Penang -- Week 9, Part 2 -- Not THAT Kind of Massage

SUNDAY, May 11th
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! It's my second one!
George wakes up early, goes to the wet market to pick up eggs and flowers and he makes me breakfast in bed. He has Regin carry me a little flower, torn off of the bouquet, and it's about the sweetest thing I've ever seen. My eggs are delicious. After breakfast, I enjoy a cup of mint tea (my staple since learning I can't have any caffeine) and enjoy a hot bath with yesterday's newspaper. It's not so easy to read a newspaper in the tub, you know! But it's still a fascinating look into the local psyche.

On the first inside page, there's the weather report, which seems funny to me, since the weather is pretty much always the same: hot, sunny, with a strong chance of torrential downpours and major thunderstorms. There aren't temperatures given in the forecast though. Makes sense. Further down the page I notice today's times for the muslim prayers. Interesting, I thought I knew some things about Islam, but I had no idea that prayer times changed. Is it based on sunrise and sunset? Where? Mecca maybe? Surely the sunrise and sunset times are pretty darned similar here throughout the year.

Further in, I'm seeing that a page in the newspaper often covers a single topic in many articles. Many of these would be easily consolidated into single articles in my mind, but perhaps it is important to them to keep the subtopics separate. I'm also noticing a slightly increased interest in discussing feelings here. I'm also pleased to see that on the page covering students excelling in academics, all three articles feature pictures of girls. I only wonder if they are showing only girls to compensate for a culture that hasn't fully embraced equality of the sexes yet. (Does any such culture truly exist?)

One of the major stories in the news right now is about a man, a politician or lawyer or something, who stated publicly that one of the sultans (I believe there is one per state) does not have some kind of jurisdiction over some certain thing (I think it has to do with choosing someone to fill some high religious office). Because he questioned the sultan's authority (which is doubly bad because 1- you never make your superior look bad here and 2- the sultan is also a religious figure head and you never question your religion) a whole world of crap is raining down on this man's head, and he is facing all kinds of possible action even though he has said over and over again that he didn't say anything false or do anything illegal. Another guy -- some expert or other public figure of political importance -- said that what the dude in trouble said may have been technically true, but it was morally reprehensible that he said it in public; if he had said it in private to the sultan and they could have hashed it out together, it would have been fine. WOW!

After my bath, it's time for me to finally find out what George has planned for me for Mother's Day. All I know is that I'm supposed to shave, but I don't need my camera, and I don't have to dress up. I get myself ready and pack some snacks and my magic crash-managing potion, and we head out. After only a couple minutes of driving, George stops the car and let's me out at the spa that is only a few blocks away from us! I have package options. For today, I sign up for a 90-minute, full-body massage. I tell the woman that I will need to take snack breaks and she tells me she will let the masseuse ("mashush") know. She walks me up to the room and instructs me to take off all my clothes and put on a pair of disposable panties. That's what those are for! I've seen them in the drug stores and have had no clue why this country needed disposable undies so much! Some kind of rampant bowel problems in Malaysia perhaps?? But then, she changes her mind and for some odd reason, decides I'd be more comfortable in a disposable G-string.

I disrobe, put on the G-string, cover myself with a towel and get on the table. In comes my mashush. She pulls the towel away and covers only my bum. She starts on my feet and legs. I have to say, I've had a few massages before, and this is nothing like I've experienced. Every part of it is different. Every way she kneaded me was not like what I've been used to. She stretched out the tops of my feet, which was great. I don't think people realize how much tension you can carry there. I myself didn't know until a yoga class revealed it to me a few years ago. Her massage was deep and strong. Which was mostly fine, but sometimes quite painful. No matter, she's going to make me feel better in the long run, I think.

Over and over again she is able to make my scalp tingle, even though she's only massaging a calf or a foot. Then she shakes my legs several times and then whips them violently, presumably to see if any of the joints will crack. She cracks my toes too. She puts my leg against her body and stretches out my quads. Hmm. Well, I guess they are a little more comfortable with that sort of thing here. When she moves further up I'm feeling a little less comfortable, and a little more keenly aware of how I maybe ought to have been a little more attentive when shaving my bikini line. Yes. It got a little intimate for my taste. Oh, I can handle a butt rub, but it's a little too close to the edges for me.

I'm relieved when she moves up to my back. But then, I've been having terrible back pain every night and have asked them to go easy on my lower back. No dice. She hasn't heard this request. Luckily she doesn't focus much on that area though, because she has found knots in my upper back that she will pound into submission. A lot of what she does feels great, but I wish she would go a little easier on those knots; even if it does help them go away, right now it just hurts. Then, we get a little close for comfort again when she, yes believe it, climbs on the table and straddles me to continue working on my back!

The whole massage is uncomfortably quiet. There is none of the occasional chatter, or questions to see how I'm doing, that I've had in the States. I'm trying to think of it as meditative and relaxing, but it's a little unnerving. All I hear is the occasional, "OK" and sometimes a "press." I don't recognize it as "press" right away. The first several times she says it I think it's some kind of word she's chanting to help me release tension or something. Heck, what do I know? Eventually I figure out that it's a question. Roughly translated it means, "is the pressure I'm using ok?" However, this seems to be a rhetorical question, since the answer really doesn't seem to matter.

She tells me to roll over, and she carefully covers up my eyes, breasts, and crotch. She does my shoulders again, and a little bit of my head. There are more tingles, and more pain. She actually cracks my neck, twice! Yikes! Then she proceeds to massage my breasts. Ugh. No, I am not describing some late-night movie, this really happened! And no, mind out of the gutter, it wasn't that kind of massage, it was just the outsides of the boobs and underneath. I'm more embarassed than anything, because she's slapping them and flopping them around like crazy, and they, like the half-empty water balloons that they are since having a baby, are rippling and sloshing. Finally the humiliation ends, or not, as she moves to my stomach, my still droopy, empty baby sack. She slaps it around and tosses the bulge between her hands and meanwhile, I'm struggling to find the therapeutic value in what she's doing. She says, "OK press" as she begins to push really, FLIPPIN, hard on the middle of my stomach. I, now realizing this is a question of desired pressure say, "no, please do not push so hard!" But she pushes even harder. Oh the pain! My stomach was on the mend, but still a little tender. This, however, has brought the agony right back.

She does my arms, which is really nice. And she stretches them in cool ways that I didn't even know I could stretch! I get more tingles and she does my hands. She cracks my knuckles -- yeah, that just doesn't happen in the States, does it? Then she shakes my arms three times and yanks them hard to try and crack my wrists/elbows.

I'm thinking we must be close to done by now. And no, she hasn't stopped for my breaks. But it's not over. She has me lift my knee up and turn it outward to expose my inner thigh, which she then massages. Uuuuuhhhhh.... relax Elisabeth, relax. Get over your western prudishness and relax!

She goes back to my head. Yay! A head massage! It's nice until she starts flicking/scratching my scalp with her nails. Man! There is a whole sado-masochistic vibe to this entire experience! Tingles/yanks, soothing/embarassment, tingles/scratching pain.

I had thought about asking if they do massages for men here. George has never had a massage, but by the time we're done I'm positive, this is NOT the place. No WAY they are going to touch him like that! Unh-uh!

When it's over, she tells me something indistinguishable, I ask, "sorry?" and she doesn't answer like the few other times I asked it when she said, "press" or whatever that word was. When she leaves the room I leap up and put on my clothes and run downstairs. I'm a little more limber now, and a little more sore.

I decide, you know, for the blog, to ask the woman at the desk what kind of massage that was. "Oil massage," she replies. No joke! I ask if it doesn't have some kind of name. She says it's a bit (not sure which bit) like Swedish massage but stronger, but that the girl also knows Thai massage and she could do that next time if I want. What will I do next time? I'm not sure what other thing in the package I'm going to do, but I'm thinking I'm not going to get the full-body massage again. Maybe the facial will be safe?

We go out for a late lunch/early dinner and Regin gets some play time at the mall playground again. (picture from a different day)

Late in the evening, as we're trying to convince Regin that it's sleep time, I realize there were no pictures taken today. So we take the picture (at the top). Me and my boy on my second Mother's Day.