i had a fantastic thai massage this morning!

[vash]

my first one! i have been to thailand 3 times, and i get my first real therapeutic thai message in san francisco. i have been pushing it lately, jogging alot. my legs are sore, and my body is beat up from a recent more physically demanding job assignment. my wife hooked us up with 60 minutes of torture..i mean massage. i was pretty upbeat, and really looking forward to it. i put on a pair of thai fisherman pants, and a light t-shirt and sat down waiting for my masseuse. the woman that walked in was a beefy, thai woman...she was rugged! she worked me with everything..elbows, knees, her forearm..i bet she was in some serious tea-baggin positions. i was facedown, 80% of the time, and for most of the session, i had no idea what she was putting the hurting on me with. she was yanking, and twisting, and cracking my joints. it was awesome! i left feeling really loose and limber. $60 and 60 minutes of my time and i am a new man. bay area folks really need to do this. this isnt a mamby pamby, oily, touchy feeling rubdown. this was rough. good times.

since smashing my body in a motorcycle crash, i cannot sit x-legged anymore. she had me awfully close a few times..

[kstar]

Did it end happily?

[widebody911]

i get my first real therapeutic thai message

I can guess what kind all the other ones were...

[Rick Lee]

$60 for an hour? Was this in the US or Thailand? I think the same thing ran me less than $8 in China. We did it about 10x in four weeks. So awesome.

[vash]

downtown san francisco.

i had regular, non-dick touching rubdowns in thailand for maybe $12/1.5 hours. this one was deep down painful, and designed to get your blood going, and joints loose. i think.

[Tishabet]

Dude, you went to Thailand and didn't enjoy Thai massage there? I was in Thailand for about 2 weeks and had probably 12 1-hour Thai massage sessions while I was there, WAY different from "traditional" (for lack of a better word) massages. They are like a passive workout! I am a freakishly flexible guy and was pushed to the limits of my flixibility... amazing that such small women were able to exert so much physical force.

[stomachmonkey]

You better have drunk a few gallons of water afterwards.

Those deep massages cause lactic acid to be released and if you don't hydrate you may regret it tomorrow.

[Dottore]

Deep tissue massage is a wonderful thing. When it's good in Thailand it is very good.

But as all Old Asia Hands will tell you the very best place for this kind of massage is Indonesia. Specifically the island of Java.

This is such a tradition there, that there are as many massage parlors as coffee shops. And it's not a luxury. Everyone from all walks of life goes and gets worked over.

Amazingly enough, the best massage house in Jakarta opened up a branch in the little tourist town in Canada where we have been spending significant amounts of time. The price for a session is approximately 10 times what it is in Jakarta. But all of the girls are from Jakarta, and here on temporary visas, and the massage is every bit as good as in Indonesia.

[masraum]

My wife was a licensed massage therapist. Don't get too excited. From what I understand, mechanics don't work on their wive's cars, well, licensed massage therapists don't do much work on their husbands. But, mine loves the deep tissue stuff. I hate it. I want to relax, not be tortured. Give me one of those "mamby pamby, oily, touchy feeling rubdown". I'm all for it.

Glad you liked it.

[Rick Lee]

This is a friend of mine in Chengdu who took us to one of those serious workout massage places. It was a hoot.