The massage

The Massage

So, here is a story I have been meaning to write for some time. The most interesting massage experience. Interesting might just be code for awkward!

……………………………………

The Hue Backpackers Bar

………………………………….

I spent many weekends in Hue. It's only three hours on the tourist bus or train from Danang, my home away from home and has plenty of bars and tourists and things to see and do, without being as crazy or pushy as some of the other tourist towns.
I very rarely went out in Vietnam, heck - I very rarely go out in Australia, the crush of people, the loud obnoxious music, the expensive drinks (in Australia anyway!) but in Hue I tended to frequent a chilled bar. After all, it does get to be a treat to speak with other people who have English as a first language after months of straining to understand conversations.

It all started walking back to my hotel after an early dinner and a walk around the citadel. I was thinking that I should make an effort to be more social and just so happened to wander past a bar playing Smoke on the Water at a volume that was less than ear splitting. Decent music and decent volume are both attributes rare of Vietnam and so it swayed me to go on in. I had a great time, had a couple of drinks and chatted with an Aussie man I eventually realised was the owner. Cheap (but tasty!) drinks, a pizza that actually featured REAL CHEESE, and massive and delicious burgers… I love Vietnamese food, but had amazing Vietnamese home cooked meals every day of the week. I missed Western food sometimes so I was sold on coming back the next night for dinner and more drinks.

A month later I was back. But this time I was accompanied by 6 Uni students who were doing a physio placement with us in Vietnam. Needless to say, the influence of the students meant the next morning I was feeling somewhat more shady than usual. It was a combination of the student influence, a series of free shots from the lovely owner, watching people do the “duck egg challenge” (have a shot, eat a cooked egg containing a mostly grown duck foetus, then drown a beer) and then that boat ride we decided to take at 2am which proved that drunk people should never be allowed on unstable boats, resulted in a very stressed boat driver and almost landed us all in a river!

After a light breakfast, light because I couldn’t stomach the extremely greasy egg and postmix orange juice that was presented at my hotel, I was walking through town and saw an advert for massage with mud or coffee wraps. At that point having coffee scrubbed over my whole body seemed like a good hangover cure. Besides, at $12 for a massage and body scrub I thought it seemed important to stimulate the local economy a bit. I did waver for a while, recalling the last massage I had in Vietnam, but the staff seemed friendly and professional and spoke good English.

I figured it couldn’t be any more awkward then the massage I had in Hoi An a few years before – and the last experience wasn’t that bad after all.

………………………………………..

A Flash Back

.......................................................

After a long day of walking up Marble Mountain, and being the last day of our trip and in possession of some Vietnamese dong to use up, we thought a massage seemed like a good plan. We were taken to separate rooms and I was instructed to remove my clothes "underwear you keep". I waited a few seconds for the masseuse to leave me to my undressing. After all, it seemed to me that standard procedure is to leave the room, allow people to get undressed and lie down, then return. After what became an awkward pause I established she would remain in the room so turned around and took off my shirt and pants.

I should probably be clear that in Vietnam I am tall. Most people would be about a head short than me. So level with my chest. I am also a red head with white, white skin. Skin that glows with whiteness. Skin that is almost translucent in the bits the never see sunlight, bits that may be revealed during a massage situation.

When I turned back to lie on the bed she pointed at my bra "You take off now" the removal of which resulted in a long break while she stared at my white skin. I felt like some sort of Vietnamese specialist stripper with this woman’s face level to my chest and about 30 cm away as she stared and quietly said “Dep (beautiful), so white”. I took the initiative to end by lying face down on the plinth.

I am pretty sure that halfway through the massage when I was face down other people came in to look at my skin and admire the whiteness that no amount of skin bleaching will allow them to achieve. I am also pretty sure that the lying on my back while she massaged my scalp was more so that she could take the opportunity to gaze upon the whiten, translucentness of my chest.

……………………………………..

Back To The Current Massage

……………………………………..

We started downstairs with a relaxing foot soak and pedicure. As I relaxed back into a deep chair with my feet happily plopped in a bucket of water a few of my students wandered past. We talked and they considered returning after breakfast for their own massages.

Feet pampered and dried I follow the masseuse up the typically Vietnamese stairs (long, windy, with differently sized steps and half the width you think they should be) into a pokey little room and the lovely, English speaking lady leaves. Replaced by a much less communicative and abrupt lady who seemed the think that because her phone was on vibrate I would not notice the constant stream of text messages coming and going.

Despite the frequent texting breaks, it was actually a very good massage. I definitely relaxed and was enjoying the cool, dark air conditioned room and the muscle melting massage.

Once the massage portion was done I was stood up and was told to sit on a little stool in the corner. I should point out that I was stood and directed to the stool entirely without words, just with guiding hands pushing and pulling me to wherever she wanted me to be. The masseuse left the room and returned sometime later with a giant scrunch of Dexter style plastic wrap. This was laid over the massage plinth.
At this point I began to wonder which of my organs would be harvested first by whoever was involved in the very detailed text-a-thon that went on during the massage portion.

I was then pulled into standing, and the lady started to pull my underwear off.
"Too dirty, too dirty!" I must have looked confused at her accusations that my underwear was too dirty to lie on her suspiciously stained plastic sheets as she got a tub of coffee scrub then repeated that it was too dirty to wear underpants while pointing at the brown scrub.

“It’s fine.” I said with a smile and shrug. She looked upset. “Old anyway” I stated flippantly, and got up on the plastic wrapped plinth before she could argue.

I won that round and she started to slather the coffee scrub over my back. I relaxed into the massage bench and returned to enjoy the relaxing massage, the scrub and the smell of coffee clearing my somewhat stuffy brain. Relaxing and letting my guard down was in fact a mistake. Before I knew what was happening my underwear had been whipped off and the coffee scrub was getting far more personal than I expected, or needed. I was rolled so that my front could also be scrubbed. I honestly hadn’t thought through the fact that my nipples would be getting scrubbed with shards of coffee when I agreed to this massage situation.

Once all (absolutely all) of me was well scrubbed I was wrapped in the disturbing plastic sheeting with arms pinned to my sides. The masseuse then showed me a bottle of water on the side table, turned the air conditioning to maximum "no move now" and left the room.
Sometime later, after I had been shivering and wistfully staring at the water bottle that was forever out of reach of my wrapped up arms, she returned to unveil me.

"Shower now" as she led me by the hand into the adjoining bathroom.
Again I had assumed the protocol for cleaning the scrub off that I would shower myself, dress, then head downstairs to the exit once I was done. How wrong I was.

The shower portion of the massage was not the independent affair of my dreams.
Instead I was washed. By a determined and surprising strong woman half my height.

As she had to reach up so high to get to my back, or underarms, she put hands on my shoulders and pushed me down into a squatting position on the floor. Vietnamese people from tiny toddlers to wrinkled grandmothers have an amazing ability to squat. Whether they are cooking on a fire or waiting for a bus they will be in this amazing deep and painful looking squat – which seems to be perfectly comfortable for them…. But is incredibly painful for those of us less accustomed. She assumed my less than perfect squatting abilities and put my hands on the sink to hold myself up and give me the extra balance.

Wet, naked and covered in mud I squatted on the tiles in a sad dark bathroom and was circled by the tiny masseuse who came at me armed with a high pressure shower hose and handful of whitening soap. Thoroughly cleaned, I was towel dried and sent on my confused, but somewhat less hung over way.

Later that day I walked past the massage house, I was called over by the staff who were very proud to tell me that my friends “The boys, the cute boys” had come back and got a massage. I was assured that their massage was satisfactory with exuberant cries of “Very good massage for boys, very happy. Big smiles!”

I am assured by the boys that their massage was lovely, not at all awkward and they were in the same room, permitted to keep their underwear and didn’t engage in any “happy massage”. 

The rice harvest

I am finally getting around to looking back over all my photos and making some collections.

This one is the rice harvest.

Depending on the field quality and how much rain a particular region gets, most rice fields will yield 2 or 3 harvests per year. All planting, picking and separating is done by hand. Although some towns did have thrasher machines to more easily get the rice off the grass.  

These women seemed to enjoy the distraction of photographs. They loved looking at the photos on the screen. 

I found it incredibly hot just looking at these ladies. Jeans, jackets, scarves, gloves and usually face masks all to keep the sun from making their skin darker.     

Every harvest field seems to have a spectators area

Shaking the rice from the stalks, letting it dry in the sun - often on tarps by equally often on the side of the road, and tossing it to separate the  husks as much as possible before loading into sacks 

The rice grass left to hay before being bundled up for water buffalo 

 The next morning we found another rice field to explore

the breakfast food van

next up I should have a collection of fishing photos!
let's wait and see how damn long it takes me to get them up now!

Cooking with Mrs hanh II amazing Smoky Vietnamese eggplants

So,  I went looking for my post with the most delicious eggplant recipe ever.  Mrs Hanh made this a number of times for us,  and taught us to cook it as well.

We even got to try it ourselves one weekend and it was assessed as good...  although she was probably just being nice - hers somehow magically gets an amazing smoky flavour,  even though no smoking was involved.  Anyway,  upon looking I discovered that I never got around to sharing that recipe,  so I had to make it up for my family and fine the recipe when I get home to share!

EGGPLANTS OF POWER AND MAGIC (aka Smokey Vietnamese Eggplant Recipe)
Stuff you need to have:

Eggplants: The long skinny purple type work best. I believe this recipe will do sauce for 2-3 eggplants, but you can stretch it if needed :) The big fat round guys do work too, but you will find that the eggplants fall apart in the "squash water out" step, or you cut them up because it's too hard to fry when they  are so big!



 Mrs Hanh's Amazing eggplant of awesome

Sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 TbSp fish sauce
3 cloves garlic
one long red chilli
3 spring onions


Carefully slice eggplants as in the picture. By scoring them this way you will drastically cut down cooking time! Place eggpants with slits cut in into a saucepan of simmering water with a teaspoon of salt and simmer until soft and squishy to the touch (or the poke as the case may be)

Mix sugar, water and fish sauce together and stir well to dissolve sugar, add finely diced chilli.
Fry diced onions and garlic until soft and add to the sauce

Once eggplants are cooked place in a colander and squeeze excess water out with the back of a spoon. Fry eggplants in about 1-2cm of oil until brown and crispy.

Drain excess oil (this can be kept and used for frying spring rolls for added flavour - stay tuned for spring roll recipe!).

With small amount of oil add sauce to the cooked eggplants and cook for approximately 5 minutes, or until it smells so good you just have to eat it!

Tip onto a plate - if you have somehow kept your eggplants mostly whole (mine never are!) cut them roughly. Put chopped peanuts on top of the eggplants.