whatever you do, don't make eye contact

i don't know if serving food at spas is a brilliant idea. i know there are spa+buffet places around town but i'm not completely sold on this. i suppose there could be some exceptions. for instance, at Let's Relax in bangkok, the price of a body scrub and massage combi includes a plate of mangoes and sticky rice – an add-on that younger sister mia and i didn't know about until we found the pretty plate in our room ('for us? really??? yahooooo!!!'). maybe it was the relaxed atmosphere after our massage or the element of surprise (it pays not to read the fine print sometimes), but it was seriously one of the best versions of mangoes and sticky rice i've ever had in thailand or anywhere. let's relax? by all means, yes please.

the only reason why i'm wary of spas that serve real food before a massage is because of one particular experience at a small spa that my older sister (ate) and i tried out a few years ago. she had a gift certificate for two massages so we checked it out one lazy afternoon.

we entered the communal room and there was already one client there, in the middle of her massage. i usually don't mind sharing these big rooms with other women; most of the time, i forget that they're there anyway. this particular lady, however, reminded us of her existence all too often through her loud and frequent burps.

this was hardly relaxing for juancho
(late warning: this is an unrelated photo)

there are polite and timid burps, and there are BURPS. this lady was a certified grandmaster of burpery. she burped with so much gusto that there was absolutely no way to ignore her in that tiny and presumably once-peaceful room. upon hearing the first burp, i knew that ate wanted to make a funny comment or even just shoot me a horrified look. ate needed an audience badly. unfortunately, that audience was me. even if we were in a dim room, i knew with absolute certainty that ate, excommunicated from the church of subtlety, wanted to catch my eye because she wanted to share a laugh instead of focusing on her ongoing massage. any other reasonable person would choose to AVOID laugh-inducing eye contact in places that are supposed to be quiet and serene. but nooo, not ate. i heard my sister clear her throat so many times, you would think she was contracting a throat infection. finally, i gave in and looked at her for just a second. seeing that she finally had the audience she longed for, she whispered, 'bakit walang nagsabi na may buffet sa labas?*'

we both shoved our faces into the massage table (thankfully not made of concrete), snickered as silently as possible, and just prayed that the stranger would run out of stomach gas or that it wouldn't go out the other end.

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*translation for my non–filipino-speaking friends: 'why didn't anyone say there was a buffet outside?' hmmm. you had to be there. or maybe just be glad you weren't.