The other day I cashed in the salon gift certificate Alaric gave me for Christmas. We’ve been there before to get our hair cut. It’s a good place for farang: clean and bright, mid-priced, pricier than a regular Thai salon, but still not out-of-this-world pricey. For 900 baht, I got a full mani-pedi. That’s about $30CAD. I mean, full! Massage up, rub up, cream up, soak up, and wrap up. Then some hardcore sloughing with a pumice paddle, then some soft rubbing again, before getting the nails painted. Oh, and the chick used – gasp! – cuticle scissors! Remember when there was a big kerfuffle in the U.S. about salons using dirty cuticle scissors, and causing their patrons to develop infections? Well, I suppose the dirt all around us here is way dirtier than the scissors… Or maybe the scissors in the super cheap salons will infect you?

Anyhoo, sitting next to me was another farang, who made me do a double-take. I thought it was a man in drag, but it turned out to be a butch woman. Tall, white but too tanned, long blond hair, big hands and feet, and big boobs which may or may not be real. Her face was angular, her chin and jaw were strong; her full, possibly collagen-filled, mouth was set “like ten rat trap”. And, she was having a French mani-pedi done! Hello? Drag, much? But I couldn’t see an Adam’s apple. So I think it was a woman. At least that’s what I gleaned, eavesdropping on her conversation with the masseuse. That’s right: she had a lady giving a head and neck massage, another lady tending to her hands, and a third tending to her feet. But I soon discovered that’s the norm there, because a second girl joined the one who had started washing and creaming my hands (up to the elbows!) and feet (up to the knees!)

The manly woman chatted along pleasantly but with a serious facial expression. The masseuse said something I didn’t hear, but it must have been something about how strong she was, because she replied that she lifts weights and runs a lot. She also is married, has two kids, her husband works here, they have been in Thailand for a three and a half years, and she is a certified massage therapist, in two types of massage, I forget what they are. She’s originally from Chicago, Illinois, and in two weeks, she’s heading back to the US to get certified in yet another type of massage. Oh, and her name is Carla. Amazing what you can learn when your own manicurist speaks no English, eh?

Eventually, Carla the massage therapist from Chicago succumbed to her head and neck massage, closed her eyes, and stopped talking. As she was silent, you could hear the TV going: some soap opera, set in Imperial China. I couldn’t hear very clearly, so I don’t know if it was in Thai or Mandarin. But all the staff obviously follows the show, because my girls kept glancing up in a casual-but-surreptitious way, in the direction of the TV. And after one glanced up, she would mutter something quietly in Thai to the other.

As you can imagine, I left a very happy customer, and not only because my hands and feet were now soft and lovely.

(By the by, some names and details have been changed, to protect unsuspecting innocents from being outed on some farang‘s blog.)