Thai massage. Thai torture?

The website doesn't do it justice for just how luxurious this place is. I'm choosing to say posh luxury rather than romantic as the former makes me feel like I'm having a wonderfully pampered time, the latter makes me feel like I should be here on honeymoon.

Anyway, if you've been to super luxurious hotels in tropical places then you'll know how wonderful they are (beautiful infinity pool, indoor and outdoor shower in our amazing private bungalow, wonderful spa etc) and if you haven't then the last thing you need is for me to go on about how lovely it is. I'd hate me now if I were you.

We arrived on the speedboat and the white sandy beach has a private jetty which, rather than being a permanent structure, is made of floating plastic cubes all joined together. Which means that it bobs up and down with the sea. You have to see this thing to believe it, it's hilarious to walk along because as soon as a wave comes you undulate with it (it's perfectly safe but doesn't feel at all stable). Anyway, all we could think of was how glad we were that we didn't have to try and wheel our bags down it because we're clumsy cows and of course would have dropped all our stuff off the side. But the Japanese visitors who were walking down it in front of us were terrified and clinging on to each other practically in tears. Really dramatically, like their life was flashing before their eyes. Now here's the deal, we found this quite funny. Only because the worst thing that would happen is that they'd fall off the side into 2 foot of perfectly clear green seawater and just walk the last bit up to the beach. Granted, slightly humiliated, but not really a near-death experience. Anyway. Not even sure that's a story but wanted to keep you posted on the experiences so far, and a plastic floating jetty is certainly not an experience I've had before.

The other experience I'd like to share with you is the thai massage I had yesterday. I had one on Koh Lanta and it was quite nice, a bit relaxing but also a bit uncomfortable at times. But not sure she was a super qualified masseuse from the best massage school in Bangkok, more that she's kind of picked it up as she's gone along in life. Probabaly based on her experience of stroking dogs or something.

Anyway. The spa here is so stupidly luxurious that you know the staff are trained by the gods themselves. So I knew that this Thai massage would be the real deal.

So it transpires that a Thai massage basically consists of equal combinations of niceness and torture. It's supposed to be 'assisted yoga' where they warm your muscles then gently stretch them into yoga-like positions for you. I LOVED the sound of this; in my head all the bendy benefits of yoga without any of the work! Here's how it works - the masseuse spends the majority of the time ON the massage table with you, using her elbows and feet and other pointy bits that I couldn't see what they were but boy she was strong for a little chick, to deeply work every single muscle in you body that you know about along with those that you didn't realise you had. They do that thing that chiropractors do where they use all of their body weight to click out every vertebrae so it sounds as if it's doing something really bad to you but where in fact the sound of your back cracking freaks you out more than the actual feeling. Some of the positions she bent me into may have qualified me for a place in Cirque du Soleil and I'm sure that my ex-boyfriends may lament that I wasn't bendier earlier in life, but after 90 mins of being pinched and stretched and hit with rocks (okay, made that last bit up) I very timidly cancelled my booked massage for tomorrow and instead changed it for an oil-based aromatherapy massage. Which if done Thai style is probably done with barbed wire and bleach or something.

I should say at this point that I felt bloody wonderful after it was done, all sort of floaty and calm. But also still too scared to do it again tomorrow!

(here's a pic of the jetty of hilarity. Well, it was when I originally wrote that. But subsequently found out that a girl the previous day DID fall off and cracked her head on a rock and knocked herself unconscious. The jetty of hilarity is no longer funny).