A drifting mantra of mine is Wellness. In southeast Asia I get to take advantage of affordable saunas (herbal steam). I’ll happily take whichever I can get. It’s called a sauna when in essence it’s an herbal steam, just semantics.
While steam facilities are on offer, you have to locate them. At the same time, massage parlors tend to be plentiful in the radius of a downtown area.
I have a good-enough $9 a night room slightly outside the town center. This is a miraculous deal. The best traditional sauna I’ve found in this city is only a five-minute walk.
Saunas (herbal steam) facilities can be found in any Lao city.
The Wi-Fi in my room is poor since I’m at the end of the ultra-clean, eight-room hallway. I love the enhanced wellness of cultures that make people take their shoes off before stepping inside. This is the the East Asian way. I’ve assimilated it into my personal culture since it makes absolute sense.
The Slow Wi-Fi Sparked a Revelation
Maybe it’s better to not always have Wi-Fi in the room. Silence is sometimes healthier than podcasts and the mind-numbing abundance of infinite information, which causes unnecessary anxiety.
When I want to get online, I move to the breezy main area, where Wi-Fi functions fantastically.
The afternoons get hot in July. That is not an understatement. One caveat for the touristy town:
Because of the dense Mekong humidity, it feels many degrees hotter than the actual temperature. Thank goodness for the rain to cool things down.
While walking towards the sauna I felt hot. I’d sweat profusely for about 18-minutes in total there the day before. Getting in again on a consecutive super-hot afternoon felt like too much for my already heated body. So, at the thought of wellness, I decided I’d go for a massage instead.
There isn’t a shortage of massage shops. While many locals love their deeply-embedded massage culture, there tend to be more massage options around touristy areas.
Massages in this part of the world are considerably more affordable than in Euope and North America.
The region arguably has the best massage know-how on the planet. The art has been an intricate part of the culture for centuries. Consequently, a massage here is going to be more qualitative and a better value than other regions of the earth.
I’m not sure the therapists are certified like they need to be in a western land. But every massage here has been blissful. The masseuses work magic with their hands, nails, elbows, wrists, feet and bodies. They create yoga-like stretching positions.
Fingernails may act like acupuncture. You might feel a bit of pain or awkwardness if they push too deeply into the skin.
Every massage is different. It depends on your massage therapist and which massage you order. Like a snowflake or a goal scored in soccer, no one massage will be ever be the same.
So I turned around, walked towards town and stopped at the first massage shop I saw. The girl handed me a menu with around 10 options.
I opted for the traditional body massage. It was the cheapest, and standard cultural option.
The therapist had me sit down while customarily washing and lightly scrubbing my feet in a little tub. I removed a foot one at a time, which she then placed on her her lap to dry with a fresh, white towel.
She led me up a few stairs and into a room that had three massage beds. She gave me a loose pair of shorts to change into and checked back a minute later. I was set.
Most massage places are legitimately for therapy. That’s what I had in mind and this is typically what I’m offered. Almost always.
Should I try to maximize life and take advantage of wellness options that arise? Absolutely. And this is the best massage region on the planet.
Lying on my stomach she started with a delightful foot massage and then worked on the lower legs, at times digging deeply but not too hard, like a man’s hands may. She went deeply into my calves to the threshold where I still didn’t feel pain, but perfect pressure.
She went back to my feet while using a tool to help access pressure points. I felt little jolts throughout my body.
We didn’t talk. She smiled a bit. I mostly kept my eyes closed and tried to focus on long deep nasal breathing and breath holding, while aiming to stay focused on the part of the body she was so pleasantly manipulated.
Breathe in what is happening right now. Breathe out what is not.
She wore shorts. At times I felt her her silky-smooth legs massaging my buttocks. While massaging my inner thigh she didn’t go overboard, like some might if they’re signaling they’d like you to pay extra for a happy ending.
This particularly pretty woman didn’t make anything obvious and didn’t overly massage the inner thigh and crotch area.
It didn’t matter where her hands were on my body, the electricity felt magical.
For a man, this is where things can get complicated. For multiple reasons I didn’t want it to be sexual. Wellness was the mantra. But I was a guy showing up alone during the low-tourist season.
Life revolves around money. There are zero handouts. People need to make do and wages haven’t changed from their already low amounts, even though costs have doubled.
Who doesn't want a piece of tourism's economic pie?
She may have been 45-minutes in. Ideally time doesn’t exist while getting a therapeutically fuzzy massage. She got a phone call, and didn’t excuse herself. She just stopped, took the call and talked for less than 30 seconds.
Feeling tingly throughout, I was completely content with a break.
No words were uttered. She resumed. The wellness worker discovered pressure points I didn’t know I had. The elation kept rising throughout my body.
Soon after the call, another young masseuse casually walked in. Then I noticed there were two of them on the bed beside me. One was massaging the other’s buttocks, upper, and lower legs. These two attractive young ladies also had shorts on.
A Purely Blissful State of Mind Turned to Surprise
I’ve had a fair amount of massages in recent months. This episode was a first.
Everyone was pleasant. The superb massage continued. The therapist worked my upper body, arms and hands.
First she did the arm and hand opposite the ladies on the bed beside me.
Just as I’d been doing before the other two arrived, I tried to continue putting my head back with my eyes closed, and focus on breathing.
My curiousity got the best of me. I couldn’t help but open my eyes and glance over. One lovely lady was rubbing, pushing down, digging and accessing my pressure points while I saw another perform a massage on her adorable friend, just centimeters away.
The petitely perfect massage recipient got up and motioned on all fours, mimicking a sexual position. The words kama sutra flashed in my mind.
I turned back, closed my eyes and tried to breathe. I still couldn’t help but look over again. They were speaking in the local tongue when I thought I’d heard in the middle of it all: Openpussy. The other attractive masseuse was looking right at me while I thought I’d heard those eloquent words from her elegant vocal cords.
It must have been a direct translation from the local tongue.
It was completely unexpected.
As she said it, I wasn’t 100% sure I’d heard it right, but how could I have imagined it? I’d never heard an expression exactly said that way. Otherwise it didn’t seem like they knew English. But this was a tourist town. The shop was near the city center. Many people speak some English.
The dreamy massage went on. My body felt electric and completely relaxed. I wanted to express gratitude. I felt fortunate to be immersed in this wondrous feeling of wellness.
The masseuse working on my hands and arms switched sides. She sat up beside me and held onto the top of my shorts, pulling them up gently, tightening them.
She massaged my arm and hand, then moved it onto the silky-smooth upper back thigh of the massage recipient beside us.
Then she pulled up lightly on my shorts again, looked down at my midsection, and produced a teasing chuckle.
It took me by such surprise that I didn’t know how to react. So I continued to do nothing and let the magical massage continue.
The girl eventually had me sit up so she could finish with a swift performance on my head, neck, shoulders and back, while having me watch the other massage in front of me.
She finished and said:
Thank you.
My entire body tingled as she walked out and closed the door. I thought:
Life’s possibilities are limitless. You never know what’s gonna happen. The unexpected will occur.
The girl was still giving her friend a soothing massage. I needed to change out of their shorts and into my boxers. I should have done it right there. It wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t know what would have happened though.
Feeling great, I opened the door, stepped into the hallway and changed.
I quickly returned to the two lovely ladies, deliberately operating in slow motion with putting my pants on and getting my stuff together.
I smiled and tried to make small talk, telling them how great I felt and how good the massage was. Deep down inside, I didn’t want to leave them.
But instead I said:
Thank you.
The masseuse smiled.
I couldn’t help but think:
Imagine the possibilities if I learned the local tongue.
Downstairs I paid the masseuse and fuzzily added what I’d later calculate to be a 44% tip. She was confused and so was I. I tried to convey something along the lines of:
The rest is for you.
She made me feel so good that I felt the need to tip, although it isn’t necessarily customary. But for such a service, I felt it was the right thing to do. I felt euphoric.
The 44% must have taken her by surprise. Normally I’d tip around 20%. I went overboard because I wanted to keep the karma good. After all, I’d enjoyed an unforgettable hour. Still, in hindsight: there’s no reason to tip so much as it’s not the cultural norm and I really should frugalize my drifting dollars as much as possible.
I was mesmerized. As much as I may have enjoyed what they had in mind, it felt awkward. I can’t know how much money they might have wanted and for what exactly. I suppose the service(s) could have been haggled.
I felt the need to maintain personal integrity. I don’t want to be part of the flesh for money human subculture.
Although these young ladies learn how to become great masseuses, for the small percentage who are willing to sell their feminine flesh, it's all about the money. Money feeds families.
Good or Bad Trauma
One side of me is traumatized because I turned down what may have been a heavenly arrangement. Something like this doesn’t come up often. Actually it’s the first time.
The other side of the trauma lies with the fact that people sell their bodies for money. Imagine all the strangers a person such as that might copulate with? I wish that things weren’t that way. If you disagree, that’s completely OK. There is no right or wrong.
What is morality, integrity and reality? It depends solely on an individual’s perspective.
While the vast majority of massages have not offered extras, I was in a major tourist center. I don’t know the intricacies, but I’m pretty sure that most of the massage culture here is just, massage.
In my opinion, economics is a dogma. People need money. Selling one’s bodily flesh might be the oldest and fastest way to get this dinero. This human nature happens throughout the earth.
Whether I believe it to be morally right or wrong, I’m not going to change the world. I can only accept it.
As for the ancient wellness art of massage that probably originated in what’s modern-day India, there’s no doubt it can produce a fairy-tale feeling that makes a person feel fuzzy, well and happy to be alive.
Have you ever had a fuzzy feeling during and after a therapeutic massage? Feel free to leave a comment below.
Yeah… Doesn’t have to be zero-sum, though, everyone can win.
The extra tip was a nice touch.