thai massage

amazing!



thai massages are very different from traditional oil Swedish-style massages that are pretty standard back home. ever since i got to pattaya, where there are 10 massage parlors on every block (most are mainly to complement the prostitution scene, though apparently they still offer traditional massages even without the desire for a happy ending…) i’ve been dying for a good thai massage. like a good poor teacher on a backpacker’s budget, i held off until payday. even though massages are only about 150-200 baht per hour, i’m still in the mentality that treating yourself to a massage is a huge splurge, so i waited. i mostly hear great things about thai massages and people have compared it to doing yoga or pilates without any of the work. i was intrigued! though the motivation was really more fueled from needing to relax my tense muscles after my first month of teaching.


we chose healthland, recommended by several different people as having a really nice legitimate spa atmosphere, but still good prices, which sounds better than choosing one of the random shops on beach road, where you really don’t know where the woman’s hands have been before your body…


all three of us are in the same simple room with mattresses on the floor. we get into our awesome pajama-like outfits to allow full mobility of the limbs. i lay there for the full two hours in complete noodled-out bliss, in a half-dreaming trance of complete relaxation as i let the little thai woman do who knows what to my body. she throws my legs across my body, swings my arms over my head, bends my hands backward, presses my feet into the floor, walks across my back, and pulls my head out of my neck. and man, it feels uhhh-maazing! this splurge might have to be a weekly activity here in the land of thai!