Chiang Mai's women's prison and Thai massages

I'm bored and avoiding thinking about too much right now.

I will write another story to keep me occupied. This one is more recent than the last - this is from my trip last year. (Wow... It's almost been a year now...) As I said previously I don't think I ever wrote about this one so ... here we go.

We were in Chiang Mai. I had already been in Thailand for about 3 weeks at this point. In the middle of Songkran we decided we should go for Thai massages. Our wonderful guidebook advised that there was a women's prison nearby where as part of the reintegration / rehabilitation program they taught the women massage. (This is kind of strange maybe?)

Anyway... of course this sounded like it would be right up our alley. [I will point out here that I don't think I would've done this by myself... Ever since the Caracalla massage I haven't been much of a fan of massages and going to a prison to get a massage? That's just strange.] Anyway, off we went to the prison. The prison itself was kind of away from the main tourist area but walking distance from our hotel.

We got there and it was awfully quiet. No one was around. This was a full-on prison - with tall walls, barbed wires and guard towers. We noticed there was a sign for the souvenir shop so we walked over (souvenirs from a prison?! again, very strange... I've seen this kind of thing before in Mexico too actually... Maybe this happens here in Canada too - I wouldn't know - I've never been to a prison here.) At this point as we removed our shoes to walk in a woman ran over (I believe she was dressed in a guard's clothes - I don't remember.) She explained that the shop and massage area was closed today but that this other woman (who just happened to be there with her car) would bring us to massages. Yes, this was strange... but for some reason we didn't think much of it.

When I think back to some of the things that happened in Thailand I just wonder how I managed to convince myself that things were okay / normal. I think if I were at home and dealing with these situations I would be pretty concerned. I guess it's simple... it's like what Tony said "just trust the elephant, the elephant won't fall." There are two things - one, if you fall, you have to trust that you will know how and be strong enough to get back up. And two - what's the worst that could happen... okay, a lot of bad things could happen... But really, what's the chance of them happening to me? None of what happened was particularly bad. I digress yet again!

Anyway, we hopped in the car and a couple of minutes later we were in front of a massage place. We went in and didn't know really what was going on - we had tons of questions but didn't quite know how to ask... (I can almost hear myself asking "ummmm... where are the prison guards?" or "are you an inmate?") We weren't quite sure who these people were who were giving us massages - they could've been prison inmates. Let me correct that last statement - THEY LOOKED like prison inmates. They were not small women. In fact the woman who was massaging me was significantly bigger than me.

To this day I don't know who those people were. They did a pretty good job, I learnt that when they ask if I want Tiger Balm I should say no and that Ryan cannot dress himself in thai clothing. It was a pretty good massage once the whole tiger balm wore off.


Now that I think of it, for all I know this could've been a scam where someone dressed as a prison guard told us to get into their car so that they could usher us away from the prison's massage program. This actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. Scams like that happen quite a bit - people try to get you to go somewhere else you didn't plan on going so that they can somehow get paid for bringing in tourists. This was especially the case in Bangkok around the grand palace. I think when I was there someone dressed in an army uniform told me it was closed. I kept walking around the palace until I found the main gate and it was open to tourists.

Ahhh yes, and so that is my prison inmate massage story. Probably not as entertaining to you as it is to me.



As an aside, I had a dream about being in Kathmandu the other night. It was strange. And somehow exciting. I had a couple of weeks of free time and somehow had landed there and I had to decide what I would do. I know nothing about Kathmandu and though Nepal is on my list of places I'd like to eventually visit it's not exactly at the top. I ended up Wikipedia-ing it when I woke up and it does look interesting... anyway, the dream had very little to do with Kathmandu at all anyway... It could've been any other random city in the world... For a moment I felt the excitement of not knowing what was going to come next - of having to make decisions as to what I would do, where I would go...

Sometimes I think that my thoughts on traveling are unrealistic - that somehow my idea of travel is romanticized by my endless day-dreaming about it. I know that during my trip I did have some serious bouts of home-sickness. It's hard to forget those moments... but as soon as those feelings would pass I would realize how amazing it was that I was in such interesting places, having such amazing experiences.

That's enough for now.