Thai Massage

What's better the morning after drinking than a massage? A mixture of massage, chiropractic treatment, forced yoga and contortionist training awaited me as I took my shoes off and entered the house of massage. First there was a foot scrub, then I stepped into a darkened room and changed into loose-fitting clothing. With the air conditioner humming, and Thai light-rock playing overtop I lay on my back on a mattress and the Thai lady entered and began working on me from the bottom up. Using everything from fists, to feet, elbows and knees, and full body twists too she kneaded and poked, pulled and pushed, while stretching and sometimes tickling me all over. At one point she cracked my back in a torso stretch, which I enjoyed, but my favourite part was probably the forearm tendon massage. In contrast, my least favourite was when she began chatting with Larissa's attendant and forgot that she had her thumbs pressed deeply into tender pressure-points in my lower back for thirty seconds at a time. Once she dismounted from standing on the backs of my legs, she attempted to pull my neck from my shoulder. After all in a Thai massage there are equal parts pleasure and pain.

Sup, Beaches?

It was surprisingly quite easy for the normally can't-sit-still me to spend the entirety of today on the beach. Pulling up a yellow wooden lounge lounge chair under an equally yellow umbrella I settled in for countless hours with the salty water lapping at my toes. Also to do with my toes was the foot, or should I say lower-leg massage that stretched me from ticklish thigh down to the tip of my big toe. (I opted out of the pedi, while Larissa went for the whole shebang).

From there the afternoon was an intermingling of floating in the waves, drinking chilled beer, catching up on over a week's worth of journalling, and purchasing new sunglasses, while turning down most of the other beach hawkers with their various wares from breaded shrimp, to henna, banana boat rides, fresh fruit and jewelry. However with the late afternoon sun peaking under the edge of the umbrella I couldn't resist the cookies'n' ice cream frozen stick.

With the apparently hectic city of Bangkok becoming our temporary residence tomorrow I think it was for the best that we recharged today on the beach and are now ready to battle the traffic and smog.