Levi and I totally love Thai Massage as we have both spent a great deal of time in Thailand and spent about six weeks there on our honeymoon. There you could get a two hour massage for $5. We literally had one everyday. It. Was. Amazing.
Thai massage lends well to the fitness guru. You are not going to be relaxed to sleep. You are going to be worked, stretched and walked on. You will feel tension release that you didn’t even know you had! It is the most therapeutic massage because it’s both completely “full on” and, at times, somewhat (but perfectly) relaxing. In fact, I am on a quest to learn it!
Here in America, massage is a luxury. It’s usually pretty expensive. At least $1 a minute, I have to budget in my favorite pastime. So I am not going to lie. When I first saw the sign for $40 Thai massage in LA I was skeptical. But there it was. The sign. $40 for an hour of Thai Massage ($35 if you got there before noon). Not as cheap as Thailand but certainly tempting by American standards, Lamai on Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach promised tension releasing therapies for a steal. And we stole. (Or well, paid up).
I wondered, “how good it could be?” Could it be translated to American soil? Could it be as good as the nicest spas I have experienced? Could it be as good as the $5 massages on some of the most beautiful beaches in the world?
When we first walked in the door, I was hit with the smell of my beloved Tiger Balm. And then I started to get how they could charge so little when I saw how many mats with sheets for walls were lining the floors. There was nothing spa like about this place. You would have to wrap your head around this. My love of third world countries and Southeast Asia made this place seem like a palace, so I was fine!
We were quickly ushered to our stations, given our clean uniform (boat pants and some sort of apron- thank God it was dark) and the stretching and releasing began. My sweet, gently speaking masseuse suddenly started walking on my back, legs, shoulders. She used her toes to expertly release my rhomboids, her heals to press on different points of my piriformis and stretched my leg in a direction I didn’t think it was supposed to go. There were times when I thought, “just breathe.” But the whole time I was loving every minute of it. I was praying that Levi was liking it just as much. He’s not as “bendy” as I. At the end of our first massage at Lamai, Levi was hooked. And so was I.
The next time we went back on another trip to LA, we signed up for two hours. Two hours of intense (sometimes torturous) muscle work. And we felt amazing when we left. Just look at my face!
Hopefully I will learn some of the techniques myself very soon. I am somewhat obsessed… :) Thank you, Lamai! We will be back!
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