The Cost of Comfort

In Vietnam, it doesn’t cost much to be comfortable. I could buy a week’s worth of groceries for less than $15. A beer costs around $0.50. I can get a healthy, delicious breakfast for $1.50.

Oh, and the massages here are pretty awesome, too. I went to a place called Amy’s Massage yesterday, found right in the heart of Bien Hoa. It was my first time going for a ‘professional’ massage — in other words, not one of the cheap, back and shoulder rubs you can get in the middle of any shopping mall.

It started with a shower. I was directed into a locker room, and given a bag for my valuables. Let me preface this for a moment: growing up, I never played team sports. I preferred tennis or other solo games, and so I never experienced the idea of group nudity. And for a brief moment, I thought it would be strange.

In truth, no one cared. The American idea of modesty is a strange one, and one not shared by many other cultures around the world. In specific Asian cultures, hot springs are a way of life — and no one really cares that they’re all hanging brain in front of one another. It just doesn’t occur to them to worry about it.

Of course, there’s a reason why the pictures on this post are all unrelated to my visit yesterday — I don’t run that kind of blog!

After changing in the locker room, I stepped into the showers. While it may have been a facility built for mass-use, the quality was tremendously high. The showers were equipped with waterfall showerheads. The sauna came after the showers.

If you’ve never sat inside a sauna before, it’s an experience unlike no other. It’s difficult to breathe due to the heat, and it takes no time at all until you begin sweating. Of course, this serves to open the pores and cleanse the skin of any dirt and debris. The two other guys in the sauna with me made small talk for about ten minutes, before I told them I couldn’t take any more and stepped out of the sauna. I never thought the humidity of Vietnam would feel like a relief, but it was nothing compared to a steam room.

After leaving the sauna, I was led down a long hallway into a room, where the masseuse came in and instructed me, through a series of hand gestures and a lot of laughter, where to lay.

And that’s when the fun began.

See, it wasn’t the type of massage I’m used to. It was a Thai massage. For those of you who don’t know what those are…they hurt. The masseuse crawled onto the table with me, bent one of my legs upwards into something like a yoga pose, and began cracking bones and massaging muscles I didn’t even know I had. I don’t think there is a single bone in my body that didn’t get push way outside its comfort zone.

During the massage, I had two main thoughts. The first was that I should take up yoga. The second was that I may never complain about sore shoulders ever again. However, it turned out to be quite pleasant, in the end. I was even given the hot rock treatment — the masseuse took heated stones and began to rub them vigorously across my back, at times almost playing the xylophone with my ribs, and the sat the two stones at the base of my spine, repeating the process until I had a full line of stones on either side of my spine, all the way up my back.

The process was reversed when she removed the stones and placed them on the table, making me lie down on top of them. At one point, she somehow twisted my arms around and used her knees to lift me off the table and into the air. It felt like the beginning of a flying trapeze act.

When the massage finally ended, I was both disappointed and relieved. Despite the discomfort and pain involved, I walked out feeling rejuvenated and in much better spirits than when I had went in. And truth be told, it was nice to lie down and get every single tight muscle treated.

By the way the masseuse worked, it was clear she knew what she was doing. Due to some old injuries over time, some muscles tend to be tighter than others, and she seemed to have a sixth sense about it, zeroing in on those places and giving them extra attention. Of course, the attention was quite painful (like on my right calf, where part of the muscle is missing.)

In the end, I would recommend everyone try a Thai massage at least once in their lives. And try pushing outside of your comfort zone, as well. When I first arrived in Vietnam, I didn’t think I’d stand nude in a room with a bunch of other Vietnamese guys, all of us doing our best to keep our eyes at eye level, but you know what?

It was totally worth it for the new experience.