Thailand Trip Theme

Frommer’s Travel Book for Thailand suggested that you could give your trip to Thailand a theme. For instance, some folks come to Thailand and take several Thai cooking classes. Other people will have architecture as a theme. Still others will visit several Temples, talk with the Monks and study Buddhism. After great thought and careful deliberation, we decided to have our theme be “Massages of Southeast Asia”.

See, once the hope of any puritanical discretion had been lost in a hotel room in Manila and all dignity abandoned in a train’s bathroom we pretty much decided to adopt the mantra “what the hec.” (A rather elegant merging of both the Thai and Utah cultures… We deserve some sort of ambassadorship title.) These losses, coupled with our extremely positive experience with the foot massage in the Bangkok Train Station sent us out with great anticipation for the successful execution of our trip theme.

After leaving the Elephant Camp we checked in at The Green Tulip Guest House. (We’ll tell you about this great find later.) We asked the woman who owns and runs the place if there was somewhere close where we could maybe get a massage. We didn’t share with her that it was our trip theme as she might be a Puritan with dignity and kick us out of her establishment. So we tried not to act overly enthusiastic.

She said that there is actually a program in Chiang Mai for female prisoners. The prisoners are trained in Thai massage thus giving them a marketable trade and helping with their rehabilitation. She said they were running a special: 2 ¼ hour Thai Massage and an Herbal rub Thingy for 500 bhat. They would come pick you up and drop you off when you were done.

That’s not exactly what she said but we really didn’t hear anything except “2 ¼ hour massage”. We huddled up to discuss if 500 bhat meant we would need to take out 2nd mortgages, which we were more than willing to do. We did some complicated computations… I lied, Tammy & Suzi did what appeared to be a combination of trig and quantum physics where they divided 500 by the exchange rate… whatever that is, and told me it would cost about $15.00 each.

$15.00!!! Are you kidding me? We were all ready to give up a kidney or at least make Suzi give up hers and they tell us $15.00. I swear it was like “Field of Dreams”, only with massage instead of baseball. And the honest truth, she could have said male prisoners and we would probably still have said, “What the hec. It’s $15.00 for the love of Pete!”

We told the woman it seemed like a noble cause and we were happy to do our part to support it. One hour later a van picked us up and dropped us off at a spa. (And here we were all ready to go to the prison.) As it turned out, they are recently released prisoners who were trained while in prison. Oh!?! 2 ¼ hour massage at a spa for $15.00 and Suzi keeps her kidney. Does it get any better?

We go in and … here’s the ironic part… they have us change into orange jump suits. They bring us some tea and lead us into a comfortable dimly lit room with several foam beds. All serene all warm, all inviting and disarming. You are probably getting sleepy just thinking about it. Well don’t!

First a word about little Thai women: They maybe weigh 90 lbs dripping wet and have these sweet faces and charming smiles. Do not let this fool you. And do not, we repeat do NOT get into a street fight with them because they will tear you up!! They aren’t just strong the are WWF strong, but without a metal chair over your head.

Second a comment on Thai massage: They use their boney little elbows. They use their knees. They punch you. They walk on you. They use a vise like death grip that could make a Navy Seal buckle and cry for his momma. And they mix it up with some very pleasant extremely soothing massage techniques as well. About half way through we realized we were suffering the effect of Stockholm syndrome, but they had pushed some nerve point known only to Thai people making it utterly impossible for us to resist.

We’ve been back 2 more times.