Spiritual Honeymoon in Fantasy Thailand

Depending on the day, I’m slightly to extremely obsessed with Thailand. The first three months of 2006 have been dedicated to the Land of Smiles--I’m all about curries and rice noodles and creamy Thai iced teas. I even bought a Thailand-made bust of Buddha and Thai fisherman’s pants have become my favorite leisure apparel. Oooh, and the massage, but I’ll get to that later.

I was always interested in Southeast Asia, but I held my curiosity until I had an excuse to visit. Now a honeymoon has given me a solid reason to drool over guidebook images of temples at sunset, meditating monks, and the flat green sea of the Gulf coast. We’ll travel to Bangkok in June--the hottest time of year--and seek peace of mind and pad Thai and simultaneous massages, but probably not in that order. After 21 hours of travel and a time change that will have deprived us of an entire day, we’ll be more than ready to sink into the hands of a Thai massage practitioner. Unlike Swedish massage, which kneads the knots and tension out of muscles, Thai massage opens the body’s blocked energy channels--when executed with the right combo of determination and ease, the results can be extraordinary.

Our friend K recently returned from two months of studying Thai massage in Chiang Mai [note: friends living in Thailand add to Thai obsession]. He returned with dreadlocks, mind-blowing massage skills, and an otherworldly calm that I hope to find there too.

-- Guest blogger Marisa Lowenstein