Massage Asides

On any trip to Asia, or any other developing nation's cities and villages, tourists can look forward to certain affordable luxuries that they may otherwise eschew. In our case, I'm talking about massages.

We've gotten massages on occasion back here in the States, but in Asia we planned on taking advantage of the market inefficiency and trying for a massage each or two.

We did each get two massages, and they were interesting anecdotes that could have been crammed into the larger narrative, but decided instead to place them together at the end because...well I forgot to add the first one, and decided then to do this hokey deal.

1. Siem Reap;

(or)

Wow! You sure won't shut the hell up, will you?

On our second day in Siem Reap, the staging town for Angkor Wat, we decided to grab a massage after our epic bike ride. That day found us riding for upwards of twenty-five kilometers, and after showering, we rode over to a street that had a massage parlor that was staffed with underprivileged blind masseuses. 

We never did find that parlor, so we stopped into one that had prices posted on a menu-like sign outside. It seemed like a good deal.

We were stashed in quiet and dimmed room where we could change our clothes and prostrate ourselves on our our nicely padded massage-beds. Stationed right next to each other, we awaited our handlers. Two young ladies came in, introduced themselves in cutesy broken English, and got started.

After about ten of fifteen seconds of what must have been excruciating silence, my masseuse started whispering to Corrie's. She just couldn't help herself. Something was just so important that she couldn't keep the gossip inside for the entire 52 minutes of disheartened rubbing on my shoulders, back, and legs.

Part of me thought it was fully unprofessional, but this was a tourist town, and everything in exotic tourist towns runs on "island time" accompanied with the similar mentality, so I try not to gauge based on American metrics. Another part of me, though, thought it was kinda funny, and was curious to see for how long she would quietly gab with her friend. The other girl seemed far more reluctant to talk, but did respond from time to time. It helped that it all sounded so pretty, with its quiet sing-songy effect quite relaxing.

Early on she stopped herself, an embarrassed tone in her broken English asked if it bothered us that she was talking; I lied and said, "No, not at all." Was I bothered enough to eclipse my curiosity to see how long she'd keep it up? Not at all, so I guess it wasn't that much of a lie.

She talked through until the end.

As we were decompressing and before we changed, we got to exchange some words with the girls, basically asking about them and their lives. My chatty masseuse's story I could barely believe, but by then these kinds of stories were associated with nearly everyone we met: her brothers and parents had been killed by the Red Khmer, and her husband had been killed in a later incident while she had been pregnant, or, she was pregnant right now and her husband had just been killed, or died in an accident. Some of the details weren't exactly clear, but the toll of the Khmer Rouge seemed to be paid by everyone. This young lady, couldn't have been but a few years older then me, looked a decade younger, and had a distinctly 'smiley' shape to her face.

You know what I mean by 'smiley', right? Not quite smile-lines, like Nelson Mandela had, but the pre-cursor to that: someone who smiles so much they will eventually get the smile wrinkles. There were a surprising amount of them among the Khmer folks of Cambodia. Thailand? Sure, smiles all day. Vietnam? I think their default face is a stern clenching of the jaw. Lao seem despondent... Some of these Khmer, though...is that how you deal with the violent deaths of a family you likely never knew and a husband who won't be there to help raise his and your baby?

I guess so.

2. Da Nang;

(or)

Holy bejeezus! You're kicking my ass!

On our last full day in Da Nang, when we explored the city on foot, we'd decided that we wanted to get another massage--this one to make up for the Lao jungle adventure. We'd checked the available times and prices at the Sandy Beach resort, but they were either inconvenient or too expensive or both. Well, too expensive by our Southeast Asian concept of pricing.

In was on that last day that we wanted to find a foot reflexology place at least. Da Nang isn't such a hotbed of white folks, and during our walk, we had mostly ditched them. Near the end, after eating at the "Czech" brewery and exploring the bridges and neighborhoods, we started off down a street and just hoped for a massage parlor.

There had been a Belgium guy we met while riding the long bus from Laos to Vietnam who was young and, at the moment, traveling with some older Romanian guy. They seemed to be the connoisseurs of the sleazy type of massage parlor where you get as much as you pay for. On the topic of these types of massage places, or travel book had the following paraphrasable advice: If it looks sleazy, then it most likely is.

Do you want a relaxing massage from a reputable establishment? Then maybe you want to avoid the parlor with the neon lights outlining fully darkened tinted windows and the noticeable bass-line emanating from inside.

In any case, on this hot and muggy last full day in Asia we found in a corner lot a sunblasted waiting room that turned into a greenhouse. It was certainly a reputable place. They had us go into a room and change our clothes, and then they came in and we all centered on the type of massage we both were getting.

This time we were sitting in fancy reclining chairs instead of laying on bed-like mats. They started with our feet, since our "back and neck" massage got a truncated whole body effect.

Now, maybe because I'm a guy, my lady thought she needed to be extra rough with me. Good, hard massages I'm not against, but, not only am I a bundle of tight muscles, I'm also covered in hair.

I'm a hairy man, and if you're rubbing my calf in a fashion that could be considered "mostly excruciating" in the event that I was hairless, and you're not using lotion or massage oil while applying that much pressure? Better turn that "mostly excruciating" up to eleven.

There were about three or four minutes out of my 56 minute rub down that was relaxing, or okay. When we were putting our clothes back on I was still under the impression that I'd liked it, but I told Corrie, "I felt like I just got my ass kicked."

Now, the point about the tourists not really being around that neighborhood was to set the context for the very professional tough lady who was my masseuse: they don't get too many tourists, and so she may have never seen anyone as hairy as me before, and may not have known the effect she was having on me.

I would have been fine with the right amount of oil or lotion, and I think she started with some, but then she just got into the zone and went to town.

Corrie passed out during hers.

Next time I'll know what my expectations are before I get too torn up...