(I had intended that the accompanying photo at the foot of this posting should be of my naked feet in all their post maintenance glory but Facebook asked me to change it.)
To Sukhumvit's infamous Soi Nana, this morning. On the recommendation of old local friends, expats of my ken, a mildly inebriated but happy Swiss man with a pronounced limp, numerous hotel doormen and the bouncer on the door at The Why Not? Transvestite Bar - my voluminous list of reasons will take up a posting all of their own, shortly - I head to P's Massage - about a well-lubricated arm and leg into this seething cauldron of vice, street food and poorly kept imported lagers. Soi Nana, pre-covid, looked like a corner of Hell on which The Prince of Darkness has blown his entire marketing budget. Nowadays, this Bangkok flesh pot more resembles a corner of Hull... but warmer... obviously.
Before the 'tsk,tsking' and olympic standard judging starts, let me explain. There is massage and there is massage. One can get you into all sorts of trouble; the other one is rather good for you. Anyway, I needed the latter, especially in the foot department. As an almost daily walker, I cover a fair amount of ground each year. During another jet-lagged and sleepless night listening to the bloody neighbourhood Koel - a very noisy Thai relative of the Cuckoo - repeat its song ad nauseam, I managed to calculate that, unlike those speccy Scottish amateurs, The Proclaimers (500 miles... Pah!), my feet - oddly shaped to start with - had probably covered around 10,000 miles since their last MOT. It was time to give the old 'plates of meat' a bit of a treat.
Mei Mei was a shy, retiring and attractive Thai women in her early thirties. 'Shy and retiring', that is until she gets you into a massage chair in a gallery room with a number of other victims/clients undergoing 'treatment' and gets your socks off! Then things take a very different turn. Have I mentioned that my feet are oddly-shaped? Well oddly-shaped is one thing but as I removed my socks, I noticed Mei Mei's demur demeanor change radically. In fact, her expression reminded me of the first character in a horror film to see the monster. Mercifully, I am not self-conscious. Otherwise, I might have been offended by Mei Mei alerting all the other masseuses in the building that she appeared to have a client who, from the knees down, appeared to be a badly shaved Wookie. After the pointing and giggling had stopped, Mei Mei got down to business with a bowl of soapy water and what felt like a wire brush borrowed from the cellars of the KGB's Lubyanka to remove dried blood from the tiling. Dear God! As Francis Bacon once said: 'Champagne for my real friends; real pain for my sham friends'. Whilst falling a mere gnat's scrotum short of being real pain, it was pretty intense and that was only the washing part! Mei Mei is a world class mime and managed to explain to me that I still had 'exfoliation' - the gesture for which looked more like 'flaying'; 'toe nail extraction' by which I fervently hoped she meant 'clipping'; then the actual massage and lotion to finish.
Suffice to say, I am still mentally and physically scarred from the 'exfoliation' part of the process. No matter how often I screamed, 'All right! I'll talk! I'll tell you anything you want to know! Just stop for God's sake!', the process just went on and on. As my juddering sobs subsided at the end of this, only the 'second stage' of the foot massage, Mei Mei pressed a glass of water into my shaking hands. A large Woods Navy Rum would have been more appropriate.
Next came the massage. How can such seemingly delicate little hands exert such intense pressure? And to such uncomfortable effect? I am told that the foot has thousands of nerve endings. Well, Mei Mei seemed to know each and every one, its address details, family members and medical history. After ten minutes of squirming around like an insufficiently anaesthetised four year-old in a dental surgery chair, it seemed that either my feet were getting used to the abuse or that a sufficient number of nerve endings had been killed off entirely, relieving me of any discomfort. I was left to recover and whimper in the dark for five minutes while Mei Mei took a phone call. Presumably, it was Bankok Zoo confirming that all of their primates with oddly-shaped feet were present and correct.
Then, the good stuff. Having mildly mentholated lotion gently massaged into your feet has never felt so good. It occurred to me for the first time in the hour that my feet just might actually survive to walk another day.
But Mei Mei hadn't finished with me yet. Adopting a sweet, pitying smile, she patted the low stool in front of her prompting me to sit there with my back to her. During the rigours of the preceding 45 minutes, my neck and shoulder muscles, fearing their body's imminent demise, had managed to tie themselves into a survey of marine knots. Mei Mei, whose hands never seem to tire or lose their power, set about the task of undoing these. At one stage, I felt that adopting Alexander The Great's approach and just cutting through the damn things might have shortened the agony but soon there was a distinct improvement. Mei Mei placed my hand on the back of my head, looped her arm, somehow, through the aperture, applied her knee to my thoracic vertebrae and pulled. A loud 'crack' resulted. First one side; then the other. And we were done. Well, I was, anyway... for another ten thousand miles... at least.
Great stuff Philip..!
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