We keep discovering new attractions in our neighborhood. A few days ago, Poe led us deep into the byways of the Suan Plu market, which is several hundred food and merchandise stalls that seem to have been flung off the back of a convoy of trucks, shoved one on top of another by a bulldozer, then roofed over. It's a lively and redolent hodgepodge of Suan Plu humanity and its needs and habits.
One of those habits is a good massage. If you go straight ahead for about 100 feet, turn left at the shrine, then take the first right, you come to May Massage. There are actual buildings in the rear of the market, and this is one of them. You enter into a quiet, dimly lit room where other customers are semi-recumbent on chaises getting their feet reinvigorated. We opted for the 100 baht "traditional" Thai full-body massage of one hour. (A hundred baht is just over three dollars.) The same massage with oils or creams would cost two or three times that amount, and naturally the price doubles for a two-hour workover.
"Massage" means any number of things in Thailand---many parlors include a "happy ending" for an additional charge---but May's is "traditional," meaning it doesn't get sexual, and the masseur or masseuse uses not just the strength of his or hands and arms but his full body weight bearing down through the arms to knead tension away. Joe and I were led up to the third floor, where we lay on adjoining mats. The kid who worked on me looked too frail for the job---we learned later he was 15---but he was strong enough and enormously skilled. Traditional Thai massage has been taught for centuries at the country's monasteries, and it's one of the culture's defining arts. A Thai woman was being massaged by an older masseuse in a nearby curtained-off area, and occasionally we heard her happy sighs. The lighting was pink and subdued, and the music was new-agey. I almost laughed when I thought of our friend Bill Herrick's famous last words, "Enough of the schmaltzy music already!" Oh, Bill, how you would have loved Thailand and a Thai massage!
Downstairs, we rejoined Poe and his happy feet. We were served tea and sat about and chatted for a bit. The young masseurs, we learned, were actually probably Burmese and they tended not to go out, because their papers were not in order. Life in this region can be complicated in its own ways.
Speaking of Burma, we received our visas. Somebody told us the consulate is grilling Americans now---"Why are you REALLY going to Myanmar?"---but we had no trouble. We go March 14.
Joe is working hard at understanding all manner of Bangkok street food. He's constantly coming home and saying, "Taste this." It's often something wrapped in a banana leaf with a bamboo stick through it. It's usually good, but sometimes it's just odd. Nothing seems to make us sick. Though recently we ate in an actual restaurant where other farangs congregated, and I became queasy after a dish of some kind of pork curry with ferns.
I finished my book, Strachey # 12, and sent it off. It's a political thriller tentatively titled RED WHITE BLACK AND BLUE. (See Joe's proposed cover above.)
Sunday we go to the seashore at Hua Hin for five days. Just in time. We heard it's warming up in the U.S. Here too.
No comments:
Post a Comment