I am very fan of massages. Whenever there is the possibility of getting a commercial massage I like to go to relax at least once a week. In Thailand or in Bali, it is very common for traditional reasons that there are massage places at very low prices when you leave the tourist area. They are massage sites aimed at the local public, not foreigners. In other countries like China, I failed to understand how the massage sites worked and I missed them but there is also a tradition of massage.

However, last April, during the trip to Singapore, I had an experience that I had never lived before: it was the day they tried to give me a massage with most pleasurable experience.

We were in Orchard Road. We had spent 4 nights there and we knew each other well almost the whole city. On previous days we had seen that there were several places where massages were offered at good prices, slightly lower than the prices offered in Orchard Road. Some types of massage sites were mixed businesses, where in addition to the massages, aesthetic services were offered, such as nail painting or haircuts. But, we have always heard that the massages in Orchard Road provides are premium and of good quality.

I had already seen a business of these that was one of the few that opened late, since my idea was to go on the last day in Singapore just before dinner. The place was in an alley in Orchard and when we first passed it seemed a clean and legal place where in addition to the massages you could leave some “divine” nails. The fact is that when we went for the second time, the two girls who attended the business were busy with some clients and did not pay us any attention. It was impossible to communicate in English with them since they did not speak anything about the language of Shakespeare. We decided to wait a while and see if when he finished with one of the clients we paid more attention, but a couple of Vietnamese came to those who began to attend and on which they turned all their attention. We decided that there was no point in waiting and we went to dinner.

After dinner, we decided to walk along the avenue of the port of Singapore and I do not remember very well why, we searched online and stumbled upon Massages. Without much hesitation, we just gave the signature tantric massage a go. We innocently asked how long the massage lasted and they told us that at least an hour massage should be.

The guy who attended us asked me if it was for one or two for the massage. It was my first massage in Singapore and I didn’t know “the protocol”. I called and after 30 minutes of waiting a girl came to my place.

My place had a ground floor with a kind of waiting room with chairs and a counter where there was always a whirlpool of people coming and going and, separated by a curtain, some guests waiting room where they were playing with their mobile phones. On that first floor there were individual cabins where there was barely a stretcher in each one and whose separation wall consisted of a screen of no more than a centimeter thick.

Upon arriving at my room, the girl gave me a towel and said something like ” change ” that I understood more by the gesture than by its pronunciation. She got out and I rolled up in the towel and sat on the stretcher to wait for her to enter. When she came back she brought a tray with the massage oils and asked me to lie on my stomach. I began to smear my feet and legs while doing a tantric massage, but with very little force. She continued the same for the back and shoulders. Finally, before starting on the other side, she climbed onto the stretcher and walked on my legs, ass and back, making small leaps in strategic areas that made my joints creak. The truth is that this last manoeuvre was very good.

Then she asked me to turn around. So far everything had happened normally, as in so many precedents in other countries. At first there was nothing strange either, she began to massage the legs and then went to the arms. At that moment, she stammered some unintelligible words. I usually relax a lot in the massages and close my eyes, so I must have thought that I had not listened to her since I did not know if she was addressing me or if she was thinking aloud … I will know! If when I was receiving the massage of the Chiang Mai dams they kept talking to each other! But no, she was referring to me, there was no one else in the room and I realized that the subject was with me when I raise my voice and she understood a “my friend”.

That was me? I opened one eye while raising an eyebrow in the purest style of Carlos Sobera and she, who was there giving my arm, smiled, released one of her hands and made a gesture that I did not understand while saying words that I thought were Vietnamese. Something like ‘viuapiand?’

I didn’t know what she wanted to tell me, so I smiled at her, shook my head and closed my half-open eye again. She changed her arm and returned to the attack. “My friend, my friend, do you want it “. But what does she mean? I smiled again and said I didn’t understand her with a shrug. And then she made a gesture that I did understand. With a narrowed hand she waved it up and down. As if discovering the meaning of that gesture had given me the gift of tongues, I understood what she means: I was wondering ‘ end it with a good one? ‘.

What face I should have put so that without saying anything I stopped asking. Almost immediately she continued the massage on her arm and went to her head. Then, she said ” end, change ” and left the bed. I changed and reappeared saying a word that did know very well ” tip “. I explained with gestures that she had nothing, that the money had left her down with Núria. We went down the stairs with the music: ” you tip, tip my friend “.

When I arrived in the waiting room, Núria asked me “now?” I said yes, that I had found it was too short as I enjoyed it a lot while I was looking for some money to give it its ‘ tip ‘. But Núria looked at a message that had just arrived and we discovered that the massage had exceeded by 10 minutes. Another glaring look of those who close a negotiation, while pointing at the clock and shouting ’30 minutes ‘ and the girl did not take half a second to turn around and return to work knowing that there was nothing to scratch there.

Clare Louise