Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  No one at the third place spoke any English. I was not looking for a conversation, but you need to be able to communicate with your masseuse on at least a basic level. You can’t give her any instructions if she does not understand a word you say. There are a million different ways you can massage someone, and everybody has their own ideas of what is good and what is bad. A massage is not one size fits all. We had about a week to plan this trip, so obviously I did not become fluent in Thai.

  We finally found a place that looked clean and everyone spoke at least some English. Then we had to decide what kind of massage to get. They had Swedish, aromatherapy, Japanese and of course, Thai.

  I don’t like Thai massage. They bend you in unnatural ways and twist you in knots. It is like going to a chiropractor. I don’t want anyone twisting my spine. I will probably need to use it later.

  I don’t know what Japanese massage is. I thought it might be shiatsu, but no one there knew what I was talking about. Maybe they just call shiatsu Japanese. Or maybe it is something else entirely. The Thai idea of Japan might be very different from the Japanese idea of Japan.

  I just wanted a relaxing rub down, so we went with the Swedish. Liam does not know anything about massage, so he went along with whatever I told him.

  They stuck us in a dark room with two tables and told us to take a shower.

  “Why do they want us to take a shower?” Liam asked me suspiciously.

  My concerns with finding a legitimate place had him convinced that they were all disease ridden brothels.

  “Hot water loosens the muscles,” I told him. “You should always take a hot shower before a massage. Besides, it’s a hundred degrees outside. Who doesn’t want a shower?”

  Liam wanted us to take a shower together, but I knew that would be a bad idea. I went first so he could sit around and wonder what was going on. If he had gone first, he would have been sitting around naked in a towel wondering what was going on.

  Once we were all clean and dry, I had him lie face down on the table and I covered his butt with a towel. Then I lay down on my table and covered my own butt.

  “How long are we supposed to wait here?” he asked me.

  “Until she comes back,” I answered.

  “What are we waiting for?” he asked.

  “You’re supposed to be relaxing,” I said. “If you want to jump up and run around, you’re not doing it right.”

  I did not entirely know why we were waiting. The masseuse had given us plenty of time to get naked and shower.

  It was not long before she returned with another masseuse and they went to work on us. At one point, Liam let out a moan and I turned my head to look at him, just in case. We were both right next to each other on small massage tables three feet apart, so I was not expecting anything suspicious to happen, but you never know. His masseuse was working on his shoulders and must have hit the right spot.

  “Is ok, mister?” she asked him.

  “Perfect,” he answered.

  “Is ok, lady?” my masseuse asked me.

  It seemed like she was only asking because Liam’s masseuse asked him. I was not wild about being called “lady”, especially since we seemed to be the same age, but I’m sure it was just the way they addressed all of their female customers. No one there knew English well enough to understand all of the intricate differences in how we address each other in different situations.

  During the course of the massage, they would occasionally leave the room for a minute, I assume to get more oils or towels or something. I don’t really know why. They should just bring as much as they need the first time.

  After my masseuse left the room, I heard Liam make a noise and his masseuse giggled a little. I was about to look up to see what that was all about, but then I heard his masseuse also leave the room. Soon, I felt Liam’s hand on my leg. I could tell right away that it was his. He does not have soft, girly hands.

  He was rubbing my legs and generally doing a half assed job, but he did not say anything. He wanted me to think that he was my masseuse. The difference in the way his hands felt and his poor technique would have made it obvious to a catatonic monkey that he was not her.

  He rubbed my legs and gradually made his way upward. He went higher up my thigh than any masseuse is supposed to go and pretty soon he was touching me in ways that would be illegal where we come from. It was highly inappropriate, but it felt good. I did not want either masseuse to come back because it was just getting interesting.

  Liam was letting his fingers do the talking and I was enjoying it, but then my masseuse came back into the room. I quickly grabbed his hand and pushed it away. I was lying face down and could not see anybody, so I could never know what she saw, but I had to assume that she saw too much. For all my concerns about them doing anything inappropriate, it was Liam and I who were breaking the rules.

  Liam got back on his table and my masseuse went back to my massage. His masseuse soon came back into the room and everything went back to normal just as quickly as it all went lopsided. I was worried that they would take what we did the wrong way and assume that it was ok for them to do things they really should not do, but they stayed professional the entire time. We were the only ones acting like teenagers, or inappropriate foreigners in Bangkok, which only made me feel guilty.

  Liam, on the other hand, loved every minute of it. After they had us roll over onto our backs, I looked over at Liam and could see that he was happier than he should have been. His masseuse was not doing anything special, and seemed to simply ignore the bulge under his towel, but the situation was more than he could handle.

  Of course, he was also looking at me while I was lying on my back naked with just a towel over my lap and another woman rubbing my oiled up body. That would have been enough to get him excited even if we had not done anything naughty.

  His masseuse ignored his growing enthusiasm and did her job. She probably sees that kind of thing all the time. The funny part is, they never left the room after that.

  We took a cold shower after the massage. I made sure it was cold, but it was not enough to get all of the oil off. We went back to the hotel and took a real shower in our giant hotel bathroom.

  Liam wanted to get busy in the hotel shower, but we had already tried that. He had a good time, but it did nothing for me. He was having plenty of fun in Bangkok. It was my turn.

  I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my body. Just before I left the giant bathroom, I turned back toward Liam.

  “Are you coming?” I asked him and went into the bedroom.

  When he came out of the bathroom naked, I leaned back against the large picture window, but I was not worried about what anyone outside might be able to see.

  There was no way to know what people outside of the hotel could see inside. Probably nothing since we were high enough. No one walking on the street could possibly see inside our window. Only people in other buildings would ever be able to look our way. Even then, they would need binoculars to see us inside.

  An hour later, or at least a few minutes later, we eased ourselves away from the window. There were heat marks from my body and his hands against the glass.

  We went to the giant hotel bed and lay down facing each other. We kissed for what seemed like hours until Liam fell asleep.

  By the time he woke up, I had gone out and brought back a jumbo burrito, a few tacos, a box of donuts and a six pack of Pepsi.

  We were surrounded by too much we could ever possibly see and do in the very short amount of time we had in Bangkok. My natural inclination is to try and cram as much in as possible. When I go somewhere new, I want to see everything. For Liam, this was a working vacation. He had to work on the cruise ship, and these last days in Bangkok were his time to relax before going back to work in China.

  Bangkok is hot, crowded and very humid in June. The last thing Liam wanted to do was walk around in the humidity and crowds from dawn to midnight. So I brought him back his favorite meal in Bangkok. I wante
d to try a little bit of everything, but sometimes you can only do so much, especially in only two days.

  Instead of going out to dinner in some fancy restaurant or trying one of the million food carts that are scattered all over the city, we sat on the bed and ate Mexican food and donuts while watching English TV with Thai subtitles.

  It is a beautiful looking language, but I don’t know what a single word of it means.

  Chapter 27: You Don’t Mess with the Dragons

  I woke up earlier than usual on our last day in Bangkok. I knew that I would have a few hours before Liam woke up, so I decided to go for a jog in Lumphini Park. It was not exactly right around the corner, and definitely took longer to get to than just going up to the cruise ship’s sports deck, but I knew I had plenty of time.

  I put on my running clothes and covered myself with a sweater. There would be no naked jogging in Bangkok. It was early in the morning, but it was not at all cold outside. Summer in Bangkok is not the coldest place in the world, no matter what time of day it is. The sweater was so I would not look like a tourist taking the Skytrain in running clothes.

  Lumphini Park was full of old ladies doing tai chi, or at least what looked like tai chi to me. There were a few dozen mostly old ladies and a few old men lined up in rows facing a younger woman who was shouting instructions into a microphone. It was the only bit of noise in an otherwise very quiet and peaceful park.

  I thought about joining them, but I wanted to jog. I think running is a better workout. Tai chi is less strenuous and burns up fewer calories, though probably better for the joints beyond a certain age. I ended up passing by them a few times during my jog. I literally ran circles around them.

  Lumphini Park is a great place for a morning jog. Like most large city parks, it is a green oasis in the middle of skyscrapers and crowded city streets. Unlike most city parks, Lumphini has very large monitor lizards roaming around. That’s something you don’t see every day. A few people were walking around the park with their tiny bite size dogs. That seemed like a bad idea to me. Those lizards might get hungry. I don’t know if they ever attack people, but they were easily big enough to take out a Chihuahua or Shih Tzu.

  The park has two lakes and you can rent little paddle boats and paddle your way from one lake to the other. It was like a much smaller version of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis with a uniquely different smell. It seemed like it could be a nice romantic place, but my boyfriend was asleep in the hotel and I knew that we would not be coming back in what little time we had left in Bangkok. Maybe next time.

  I was back in the hotel room, showered and ready to go out again by the time Liam woke up. After a quick and less than healthy breakfast of donuts and pop, he was ready to start the day’s adventure. We were in a hurry because I had reservations at a Thai cooking school. Liam was not looking forward to it, but he knew that I was, so he went for me. He also knew that we would get to eat whatever we made.

  We took the Skytrain to Sukhumvit, which is close to Lumphini Park. It would have been far easier for me to go straight from the park to the cooking school, but then I would have gone without Liam, and without an after-jog shower.

  At the school, we put on aprons with a dozen other foreigners. The class was mostly about Thai food, but they covered some Indian as well, which was great since I don’t know anything about making my own curry. At least, I didn’t know anything before this class. Now I only know very little. It probably takes a lifetime to know everything about curry, outside of British expats in Hong Kong who mix a spice or two with ketchup and call it curry.

  The chef was a pretty good teacher and knew what he was doing. Most importantly, he was very patient. He was calmly answering all of our stupid questions when most celebrity TV chefs would be throwing plates at the wall. Liam was an especially terrible student, but the chef did not seem to mind. In Liam’s defense, he does not care about cooking and was only in that class because I wanted to go.

  We thought whatever we made would be our breakfast, donuts notwithstanding, but neither of us was satisfied with any of the strange concoctions that somehow ended up on our plates. So we looked around Sukhumvit for a late breakfast/early lunch made by people who know what they are doing.

  We found ourselves in an Arab neighborhood, which only made Liam nervous.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “They’re Arabs,” he answered as if it was a obvious question.

  “This is Thailand,” I said. “Have you felt threatened by any of the Thai people we’ve seen so far?”

  “No,” Liam said. “But none of them were Arab.”

  “They’re expats making a new life in a new country,” I told him. “Just like you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not Arab,” he told me.

  He knew that I was right, but ever since 9/11, there has been an endless stream of news stories about some Arab group or another killing someone. We never hear about Chinese people blowing up bus stops or cutting off American heads.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” I told him. “If we can eat a meal in an Arab restaurant without getting killed then you have to accept the fact that no Arabs are out to get you.”

  “What if we do get killed?” he asked.

  “If we’re blown up or kidnapped and beheaded then I’ll admit that you were right,” I said.

  The funny thing is that he is not afraid of Thai people, and their national sport is kickboxing. Their favorite thing to do is beat people up. Instead, he is afraid of more sedentary people who would rather sit around smoking hookahs. Thai people in general are probably in better shape, but they are not in the news for killing each other all that much. They seem to have a coup and overthrow their government every few years, but we never hear about brutal atrocities coming out of Thailand. So Thai people seem less threatening to Liam.

  We picked a restaurant based solely on it having a menu that we could read. Most of them were in Arabic. Some had Arabic and Thai. We could not read either language. If I did not have any time to learn any Thai before this trip, I was certainly not going to be fluent in Arabic before taking a cruise in Southeast Asia. Liam and I had no idea how to find the best restaurant and they all looked pretty much the same to us anyway.

  We were welcomed to the restaurant we arbitrarily chose by a friendly older man with a wide smile and not a single explosive vest in sight. Cutting off Liam’s American head seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind. None of the other customers in the restaurant seemed all that impressed by our presence. They live in the largest tourist city in the country and probably see foreigners all the time.

  In China, we get stared at every day. Even in Hong Kong, where you can’t walk down the street without seeing other foreigners, I still get stared at wherever I go. In Bangkok, no one ever gawked at us. It does not seem to be the Thai way.

  “Why do they all have to have beards?” Liam asked me, looking around at all the people eating their meals in peace.

  “What difference does it make?” I asked him. “Are you looking for a date?”

  “Don’t they know beards only make them look angrier?” he decided.

  “To whom?” I asked him.

  “To most of the world,” he answered. “Look at China. No one has a beard there.”

  “Chinese culture doesn’t like beards because most Chinese people can never grow one,” I told him. “It’s the same idea as hats in religion.”

  I could tell that Liam had no idea where I was going with this.

  “Early religious leaders wanted to hide their bald spots, so they decided that everyone had to wear hats,” I continued. “Bald became bad because some old guys decided it was bad. Beards are bad because someone decided they were bad.”

  “It’s not just in China,” Liam told me. “Beards are bad in our culture, too.”

  “Not always,” I said. “Look at any picture of any Civil War general. Beards were very popular once. Were those guys all terrorists?”

  We eventually decided that it might be
a good idea to look at our menus. They had some English on them, so we thought we might as well see what our options were.

  “What’s falafel?” Liam asked me, trying to read the menu.

  “Fried chickpea balls,” I answered.

  “That sounds disgusting,” he said.

  “No, it’s good,” I said. “They’re probably really good here. I think that’s what I’ll get.”

  “What’s tabbouleh?” he asked.

  “It’s like a salad,” I told him. “With diced vegetables and herbs.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” he said.

  “Oh, and bulgur,” I added. “That’s the main ingredient.”

  Liam took his face out of the menu and looked at me. “What’s bulgur?” he asked.

  “It’s like couscous,” I answered.

  “What’s couscous?” he asked.

  “You need to get out more,” I told him. “Maybe eat less Krispy Kreme.”

  “Hey, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts Krispy Kreme is better than anything here,” he said.

  I laughed and it took Liam a minute to figure out why. Then he went back to reading the menu, or at least trying to read the menu.

  “What’s hummus?” he asked me.

  “Oh, we’re getting that,” I answered. “I don’t think we can’t. It’s like tortilla chips at a Mexican restaurant. You just have to.”

  “They’re chips?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” I said. “But I bet it’s great with tortilla chips. Like guacamole.”

  Liam looked at me like I had completely failed to answer his question. And he was right.

  “It’s a very tasty, diarrhea-like substance,” I told him.

  Liam made an unpleasant face. “Are you kidding?” he asked.

  “That’s from a movie,” I said. “I don’t remember which one.”