Thai massage

[Vu Ha <vu@miller.cs.uwm.edu>]

Hi everybody,

have you heared about Thai traditional massage? If not, then please read
the following not-quite-fictitious story. Vu~ 
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The best massage in Bangkok has nothing to do with a lissome naked
Thai beauty lathering you to distraction using every inch of her skin
and the only soap pad nature has endowed her with.

Rather, it takes place with no privacy, and both of you keep your
clothes on. It is available daily, in one of the largest temples in
Bangkok: the Wat Po (Temple of Enlightment). Though not as profound a
religious experience as the famous "body-body", this dry alternative,
which occurs under the incurious gaze of hundreds of Buddhist monks, has
long gained great reputations among travelers, to whom I myself belong. 

Having heared about Thai massage traditions going back twenty
centuries, etc., conferring the same beneficence on the giver as the
receiver, I was with barbarian ignorance prepared to find that the
saffron-robed monks themselves do the kneading. This, of course, was
not the case, as I was introduced to my masseuse, a slender, gorgeous
young woman named Mon, with big dark eyes and long black hair.

Thai massage is based on the theory that invisible lines of force run
through the body. Pressure is never exerted on the bones; rather, the
muscles are worked and released, after a slow loosening. It was
astonishing how much pressure Mon could apply. At times, she simply
leaned on me and seemed to weight as much as a truck. She would tug
one bent leg up easily and give a disarming smile, then suddenly,
10,000 pounds would be painlessly brought to bear on a tight muscle
I'd never known existed. She would rock back and forth on my limb for
a moment with the pressure on, then move elsewhere. It was less like a
massage than like a very thorough engine tune-up administered by a
highly skilled mechanic. After my legs, she went to work on my back,
treating it like a cross-word puzzle, clambering up and down and
across, leaning and walking kneeling and squeezing with her toes,
fingers, elbows, knees, and heels, all at the same time. Eventually, she
took my arms, which by now has little fight left, and stretched them until
they were fifteen feet long. Then she went to relaxing my skull and
kept up a sing-song, twittering conversation in Thai with the masseusr
two feet away.

I left the temple feeling invigorated and well ... enlightened!