Lost in Spas

Has anyone else noticed the plethora of spas out there these days? Forget global warming, spas may be contributing to the warming of global hearts: more and more, people need to feel kneaded.

I was right there at the birth of the spa explosion, you see – as landscape designer during the project phase of the Four Seasons Resort at Jimbaran Bay, Bali, in 1990 – when the first spa consultants arrived in the Orient, bringing gifts from the new world (Texas to be exact) of somnolent music, whispered wisdoms and nice smelly things. We, the project design team, who had only known the coarse hands of octogenarian Javanese dominatrix, slab mats and curtains pinned shut with bobby pins gently released from faded tunics, were all ears.

Quicker than you could say “spray foam” the young Australian design team was conjuring up spacious spasuites with concealed nozzles and garden courtyards. Relaxation rooms, retail corners, oxygen tents and helipads quickly followed.

Fifteen years later, there is a spa of sorts on almost every city block, next to the Javanese restoration furniture and Moroccan doo-dah shop. Indian Ocean islands are full of the children of Balinese rice-farmers pretending to be Javanese princesses from the courts of Solo. In Java, ‘Mandi Lulur’ (the immersing of large white people in bath-tubs of sacred flowers for money) is now bigger than ‘Mandi Kuching’ (the sucking of ones own or other peoples thumbs, for free).

But before I get carried away I want to describe my own personal spa growth experience – from a knead-less sunburnt youth in Australia, to Pacific Rim spokesperson for AVAGOLUV SPAS – the tension-release-solutions people.In 1973, I sailed to Java from Western Australia after a childhood as a redhead in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. I was born the day after the Waverly Council closed Bondi’s Turkish baths. I knew not steam nor anti-oxidants, just a longing for the soothing touch of someone else’s hands. My last memory of the land of my birth was that of Anthony Sharp (his real name) being dragged from the dormitory of Cranbrook school by his neurosurgeon father who was screaming: “If any man ever touched my crack I’d smash him to a pulp!” A horrible memory for a 17-year-old to carry across the Arafura Sea.

By December of that year I was in Surabaya, the massage capital of East Java, teaching English at the Bamboo Den losmen (homestay). One night, my good friend Budi Lasmono, the bastard son of an escort lady, threw me on my back and started to massage me. It was my first. He had magic hands. I was like a born-again sensualist, whimpering, as soup-vendors carts clattered outside. For the finale the little monster whipped off my sarong exposing a limp ginger acorn – to the horror of the gathered Muslim crowd. I was traumatised – from that day on I have always worn tight board shorts at massage time. [Yeah right, Ed.]

A decade passed, during which I experienced traditional Thai massage in Chiang Mai (the best), a number of less-traditional Thai massages in Bangkok (best forgotten), a series of fabulous Ayurvedic massages at the Somatheeram in Kerala, and the healing hands of a mystic masseur in Peliatan, Bali.

By Made Wijaya

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Courtesy of  lifestyleandtravel.com