Stay another day

Funny the people you meet along the road of life. On my way to Laos, I got stuck for a few days in the border town of Nong Khai.

Nong Khai is on the Thailand side of the Mekong River, a town I hadn’t even blinked at previously when heading to Laos. But here I was for the dead remainder of a weekend and for some strange reason I lingered and strolled and smiled at locals, got smiled back at and generally began to relax back into the joy of being a solo woman on the road with no real destination or time frame for the next little while.

I listened to a man who told me about the time only a few weeks ago when “the troubles” erupted in Bangkok and all the travellers split over the bridge into Laos within the day. Suddenly the town was deserted apart from the odd hard core long term firang.

I was served coconut cake at the interent café where I worked and I met another kiwi refugee at the Mut Mee First of all it’s a groovy kind of travellers place that is still run in the way I remember from years ago in Ko Chang, basically you served yourself, wrote your stuff up in a book and paid the host when you left. The place was buzzing with tourists and the whole thing was over seen by an engaging Kiwi guy.

I had gone to see about a massage, but began to waver when Hamish looked through the masseuse chart for the day. Already the woman had given seven massages. ”My god, the woman is a machine!” I said. “maybe I will….” (Bugger off and get one when I get to Laos, I thought)

“Well, I do massage myself and I know that your energy after a day like that..” he agreed.

“So do I and my limit would be four..”

“It all depends on what kind of massage you want,” he said.

“One where the masseuse doesn’t sniff, doesn’t ask me how I am liking it and doesn’t talk, text or use her cell phone while she is working,” I said. The kind of massage I would give myself. When he heard I was a spa slut who searches every pocket of the world for spa treatments that are accessible to the ordinary mortal, he sent me along the road to a local beauty shop. ‘Ask for Bee and come back, I am not finished with talking to you yet,’ he said.

At the salon there are all sorts of treats on offer but give the lateness  the day, I chose an oil massage and was assigned a young woman. She was everything I needed her to be, well trained, strong hands and quiet. I didn’t want to leave, I could have rolled over and gone to sleep right there and then but I made it back to my guest house and slept like a baby for the first time in more days than I care to think about.