My husband, (HB) sent me a text message. “Are you okay? I saw some charges at the Mercy Hospital.” I responded, “I am very okay, that charge was for a massage.” I was on my way to visit my girl friend who lives out of state. When I requested her to make an appointment for a spa massage, she told me that we were going to get massages from the hospital instead. I was very curious and could not imagine myself getting aromatherapy massage at a hospital. This may prove really interesting.

I have a regular masseuse. She is a Vietnamese lady named Lilli. You need to hear her talk and I can only share it phonetically: Hullo, Munah, I miss you! You gone too long. “Lillli missed you, okay, now I give you mussai. Lilli tek ker you. Bee zee work, bee zee travel? Good you come, Lilli tek ker. Ok, everything ok, everything pretty, husband very lucky!” Then she gives me a massage and I can never predict if she would remember only one arm or both but she makes it up with the wonderful hot stones and a free mini-facial, always whispering, “Ssssssh….owner very cheap but I tek care, okay, no talk!” She would wink and goes into a whispered diatribe of what seemed to me is a foreign language although at the end, she would punctuate it with “Yeh, Lilli come work, Lillie tek care everything, everything ok, not ok!”

I am a firm believer in pampering myself. My eldest sister told me that pampering oneself is justified as our bodies are the machines that do the work; machines need grease to work and maintenance to continue working. I have adopted that as my personal philosophy. Here are some of my memorable massage experiences.

MANILA: The very first time HB and I visited Manila together, we were told that the hotel offers in-room massages so we promptly requested the service. Two young Filipina girls came. They were giggly and chatty. As they were giving us massages, they told me about their lives; they were both breadwinners in their families, helping to educate their siblings, keeping their profession from their boyfriends. To be a masseuse is stigmatized due to the sex industry offering massages as pretext. I told them that they are making an honorable living so long as they do not cross the line to providing sex-related services to their clients. At this, they were quite adamant that they do not; they are required to call their supervisor the moment they arrive in the guests’ room and the supervisor would call them after half an hour to make sure they were okay. HB was amused. He told me that he did not enjoy the massage because I and the two girls were very noisy. The next time we asked for massages, he decided to go to the massage center himself. Later on, he told me, “Those girls are hilarious. They told me, “Sir, you should lose some weight!” At another resort, I ended up teaching the “manangs” how to give massages. HB said that was disorienting. One manang was massaging his foot, the other his head. By the time we arrived in the Southern Philippines, I have stopped socializing with the masseuse and just enjoyed the treat.

THAILAND: The year we were in Bangkok and we asked for another in-room masseuse. This tiny Thai girl walked in with a basket of oils. I asked repeatedly if she was strong enough to do this; she was below five foot tall and my husband is tall and bulky at 6 feet. At some point, she was knelt behind him; he was seated and she hooked her arms from under his armpits. She pulled his arms with all her strength backwards. The force of it pulled HB flat on his back, collapsing with her underneath He looked like a bottle of large waffle syrup collapsing on a pancake. He was so relaxed but the force jilted him into alertness and when she crawled out from under him, she collapsed into peals of laughter, I was laughing so hard by the look of this big white guy collapsing with this tiny little girl flattened out under him.

CALIFORNIA: HB and I had a mud bath in Calistoga, California. I was squeamish about it. It looked like a quick sand bath and I felt l ike being buried alive in mud. As we lay in the warm mud, I whined about how gross it felt, looked, and smelled. HB reminded me that I grew up in the Philippines, surrounded by farms. That was the whole reason I was acting the way I did. I am familiar with the smell of water buffalo dung and this tub of mud reminded me of that sweet pungent smell. Alas, it made our skin glow and smooth like a baby’s bottom. We were rinsed with water from a geyser, enveloped in a thermal blanket, and massaged and soothed into a state of nirvana. Later on, I learned that the “mud” was made of mulch and other organic matter from plants. But I will let you in on something, from a girl raised around farms: water buffaloes also eat leaves and other organic plant matter.

CHINA: The masseuse in Guelin had me on a massage table and proceeded to give me a relaxing massage without having touched my skin. She did the whole massage using a dry towel. It was surprisingly relaxing but I was not sure why but I had a huge headache afterwards and could not function for the rest of the night. In Sou Zhou, I was afraid the masseuse was about to molest me. She was very up close and personal and I was very tensed with my own thoughts of having to punch her on the face if she moved that hand one notch more!

SLOVENIA: The masseuse was a muscular woman in her thirties. She showed me the way to stand up properly and she proceeded to give me a lecture on why people should maintain good posture and good diet. She said that she needed fifteen minutes in between before she would massage my HB. She said, “I need to restore my energy. There is an energy that I draw and without that, I would give him negative charges.” Later on, I told HB about this and he said, “You bought that bs? Yes, she needed to store her energy by taking a smoke break so she reeked of cigarettes during my massage.”

TANZANIA: The masseuse brought her table to our tent to give us our massage that can be described only as a communion with nature, punctuated by braying of zebras and the sounds of the wind as it rustled the leaves of the drying savannah. Afterwards as I took a dreamless afternoon siesta, I was woken by a gentle beating of drums and our butler announcing that tea is being served in our verandah. I think I died and woke up as a princess that afternoon.

PERU: While we were at Machu Piccu, our interest was piqued by a massage center located in the center of Aguas Calientes, where we stayed during our visit. The massage center was located above an internet café. The massage areas were enclosed much like the beds in a hospital emergency room. For $10, we were just glad to have a massage after a whole day of climbing and walking. At some point, my masseuse’s hand left the skin of my back. I peered from barely opened eyes, enough to see what was going on. I saw my young Peruvian masseuse with her hands cupped together, her eyes closed and her mouth moving as in a trance. She was saying things that did not sound Spanish to me. Then she whispered into her cupped hands, bowed, and continued with my massage. I did not levitate or felt like I was entering heaven but I am sure I left Peru momentarily to hover over the massage table and came badk with the full blessing of the Pacha Mama.

ECUADOR: Then there was Galapagos. During our family cruise a couple of years ago, the cruise ship offered a chance to have a full body massage during a visit into one of the islands. They took me by zodiac into the middle of the ocean, surrounded by the beauty that Darwin fell in love with. They had anchored a massage station right in the middle of that vast ocean for me. Seemed like I was the only one brave enough to be taken out to sea for a massage. All around me, I could hear and see ocean waves lapped against majestic rocks. As I was positioned on the massage bed, I realized that the station had a glass bottom and I could see the sea lions underneath. One of them was “checking me out.” I would like to say that this experience was memorable but only to the extent that I was out there in the middle of the cold Pacific Ocean. The massage was mediocre at best. The masseuse was more interested in telling me about her saving money to have plastic surgery for breast implants. But for the fact that I could not have swum back to the boat, I would have hit her on the head and leave. At the end of the massage, the playful young pup came on board and played with the masseuse. She told me that the pup is her friend and it would always come and visit when it sees the floating station. The sea lion pup reminded me of my cat I left at home and it melted my heart! For that alone, I think it was alright to have paid a princely sum.

Meanwhile, at the Mercy Hospital, I was taken to a room where a massage bed sat in the middle. There are battery operated candles that lent it a nice glow and recessed lights on the ceiling added a warmth to the room. Posters on the wall are circa 1960’s. The floor looks like a hospital floor. The whole room looked like a 24/7 emergency treatment room, only I was there not for a flu shot but for a massage. I was in for a wonderful surprise. I did not smell vanilla or jasmine and in fact there was none of those smells at all but the oil she used smelled of fresh grapefruit and pretty soon, as she methodically massaged every sore part of my body, I began to drift off to a place where it is light and warm and wonderful and peaceful.

Afterwards, I told my therapist, “If I were dying, I would not ask for morphine. I would ask for your massage to help me cross over.” She replied, “I have done it once. I did it for my best friend. She was passing away and I massaged her while her daughter held her hand.” The masseuse eyes welled up. She continued, “Today is her birthday. How nice that you made me remember her.”