Lusting after a Lazy-boy

I'm in desperate need of a Lazy-Boy chair, or a piece of furniture that isn't made of bamboo. On a guided walk last week in a national park we were told that bamboo is a magical building material used to make many practical things. Comfortable furniture is not one of those 'practical things' - and as a result, the minor pain in my lower back that I was experiencing before I left home has turned into something altogether more sinister. Yes I know I sound like a geriatric drama queen.

But don't feel too sorry for me folks, because I can roll from my beachside lounger (yes, that's right, made of bamboo) right onto a massage mat. You can't walk two seconds anywhere in Thailand without coming across a massage house. So the other afternoon to mix things up a bit, I had a Thai massage on the beach. It's sort of creepy, but on the beaches in Phuket the poor massage ladies massage sweaty old men who are clad in nothing but their speedoes. I'm sorry, but for $8 an hour, that's unfair working conditions.

For those of you who've never had a Thai massage, its quite different than the Swedish variety that's popular in Canada. Not a remotely relaxing experience either, though after the pain fades, you do feel better. The best way I've heard it explained is 'assisted yoga' - you lay on a mat on the floor and the masseuse contorts you into a human pretzel, while contorting herself into one simultaneously. They tend to use their own body weight to knead your muscles and create tension, so when you least expect it they might crawl up on your back and start digging into your shoulder with their elbow. The first time I had a Thai massage was after a three day hike in northeast Thailand - I was pathetically hobbling around, and my calf muscles were staging a most vigorous protest at being asked to do anything at all. In the ensuing weeks I'd sort of blocked the experience out of my mind, so I was initially traumatized as she began to manipulate me the other day. She started with a lot of aggressive massaging of my hamstrings, which are perpetually tight. But covering said hamstrings is a whack of cellulite, and it doesn't really take kindly to being prodded and twisted. It enjoys its privacy and likes to lay in a dormant state - occasionally ridiculed by its ower, but otherwise it just minds it's own business. So being the star attraction for the first 20 minutes of the massage was understandably unsettling for my cellulite. And that my friends, is the invisible line in the sand that my brother would consider to be too much information - and I just crossed it.

And the back? I would pay gobs of money for an hour in a Lazy-Boy, sad though that is.