Travel update - Bangkok
Feb. 20th, 2024 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_wingI was in Bangkok for a few days not too long ago, and noticed some very nice art on the walls of Suvarnabhumi Airport as I slogged my weary way from the aircraft door to Arrivals. Suvarnabhumi was clearly designed to ensure that all passengers get in their 10,000 steps before being allowed to leave the terminal...
The train into town is good and connects directly to the BTS, so if your hotel is near a BTS station, you aren't travelling at rush hour and you don't have too much luggage, it's actually not a bad way to bypass the traffic. Otherwise, take a taxi, insist on the meter being on, and take your chances with the traffic jams.
As usual it was hot and the air pollution was awful, but I'm mostly indoors when I'm there, and wear a mask anyway. This time I splurged on the time and booked myself the full three-hour Thai Traditional package at Asia Herb Association, which is a nice, rather upmarket massage chain with several branches in the centre of town. You get one hour each of herbal scrub, Thai massage and herbal ball treatment, which involves being pounced all over with bundles of hot herbs. They supply the disposable knickers and the pyjamas, and the treatment rooms have their own showers, so you can clean off both before and after the herbal scrub. The shower also stops you from smelling too much like a chicken being prepared for roasting, which was rather what I felt like during the scrub. Thai massage is all about feeling better afterwards, rather than while the masseuse is, shall we say, drawing one's attention to all the areas where one's muscles and tendons are tight and need stretching. I'm definitely not one of those iron women who can go to sleep on the mat. But I did feel extraordinarily light and flexible afterwards.
I do remember once at a smaller place, where there were curtained cubicles rather than private rooms, there was a chap in the next cubicle who was having such a relaxing time that my masseuse offered me ear-plugs to block the snores. She had them to hand, so obviously it's not that uncommon...I think he might have been having one of the oil-based massage techniques, which usually hurt a lot less.
The train into town is good and connects directly to the BTS, so if your hotel is near a BTS station, you aren't travelling at rush hour and you don't have too much luggage, it's actually not a bad way to bypass the traffic. Otherwise, take a taxi, insist on the meter being on, and take your chances with the traffic jams.
As usual it was hot and the air pollution was awful, but I'm mostly indoors when I'm there, and wear a mask anyway. This time I splurged on the time and booked myself the full three-hour Thai Traditional package at Asia Herb Association, which is a nice, rather upmarket massage chain with several branches in the centre of town. You get one hour each of herbal scrub, Thai massage and herbal ball treatment, which involves being pounced all over with bundles of hot herbs. They supply the disposable knickers and the pyjamas, and the treatment rooms have their own showers, so you can clean off both before and after the herbal scrub. The shower also stops you from smelling too much like a chicken being prepared for roasting, which was rather what I felt like during the scrub. Thai massage is all about feeling better afterwards, rather than while the masseuse is, shall we say, drawing one's attention to all the areas where one's muscles and tendons are tight and need stretching. I'm definitely not one of those iron women who can go to sleep on the mat. But I did feel extraordinarily light and flexible afterwards.
I do remember once at a smaller place, where there were curtained cubicles rather than private rooms, there was a chap in the next cubicle who was having such a relaxing time that my masseuse offered me ear-plugs to block the snores. She had them to hand, so obviously it's not that uncommon...I think he might have been having one of the oil-based massage techniques, which usually hurt a lot less.
