Thai Massage

Yesterday we finally made it over to the Women’s Correctional Institute for a massage. That’s right, the women’s prison not only sells handicrafts but the inmates also have a shop where they offer traditional Thai massage. How often do you have the opportunity to get a massage at a women’s prison, right? So the three of us headed over there and we were not disappointed. These women did not possess the typically thin Thai female body type, dainty they were not. They did however act like a typical Thai with smiles, giggles, and a lot of joking and laughing, which created a surprisingly pleasant atmosphere. I’m guessing that the woman who worked on me was in for assault and battery. She had homemade tattoos on her arms and she probably strangled her philandering husband with her bare hands. One popular technique was to lean hard on the artery pressure point at the top of the thighs. The woman working me held the point until my legs went numb and then continued to hold for what seemed like a couple of more minutes. I was starting to become concerned about the long-term health consequences of cutting off my blood flow for this long when she released the position and I could literally feel the blood whoosh back into my legs; we were clearly not in for a pleasant rub down. To make matters worse, once she rolled me over on my back (now don’t get jealous) she started saying, “I like you” and I don’t think she meant my snappy threads as we were wearing what amounted to prison pajamas. I didn’t want to lead her on but I didn’t want to burst her bubble and risk suffering a burst lumbar disk so I adopted a non-committal silence except for when I was unable to refrain from grunting in pain as she would sit behind me, put me in a full nelson, a wrestling move illegal in all civilized countries pin my feet to the ground, and crank my torso up over her knees, past her shoulder, and around her back or contort me in some other seemingly physically impossible maneuver. Every time she would say, “relak, relak, relak” (relax, relax, relax) I would endeavor to do so because I know she was about to perform some contortion on my body that was either going to break a limb or tear a ligament if I tensed up at all. Meanwhile, Maya is over there giggling as her masseuse is gently prodding Maya’s little twig arms and legs while teaching her to count to 10 in Thai. Zak described his massage as, “rough, but very good.” He says he enjoyed it very much. I have to agree that it was a very good massage even if I did feel as though I had been run over by a small truck.