, respected training near the Wat Pho (temple of the reclining Buddha). To get a professional massage in the Wat Pho you have to pay the 100 baht entry to the temple (forced tourism—you might as well see the reclining Buddha statue along with everyone else), and then pay the relatively high 420 baht fee for a one-hour massage. It was hands down the best Thai massage I’ve had. The woman asked me questions about where I hurt and asked if the pressure was okay. I could also feel her sensing the knots and treading carefully so she didn’t roll over them and cause me pain. She didn’t look away. She didn’t joke with her neighbour. She didn’t dial it in. The massage was worth every penny. But I still didn’t love it. I didn’t feel better afterwards.
It was time to head to school.
To be continued…
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