“We went to Wat Pho,” I answered.
That seemed obvious to me since we were standing directly outside of one of the country’s most visited landmarks, but you never know.
“Oh, so sorry,” he said. “Wat Pho close today.”
This latest scammer pronounced Wat Pho differently than I was pronouncing it. His English was pretty bad, especially for someone who tries to scam foreign tourists, but I had to assume that he knew Thai.
“It’s closed?” Liam asked him. “Are you sure?”
“Believe me,” he answered. “Close today. I promise.”
He was using a lot of the same words the other scammers had used. They probably all follow the same script. Someone decided what works best to trick the foreigners and that is what they all do.
“Your promise isn’t worth shit,” Liam told him.
I could tell that Liam was going to get upset if this conversation continued. I take a more relaxed view about it all. It is their country and I don’t know how hard it is to make an honest living there. I can’t really condemn the con artists since I don’t know anything about their lives. It does not make your country look very good if people are allowed to openly rip off tourists so much, but plenty of people keep coming back for more, so maybe Thai officials are not too worried about it.
“We’re not stupid enough to believe you,” I calmly told the scammer. “Have a nice day.”
I walked away, giving Liam no choice but to join me.
“I can see approaching people who are heading toward the temple,” I said to Liam. “But we’re obviously walking away from it. That guy’s not doing it right.”
“That guy’s an asshole,” Liam said. “They all are.”
We were originally going to cross the river and go to another temple, but I could see that Liam was losing whatever patience he had left. I decided it might as well be lunch time.
We went back to Siam, which looked a lot different in the daytime, and had lunch at the Hard Rock Café.
“We should be eating more exotic food,” I said to Liam. “We’re in Thailand and we’re eating American food.”
“American food is exotic to us,” he said.
He had a point. If we lived in the United States, it would be crazy to eat the same food we could get any time. Since we live in China, things like tacos and the Hard Rock Café are rare for us. There is supposedly a Hard Rock Café in Hong Kong, but I have never been there.
After lunch, we walked around Siam Square. The entire area is nothing but shopping, but Liam never complained. He was just happy that there were not any scammers around. It would be ridiculous if they tried to tell people the shopping was closed.
We almost went to Madame Tussauds, but when we saw that foreigners pay three times as much as locals, we decided against it. We were not all that interested in wax statues of the King of Thailand and Lady Gaga anyway. We only looked because we knew it had to be air conditioned inside. A wax museum without air conditioning would be a bad idea in a place like Thailand in the middle of summer.
Liam was even happier when we accidentally discovered a Krispy Kreme. That is not exotic Thai food either, but we both love Krispy Kreme and there are none anywhere near either of us. I have been told several times that they are in Hong Kong, but whatever stores used to be there closed years ago. The nearest Krispy Kreme to us is in the Philippines, and we have never been there.
Liam wanted to buy two boxes. I thought that might not be a great idea. I know he can eat two boxes even without me, but we still had a lot of Bangkok to explore and carrying around two boxes of donuts is impractical.
“So let’s take these back to the hotel and then go out again,” he suggested.
That kind of seemed like a waste of time, and a lot of effort for donuts. I wanted some just as much as he did, but I thought it would be best to get a few to eat immediately and then come back for more later.
As soon as he saw the “hot now” sign, he knew that he was going to get more than just a few. The only options at that point were carrying the boxes around all day until he ate them all one by one or going back to the hotel.
By the time we got back to the hotel, I had already eaten a few donuts and really did not need any more in my stomach. Liam was just getting started.
“I can just stay here all day,” he said.
He got an overpriced pop out of the hotel mini bar and sat down in front of the TV with his boxes of donuts.
“You’re an easy man to please,” I told him.
Then I went into the bathroom. “I’m taking my clothes off,” I called out to him. There was no response. “I’m completely naked.” Nothing.
I turned on the shower. “I’m getting naked, hot and wet.” All I could hear was the water in the shower. “He really likes those donuts,” I said to myself.
The hotel bathroom was enormous. You could house an entire Chinese family in there. It had a large bathtub big enough for two, and the separate shower was about the same size as the cruise ship’s entire bathroom.
After about a minute in the shower, I noticed Liam come into the room. I watched him take off all his clothes and get in the shower with me. This was the first time we had a shower big enough for two in a very long time and we were going to use it for all it was worth.
While we were kissing as though we had not lived together in ages, I could feel how happy he was to see me. In my mind, this was going to be some epic shower scene that lasted until we could no longer stand upright. This was going to be a shower we would never forget.
Except that it did not work out that way. As quickly as he could eat a box of donuts, he was exhausted. For such a young man, his lack of stamina is rather surprising, unless you consider the fact that he likes to eat donuts by the dozen. He rinsed himself off, got out of the shower and grabbed a towel on the way to the bedroom.
“That didn’t exactly go the way I thought it would,” I called out to him.
“What?” he replied from the bedroom.
I still wanted to go to the big temple across the river from the Grand Palace. Now that Liam was full of donuts and empty of vital fluids, he was ready to do pretty much anything I wanted to do.
We took a small boat from the big river to some of the smaller rivers. We went deep into Bangkok and saw some of the floating markets and a lot of people living their lives on the water. People were shopping, making food, building houses and even doing their laundry, all on boats. A lot of people wanted us to buy overpriced trinkets. It was just like Bangkok on land, but most of them were simply going about their lives. They were just doing it all on boats.
We never bought anything. Several people in boats came up to our boat and tried to sell us food, but we were not at all hungry after all of those donuts. I’m not sure if I could be hungry enough to eat food that was made, prepared, sold and bought all on a tiny boat.
After wandering around the smaller rivers, our boat driver took us Wat Arun. The temple was actually an easy boat ride from our hotel, but we wanted to take the long way and see the floating markets.
Unlike all the other temples we went to, Wat Arun is not famous for any particular Buddha statue, although it has a few. It is famous for several large spires, one of which is so big that you can climb up it and get a pretty impressive view across the river. You are supposed to go there at dawn when the light hits the spire just right, which is why they call it the Temple of Dawn.
Our hotel was pretty close, so getting there by dawn would not have been impossible, but I knew I was never going to do that, and there was no way Liam was ever going to wake up that early to look at a temple.
Like every other temple, we had to pay to get in while admission was free to locals.
“Why do we have to pay and they don’t?” Liam asked me.
“It’s their country,” I answered. “They live here.”
“Imagine if any place in the United States did that,” he said. “Americans free, foreigners have to pay. There would be hell to
pay.”
“These are their temples,” I told him. “Their most sacred places. These buildings that mean nothing to you mean everything to them.”
“It’s still discrimination,” he said. “Everyone should pay the same price.”
“Are student and senior discounts discrimination?” I asked. “We do that all the time at home.”
“That’s different,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“Is it dinner time yet?” he asked, clumsily changing the subject.
He should have pointed out that student and senior discounts are not based on race or ethnicity.
“You just ate lunch and a hundred donuts,” I answered.
“I could go for a burrito,” Liam said.
“No, we’re not going there again,” I told him. “We’re having something different for dinner.”
“Like what?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But we’re surrounded by all kinds of food. We’re not having Mexican every day.”
“I like Mexican food,” he said. “And so do you.”
He made a persuasive argument. I do like Mexican food.
“And it’s right next to Krispy Kreme,” he added.
He had a good point. It was hard to argue against Mexican food and Krispy Kreme, but Bangkok has food from all over the world and I wanted to try as much variety as I possibly could, and I only had two days in which to do it. Eating the same thing every day was definitely not on the menu.
But we absolutely went back to Krispy Kreme. I’m not crazy.
Chapter 26: Happy Endings
On our second night in Bangkok, we got massages. I knew this could be a great experience. Thailand is known around the world for great massages. I also knew that this could be very dangerous. Thailand is also known around the world for stress relief that has nothing to do with sore muscles.
I get foot massages in Hong Kong at least twice a month, sometimes three times. They are more than a foot massage, they also do my legs, but they call it a foot massage. The main part for me is the leg massage, and my friend Amy is the one doing the actual rubbing. She knows what I like and she knows to concentrate on my legs more than my feet. Sometimes she does my shoulders and I have had a few all over body massages, but it is mostly my feet and legs. After dancing all day in large heavy costumes, my legs need a good rub down.
Whenever I have talked to Liam right after a massage, I always tell him how great it was. Whenever he complains about being sore or tense, I tell him to get a massage.
Liam is a guy. So going to spas is out of the question. Real men don’t get facials, or so he says. Have you ever seen a straight man at a hair salon? I’m sure some do somewhere in the world, but not where I’m from. Minnesota men wash their hair with rocks and comb it with wagon wheels. Get out the way for old Dan Tucker. Maybe not that extreme, but the men where I come from are never girly about hair maintenance. It took me a while to convince Liam that getting a massage will in no way emasculate him, and that working out those sore muscles might even feel good.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any places to get a massage where he lives in China. I have a regular place in Hong Kong, but I can’t recommend any place in mainland China. I can’t even recommend a place in the rest of Hong Kong. The people Liam hangs out with are not the spa treatment types, so they were no help. When I finally convinced Liam to go get a massage, he was on his own.
When he came back from his first Chinese massage, maybe even his first massage ever, he asked me an array of questions. He wanted to know what I wear when I’m getting a Hong Kong massage, what exactly they do to me and how much it all costs. I did not really want to tell him how much it costs since I really don’t want him to know how much money I spend pampering myself. It is not a great deal of money, but it is a luxury. My legs work hard for a living and they deserve a good massage, but I can live without it.
His Chinese massage was more expensive, which surprised me since everything is cheaper in Mainland China than it is in Hong Kong. Then again, I get my feet and legs done and he got a full body massage. It should cost more, but I was still surprised by how much more. You also have to consider that foreigners usually pay a higher price for everything. I don’t where I go, but that might only be because I am a regular customer and they recognize me there. Liam was a stranger in a strange massage land.
When I get a Hong Kong leg massage, I either take off my pants or just lift my skirt a little. I’m not at all naked, and fully clothed from the waist up. When Amy does my shoulders, I get topless, but they have towels for modesty. Liam was surprised that they wanted him to get totally naked, but I told him that naked is normal for a full body massage. The towel covers your butt and it is a lot easier for them to oil you up. You don’t want clothes on when you are getting an oil massage. That’s not good for anybody.
He wanted to know how they rub the muscles and what they do in Hong Kong, so I told him. It probably takes a long time to learn how to be a really good masseuse, but the basic concept is pretty simple. Amy has been doing it for years, so she might be better at it than most people.
Liam was comparing his massage experience to mine, but I pointed out that things in Hong Kong and China are sometimes very different. The levels of customer service and attention to detail are not comparable. You would think they are the same country, but they are really not. In some ways, they might as well be different cultures. Liam was also a first time customer at a place he had never been to before, and I go to my place all the time. Everybody there knows me and I know most of their names. Amy and I are friends outside of her job and I have seen some of the other girls who work with her in a social setting. Obviously I am going to get better treatment at my massage place than some random dude off the street is going to get in random China.
Liam still seemed upset and eventually told me that the girl giving him his Chinese massage also gave him a handjob. He said it happened before he knew what was happening. When she was rubbing his legs while he was on his stomach, her hands sometimes went a little higher than he expected, but he thought it was just an accident. With the towel on you can’t really tell where the legs end and the butt begins. When he was on his back she had the same accident, but it quickly went from accidentally brushing against his scrotum to full on grabbing his penis. He says he stopped her before it went too far, but I thought it already went too far.
I was upset when he told me about this, but the more I thought about it, the more I believed his side of the story. First of all, he does not have a thing for Chinese girls. Plenty of foreign men here do. Maybe that is why some of them come here. But Liam does not. He thinks all Chinese prostitutes have AIDS. Some of them must, but the way the Chinese government handles things, we will never know any real statistics.
Liam is a breast man and hates implants. He says they feel like rocks, even though he has never actually felt anyone with implants. I am bigger than most natural Chinese girls, so in Liam’s mind, going from my breasts to Chinese breasts would be a step down. His Chinese is terrible. That probably makes absolutely no difference with prostitutes, but Liam likes to talk during sex and he would hate knowing that the girl he is talking to does not understand a single word he is saying. He is a man, so he thinks whatever he is talking about is important.
Secondly, he told me about it. He did not have to. I would have never found out otherwise. I am not friends with his friends in China, and he has let go of his Hong Kong friendships. He could tell all of his band mates in China and none of them would ever tell me. They would probably all say, “Bros before hoes”, high five each other and scratch their crotches. If he was cheating on me, there is no way he would tell me about this incident. It would only make me wonder what else was going on.
I was still upset for a while that some Chinese whore touched my boyfriend’s goods, but I suppose it could have been worse. He felt incredibly guilty about it and said that he went home and took a long shower. He is too paranoid ab
out getting diseases from a handjob to cheat on me.
At least that explained why it was so expensive. A legitimate massage in China probably costs a lot less.
That was about six months before the big cruise. The next time Liam got a massage was when we went to Bali. I was right there with him the entire time, so there was no way anything untoward was going to happen. Indonesia is a rather conservative country and most of the people in Bali seem to be serious Hindus, so I would doubt the women who gave us our massages would have ever considered doing anything like that even if Liam begged them with dollars bills in his mouth.
Bangkok is different. There are plenty of conservative people. It is not all one big drug and hooker party like it is in every movie set in Bangkok, but there seem to be more than a few women willing to do just about anything for money. Having been to Amsterdam, I was more than happy to look beyond the ignorant stereotype of Bangkok and find out what the city had to offer. People who have never been to Amsterdam seem to have a limited view of that place as well.
An illicit massage in Indonesia is probably hard to find, especially if you have no idea where to look. In Bangkok, massage parlors are all over the place. They are like 7-11 or KFC. I don’t know if there is any guaranteed way to spot which are completely legitimate, but with so many all over the city, there has to be a lot of wonky stuff going on behind closed doors.
Knowing all of this, we walked the streets of Silom looking for some telltale sign that one place was better than another. It was not easy. They all looked the same to me.
The first place we walked into said that Liam’s massage would cost twice as much as mine. When we asked why, they could not provide an answer, and appeared baffled that we would even ask. So we left. There could be other reasons for this, but since Liam was so concerned with price discrimination in Thailand, I figured we might as well leave.
The second place did not have any rooms big enough for two people. We would have to be in separate rooms. That was not going to happen, so we left. Every place did foot massages in one big room with everybody, but the full body massages were in private rooms. That made perfect sense to me. I would not be at all relaxed in a room with a dozen other customers. I’m all for privacy, but not too much privacy for my boyfriend.
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