Thursday, March 12, 2009

Touchy

Let me be frivolous for a second.

Aside from dicing with dodgy cyclo drivers and rambling up and down ancient temples Jo and I have found time in our SE Asian sojourn to indulge in a massage or two. Or five.

In fact, we could've called this trip Foot Rub 09 such was our dogged dedication to pampering our paws.

Massages are, as you all probably know, extremely cheap in Asia. They're also famous for unusual twisting, pulling and trampling and, of course, infamous for rubbing and tugging and massaging the baby.

When I settled in to try a Khmer (Cambodian) massage I thought I wouldn't be in for any nasty surprises. Furthermore, I was assigned a male therapist which led me to believe I probably would not be offered a 'happy ending.'

It started off innocently enough. Khmer massage is technically similar to Thai massage with similar manipulation of meridian points. Therapists also often clamber on top of you, using body weight to apply pressure with knees, thumbs and elbows. When my therapist began to crawl up the backs of my legs I thought, fair enough. He skipped over the gluteal region which was fine and started applying pressure to my lower back. So far so good.

He then proceeded to park his rear end directly onto my rear end with his package aligned neatly between my butt cheeks. He continued to massage my lower back requiring a forward and back grinding motion which made the situation in my butt a little bit like sliding a frankfurt in and out of a hot dog bun.

At this point a man begins to wonder just who exactly is going to get the 'happy ending' in this particular massage configuration.

For a gruelling sixty seconds I wondered whether my masseuse was in fact numb from the waist down and had no idea what was going on. I ceased thinking about my lower back spasm and instead concentrated on spasming my anal sphincter tight enough that if I had coal in my ass I'd poop diamonds.

I can guarantee you there was no tipping that night.