I paid money to get kicked in the balls

Granted, it wasn’t too much money, 250 Baht to be exact (around 8 bucks). After the official festivities of orientation finished up, someone suggested that we needed some hardcore rejuvenation to help us recover from the effects of a flight half way around the planet. This sounded innocuous enough, plus jet lag still had me in no shape to protest. I hopped in the car along with the rest of the crew and a couple of Thai grad students and headed of to an “Ancient Thai Massage Center”.

When I got there, I realized this may not be the greatest idea, since Thai massage is known for its forceful pulling and stretching of limbs. Given my recent shoulder problems (for anyone who missed it, the video is available here), I wasn’t thrilled with this plan, and decided to settle for a foot massage instead. This would’ve worked out great, except that everyone else decided to go for the full 2 hour punishment, and you know what they say, “when in Thailand….give in to peer pressure”. I asked the grad students to tell the massage people that I had a shoulder problem, and to watch out for it (I didn’t feel like trying to explain what “dislocated” meant). They seemed to get the message across easily enough, so they led us away to the torture chamber.

First we exchanged our shoes for slippers and drank some nicely urine colored (though delicious) tea. Then they marched us up the stairs to a room that looked like a bowling alley with camping mattresses on the floor and hospital style curtains that could be drawn to separate each section. They closed the curtains, and we put on the provided wardobe, consisting of bright green pants which could have fit 3 of me and an even brighter green shirt. I don’t have a picture of this, but if I ever find one I’ll make sure to put it up. I’m guessing I probably looked like the Jolly Green Giant’s unfortunate sidekick, the “slightly uncomfortable green short guy”

I won’t go through all the details of the massage itself, since I think I’ve successfully repressed most of them by now, though some highlights included the deliberate depravation of blood flow to my limbs and the audible cracking of my wrists, which made the masseuse laugh out loud, Here was a woman who was at least in her 60s, possibly older, who had hands like the jaws of life and knew how to use them on unsuspecting westerners. The real icing on the cake though, was when she went to stretch my leg by placing her foot in probably the most unfortunate location she could think of, and pulling on my leg while pushing away. Ok, so it wasn’t really a kick per se, but I’m counting it since it registered at least that high on the testicular pain-o-meter. Needless to say, after the whole process was over all the girls couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they’d had, and how great they felt, while Joey (my roommate) and I sat silently staring straight ahead and unable to say much of anything.

My shoulder ended up working out fine, though I did have to stop her from pulling on my arm a few times. All in all, it was probably not the most rejuvenating afternoon, but it certainly did keep me awake.