Blind Massage: Awesome or God-Awful?

By far, one the best experiences I have had here in Ho Chi Minh City was a massage.  According to Phil, however, it was “god-awful”. 

Phil had already received a couple of massages from some of the other random “spas” around that were “decent”. I received a foot massage at one of them, and it was not spectacular, but at a cost of a few dollars I wasn’t going to complain.  In fact, it felt just like being at any California nail salon as they sat us in pedicure-style stations and proceeded to chat continuously in Vietnamese with occasional glances and subsequent giggles our direction. In an attempt to try something different and out of our comfort zone, we used a Lonely Planet recommended establishment that supposedly provided no-frills massages and was located just around the corner from our hostel at The Institute for the Blind. At less than $2.50 for 60 minutes, we had to try it. Have you ever received a massage from a blind person? I mean, it kind of sounds like the start of a joke, right?

After paying for our massages and receiving braille-encoded tickets, we are directed to the “gentlemen” and “ladies” areas. I am then pushed by a blind woman, who turns out to be my masseuse, down a hallway and into a room with three curtained areas, each containing a massage table and hard wooden chair. She directs me to one of the empty stalls and says, “Get undressed.” While she stands there waiting, I quickly disrobe, throw my clothes onto a stand, and hop onto the table, face planting into an old, tired looking patchwork pillow. How sanitary? I don’t want to know. My blind masseuse then tucks a worn, slightly greying towel into my underwear and proceeds to slap tiger balm oil onto my back with rapid-fire determination. Please don’t hit me in the head, I think. She doesn’t. She excuses herself for a moment after a quick, loud conversation through the curtains with a colleague and then returns pushing a 10,000 Vietnamese dong bill into my face. “Madam.” Shove.  “Madam.” I am being partially refunded because I was placed in a fan room instead of an AC room. “Thank you,” I mumble and then put the bill in my hand for lack of a better place and hold on to it for dear life while the massage-on-meth continues.

Fond memories come to mind of my visits to the Korean spas in Los Angeles, where the exfoliating scrub-downs by black lace underwear-clad Korean women (Why is this the uniform?) occur on plastic covered tables and have a similar “I am a piece of meat” vibe. Prior to this experience, I was mesmerized by the women and men in the street markets who expertly deboned and scraped fish meat into baggies and butchered their various meats into tenderized mounds. Now, I have empathy for those poor slabs of meat. I am thoroughly and without apologies being tenderized by a blind Vietnamese woman who seems to embrace the motto, “Take no prisoners”.  I want to laugh out loud, but I can’t because I am slowly suffocating with my face smooshed in the not-so-hygienic pillow.

As she moves on to pounding and kneading my legs, I worry that my tailbone and other more sensitive areas may end up tragically assaulted. Thankfully, she is somewhat gentle with her bottom-knocking and my cushion-less tush is spared. My massage ends with a prolonged craniofacial stimulation that, per Phil, was reminiscent of when his older brother used to give him a noogie (ie, not pleasant). I found it invigorating, but the quick, repetitive massage from the inner aspect of my eyes to my eyebrows did make me fear that I, too, may soon lose my sight. “Done,” she says and turns to leave. “Thank you and chuc mung nam muoi (happy new year),” I say to her receding backside. “Mm,” she nods in reply as she walks away. 

I'm melting...the Wizard of Oz theme continues.

I am the girl who walks into a gym and becomes flushed and sweaty just at the sight of the exercise equipment. You’ve probably seen me or someone like me at your gym - red-faced and panting with sweat dripping all over the equipment and sometimes innocently landing on a passerby. I don’t glisten or glow. I don’t perspire. I sweat ferociously and unapologetically. You get the point. So what was I thinking when I requested that we start our trip in southern Vietnam? I am currently in Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon in southern Vietnam, and I am wilting! It is mid 20sC (mid 70sF) at its lowest and mid-high 30sC (mid-high 90sF) at its highest with a 60+% humidity.

Up for an adventure, I took the local bus to Chinatown (Cholon, district 5) this morning and proceeded to walk the streets somewhat mindfully, although it probably appeared aimless, in search of pagodas, historical landmarks and some good street banh bao. I managed to successfully find all three. 

Heaven

Hell

However, by the time I was finished, I had walked back three of the five kilometers to my hostel and had no idea how or where to catch the bus back. So I reluctantly committed to completing the task of returning to my Saigon home a pied as it was the shorter distance. Now I was told earlier in the week that Vietnamese don’t walk; they ride motorbikes. 

The parking lot of the local movie theater

However, those who are out on the street appear sweat-free, and unlike me, they are often wearing pants, stockings/socks, shirts and jackets, and masks as “protection” from the “dust”. How is this possible? While I am taking an outdoor shower in my own sweat, they are casually eating a steaming bowl of pho on the sidewalk with not a single reflecting point of budding perspiration on their brow.  

Needless to say, upon returning to my district 1 home, I decide to embrace my overheated state and order a bowl of Pho soup with added chili and hot sauce. After all, if I am to be a foreigner for the next year, I might as well start the process of becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Hot, yummy street food goodness!

Power adapters, converters, and surge protection…the joys of being a wired traveler.

 Fear of the dead electronic is a powerful motivator to research appropriate charging equipment if you are leaving the US and traveling to a greater than 110V output country.

For an extended journey abroad, I fretted over what devices to bring, what adapters, converters and surge protectors I would need, and how I was going to fit everything in to my and my husband’s luggage without exceeding the weight limit. I am not a rugged backpacker nor do I usually travel in excess, or even moderate, luxury. I think of myself as an average, somewhat thrifty traveler who likes to splurge once in a while. I am a woman who likes to temper the hair frizz and stay somewhat, or rather quite a bit, on the electronic grid when possible. When in the US, I use a hair dryer sometimes, a flatiron often, a smartphone, e-reader, and/or computer/tablet daily.  For traveling, I decided to forgo on the hair dryer and flatiron. (Thanks to Brandon, my hairdresser, who told me I couldn’t live without a flatiron but suggested I purchase one abroad made for the 220V output.) This decision left me with the question of what to do about protecting the smartphone, e-reader, computer and tablet. And yes, I wanted to pack all of them so perhaps I am a bit more high maintenance when it comes to being wired than I realized.

We already had one voltage converter, bequeathed to us by my husband’s father upon his return from China, which we used successfully in Paris during our honeymoon attached to an all-in-one plug adapter/surge protector. Prior to this trip, however, we had never used a voltage converter abroad and had never had any problems. But a dear friend put the fear of disconnection in me with her story about frying her computer while using it in Tanzania. Given my husband’s new occupation as a budding internet entrepreneur and my desire to publish online as much rubbish as possible to amuse myself and anyone else bored at work looking for a distraction on the web, I suspected that we would have increased electronic needs and also be somewhat devastated if our computers were killed by errant electricity. Therefore, I proceeded to manically search for the best options available to us and below I have written a summation of what I uncovered, decided on, and may now change. I have no idea, honestly, if this will be successful or if it is excessively overcautious, but I suppose I will update this as we move along the trip…

If you look at the fine print on the plugs for most of your equipment (I suggest getting the magnifying glass out because the writing is teensy-weensy), you will find that many of your items are dual or multi-voltage, meaning they have a range of input voltages that they are compatible with. Therefore, you may not need a voltage converter because the plugs can tolerate up to 240V input. We have apple computers, phones and Kindles (keyboard versions) that all have multi-voltage plugs. My husband’s electric razor, however, only accepts a measly 125V max. Prior to all of my panicked research, I purchased the Apple world traveler adapter kit for my husband as a gift. I probably should have been less impulsive, but I was sucked in or suckered by the cute packaging and the concept. The reality is that if you are traveling to one country or locations using one type of plug, this may be a good option. You can simply attach the adapter to your computer’s plug and off you go. However, if you are traveling to multiple locations requiring multiple adapters and you have a wonderful husband whose forte is not keeping track of insignificant things like adapter plugs, then maybe this is not the right choice for you. Also, if you are planning to plug in other items besides your Apple computer, then you will still need additional adapters for those items. Another potentially fatal flaw is that there is no surge protection. And here is where my friend’s story fits in. Without a surge protector able to withstand high voltage surges, your equipment will probably not survive, despite having a multi-voltage capacity, unless there are no surges.

We ended up with two setups, mostly because we happened to have a hodge-podge of attachments. I believe that the first setup is the smarter one, and really the only one we will need. For the first one, we are using the all-in-one universal adapter/surge protector. It was cheap and has worked for me on my past five trips abroad over the past five years, so hopefully it will continue to work. Nonetheless, it was less than US$10 so easily replaceable. While it does not convert the voltage, the majority of our electronics do not require a conversion. However, we are still using the converter, which is plugged in to the surge protector to avoid burning the fuse in the converter. The main reason for the converter, besides me being paranoid, is also to relieve some of the stress of the weight of an extension cord on the surge protector/adapter because it is a bit flimsy and does not tolerate a lot of weight added to it. We have a multi-plug extension added to the converter, which allows us to charge multiple devices at once. We are using a 200W max converter so theoretically we should not overload it with our multiple devices. For the second arrangement, we have a converter with the appropriate plug for Asia plugged in to the outlet directly. A three-port+ USB surge protector up to 125V is plugged in to the converter and our electronics can be plugged in to that. The converter in this scenario is at risk for death if there is a surge that it cannot tolerate which makes it a bit less appealing. We are not using the Apple world traveler attachments; they are simply taking up precious space in my husband’s luggage, looking cute in their packaging.

So what would I do differently? I don’t think we need so many backups. As many travelers before me have said, “Oops, I over-packed.” The all-in-one adapter/surge protector was probably sufficient. Additional surge protectors/adapters can be purchased along the way as necessary. The only reason I really bemoan this over-packing is the converters are heavy! Perhaps I also could have talked my husband in to leaving his electric razor at home and purchasing one abroad that does not require a voltage conversion.