Massage and Getting Ready to Go (Nov. 8, 2014)

Today I spent the day organizing my way to the airport for tomorrow morning, getting my bag packed, and going for a massage.

First thing this morning, I showered, and got onto the job of securing a taxi to take me to the Don Meaung Airport tomorrow morning, to be ther for 6 am. My flight to Saran Thani, near the islands leaves at 7 am, so that means I need to be picked up from the hostel at 5 am. Ian, the guy who works here helped me figure out a plan. First we called a car service, but they wanted a huge amount of money. Then we found a taxi driver who lives around here, and gave his number to the hostel owner to use. I called him up and he said he would be here tomorrow morning. Now the thing around here is, that even if they promise they will pick you up at a certain time, you cannot always be sure that will actually happen. So I tried my best to speak to this guy, who only spoke broken English but was able to repeat back to me that he would be here at 4:45 am tomorrow morning. I am going to call him at 4:30 to remind him. He lives around here, so I figure that either, he'll already be up and on his way, or he won't answer his phone. I will wait until just before 5 am, and if he doesn't show, I think I can flag down a taxi on the nearby street. At that hour, I think they will be happy for the fair, to such a distant destination. I'm hopeful anyway.

It's weird here, because if you flag down a cab and they don't want to drive to where you are asking, they will just refuse you. The other night when I went out with Alice and Martin for the Lantern Festival, we were refused several times before a taxi would take us back to our area, which wasn't that far. Send me lots of positive energy that I can get a taxi tomorrow, as I'll need all the help I can get.......lol. On the way back to Bangkok, I am going to try to book a flight that will get me here during daytime hours. That way I can take the public transit to get into the city. Much easier and dependable.

So, having that sorted, more or less, I decided to walk down the street and see if they could take me at this really nice massage place that many locals as well as tourists go to. I called, but they didn't have any appointments available unless the booking was for the evening, but I could walk in and see how long the wait would be. So that's what I did, and only waited for 10 minutes. I opted for the two hour Thai Massage with Herbal Compress. It was fantastic! The place, called Health Land, is specially designed for this purpose only and has several floors of rooms that they use for massage.

One of the massage rooms

Me in my massage duds

Massage duds #2

Once into the room, they ask you to change into a loose top and pants, and lie down on one of the beds. No one else came in while I was having my massage, so it was just me and the lady doing the massage. She was very nice and really good. We chatted a bit and she told me in very broken English that she is 49 years old, with four sons, two of which have already finished university. From my calculations, she had her first child at 20. She looked very young and I found it quite shocking to find out that she had children that old. She did the Thai massage for about an hour, and while she was doing it, there were these two sacks, tied with string, steaming in a little machine that looked like a rice cooker.

When she was done the massaging part, she took out one of these fragrant sacks, filled with a traditional recipe of plai root, tarmarind leaves, turmeric, bergamot peels, camphor, lemograss and black herbal seeds in cotton poultices, and applied it in a compressing manner, all over my body. She pressed them down my legs, back, arms, and neck, both front and back. When one cooled off, she put it back into the rice cooker, and took out the second one. It was amazing and so relaxing. I am really glad I went to do it. My body is a bit stiff and sore from so much walking and was very appreciative of this service. Including the tip I gave her, it cost me about $40 as it is quite an upscale facility.

Table in front area of massage studio

Same table, but if you look at
the white sachel on the right,
that is the one with the herbs.

After that, I walked, or rather floated back to the hostel to pack up my bag, ready to take off tomorrow. I compressed a lot of my face and shampoo stuff into one plastic container. I managed to fit everything I will need for the week, into the backpack which is great. I will leave my suitcase here at the hostel until I return. It's perfect and a lot less to lug around. Then I went to the market to buy some small munchies for my trip. I bought a few mandarin oranges, some seaweed snacks and a bag of chilli flavoured broad beans. I cannot find crackers of any sort here. It would be great because I have a half jar of peanut butter left but can't find anything to put it on......lol.

I went to the bank machine as well so that I have cash for my journey, and enough smaller bills so that the taxi driver can't say that he hasn't got change for a large bill. I'm getting the hang of this pretty fast.

While I was out getting the groceries, I bought a treat on a stick, for dinner. It was delicious, so much so, that I promptly turned around and went back to buy two more sticks. They were chicken livers, roasted, and I think it was some sort of soy sauce marinade they were done in. Absolutely amazing. When I went back, I grabbed two more sticks, and later found out that these ones were gizzards instead of livers, but were just as wonderful. I love street food.

Looks awful but super yummy! Roasted chicken livers.

So, that's about it, not too exciting, but very productive. The blogs will begin to get exciting again, starting tomorrow, I'm sure. I will have lots to tell you.
Have a great day all. Talk to you next blog.