When I got up this morning I didn’t think before 1pm I would be being showered by a Sri Lankan lady with my 16 year old daughter stood watching….
Strange how days turn out; and turns out today – well, it’s been a lot.
It started at 5.30am with a glorious sunrise. We have moved into the mountains of Sri Lanka in a gorgeous, slightly more westernised village called Ella. Our hotel has a view to die for and it was worth getting up before dawn for.
I then hiked up a small mountain, got some glorious shots of a stunning valley and was back before 9am to take Libby to breakfast….
We had already agreed today we wanted to have a massage, we had one a few days ago in Sigriya. The prices are so much more desirable than the UK and our first massage was incredible.
So we headed out to see what Ella offered.
It’s custom to have a massage together, so we agreed to have a two hour massage including a treatment for migraines with some hot oil…
This was to be Libby’s second massage ever.
It was a lot.
The ladies were awesome, very little English but hands that could knead dough all day. One was approximately four foot tall and the other quite partial to holding my hand….
The massage started with removal of all clothes. Which is a lot for a 16 year old, less so for my weathered and battered body.
Then the massage started….
I have to confess the relaxation was mildly distracted as my teen snorted with giggles every time I was asked to roll over on the bed and a body part flopped over. Not helped that her masseuse (the tiny one) fell into fits of chuckles as my child did, so it was like having a massage with two hyenas in the room.
We were massaged throughly…. Genuinely nothing was left untouched, my daughter just about got through it without dying of laughter at every roll.
Then we moved to the next room.
And by room – forget all you know about a massage in the Western world: I’m talking someone’s house with wooden massage tables in each room and what could be mistaken for instruments of fortune lain on each side.
Before the next room I asked to use the bathroom.
Which I did, with the company of two frogs who bounced around the lavatory with glee as I sat, fear struck on the toilet. Frogs have never been my thing.
Then we had a glorious migraine treatment with oil dripping into every hair particle and then back upstairs, yup, my lady held my hand the whole way and back into massage room one.
At this point I had no idea what to expect to come next, in the massage so far, I’d seen a lot of my daughter, she had seen more of me. My hand had been held more than in my last relationship, frogs had threatened my toileting, we had been blown by a small steam machine, we were covered in so much oil we could pass as a deep fat fryer and my hair was tied up fiercely by my hand holder in a dodgy bun on top of my swede.
What came next was clay….
All over.
Head to toe.
Again the child guffawed through the process as my new hand holding friend battered my belly which moved like jelly under her touch.
The whole time I was thinking….
How am I getting this off me!
The ladies bowed and left the room…
“Five minutes”
We sat there looking like a scene from Towie, buffed and bronzed with some streaky lines.
Five minutes passed, and the ladies appeared, my hand was gripped again – to be honest, I think at this point I may have even initiated it as I fell under a Stockholm syndrome like trance.
And off we went, out the door, through the lobby, through the kitchen were some guy was making a brew, up the stairs and into an open shower room.
To where the story began….
At 48, I was showered and hair washed by a Sri Lankan lady as if I was a toddler whilst my daughter stood to the side watching slowly collapsing with laughter.
It wasn’t a quick one either…
I’ve not been this clean since my ma had me in the sink with Pears Soap.
The curious thing was, as we approached the two hour mark of this “massage” it didn’t even feel that surreal any more.
I left the shower whilst another grown woman washed my 16 year old head to toe, the same 16 year old who had lost her shit at me on the changing room a couple of weeks ago for even suggesting I joined her in the room….
And I was dried, by the shorter one, who asked me to sit down so she could dry my back and hair….
Then was allowed to dress my self….
Whilst Libby was dried and her hair brushed my two women that were not me.
It’s been one heck of a morning!
Never to be spoken of again!