Saturday 11 June 2011

Rest, Relaxation, and Mild Bruising

Random Factoid: When signaling for someone to come to you in Singapore (or anywhere in SE Asia), always be sure to do so with your palm facing down. Motioning to someone palm up, no matter if you do so with one finger or your whole hand, is the equivalent of flipping the bird. Don’t worry, I didn’t learn this “the hard way.”

I thought my moving week was pretty bad, until Brad told me all about his latest business trip to Indonesia… and all I can say is, W-O-W (draw it out… three syllables…). He could start his own blog that would rope in far more readers than mine! He’s been studying the Asian market and traveling here for years, so he wasn’t nearly as shocked by his findings as I was, but I still think my husband may return to the States in three years looking a little more like Anderson Cooper than the dark-haired guy he is today. Fortunately for him, I think Anderson Cooper is sexy.

So I wasn’t the only one due for a weekend away from checklists and incredibly boring trips to the furniture store. We all needed some relaxation and fun. Even Dagny looked like she was ready to throw her new baby Ikea chair through the window and make a break for it.

Brad kicked things off perfectly by booking me a massage at a spa! I think he might have felt a little guilty about being out of town during the move (especially after I typed about it with huge puppy eyes in my last post), but more likely he didn’t like that I sounded like the Crypt Keeper every time I tried getting in and out of bed (yeah, the back’s still out of whack from my foray into Sherpa-hood).

I was greeted at the spa with a warm cup of tea and a fluffy white robe. I listened to soothing music while a very sweet woman sprinkled the massage table with lavender oil. She smiled at me (again, very sweetly) and asked if I was ready to begin…

Fast forward to three hours later. I walk into the apartment and Brad immediately asks, “How was it?”

“It was awesome,” I tell him. “She worked wonders on my back.” I start to lift my purse onto a high shelf (out of reach of curious toddler hands), when my shoulders lock up and my right arm starts to shake and I nearly drop my purse on the floor. I know Brad paid a lot of money to have me pampered and the last thing I want is to appear ungrateful… but who am I kidding??? “I think she was trying to kill me!” I very nearly sob.

Okay, returning to the spa… In retrospect, as I bring my afternoon back into focus, I’m now starting to see something evil in my masseuse’s smile—the one that originally looked so sweet. We begin with a full body scrub. And when I say full body, I mean FULL BODY. After having the first three layers of my epidermis ripped off by some kind of liquid pumice, I’m treated to a slathering of sea salt. Why? Why? WHY would anyone do that??? My eyes are watering as I wait to see if she’s going to dip me in lemon juice too, just to test my pain threshold. And perhaps even worse than the intense stinging is the cripplingly ticklish sensation of her scrubbing the bottoms of my feet and armpits. Yes, armpits. Like I said… FULL BODY.

She gives me a few minutes to rinse off in a shower before my massage. I look down at my body, which is completely covered in a rash and prickles like I have razor burn from head to toe. But, to her credit, my skin (what little remains) has never been softer.

I’m quick to put the humiliating and overly invasive scrub behind me as climb back onto the table. I can’t wait to get the knots out of my back and finally get to—

Wait a second… why is my masseuse climbing up onto the table with me? And why is she kneeling on my— Holy craaaaap!!!

Now I’m no wimp when it comes to massages. I’ve had deep tissue rubs before, and like them just fine. But this was my first Chinese massage, and I have to say, I won’t be getting another one anytime soon. As far as I can tell, there was very little (if any) actual massaging. There was a lot of what I suppose they call shiatsu but I will refer to as rapid-fire karate chopping, which turned into open palm slapping (that was definitely a little weird) which escalated into punching. Yes, punching. At one point, after she’d pounded the bottoms of my feet until they were numb and had moved on to what I can only surmise was an attempt to rearrange my internal organs, I kind of wanted to ask her why she hated me so much.

Maybe I should have screamed. Maybe I should have told Patricia the Punisher that my lower lip was bleeding from where I’d been biting it. But I kept thinking, “It can’t get any worse than this.” And she kept proving me wrong. With one foot propped on the massage table for leverage, she pulled on my arms until my shoulders popped and jumped on my back until she’d cracked every last vertebrae. Then she very kindly concluded my session by yanking on my hair.

Anyone who does this for pleasure is a few eggs shy of a dozen, in my opinion.

The next day, Saturday morning, it rained. Storms here are amazing… the sky turns the color of graphite and the windows in our apartment rattle with the thunder. One peel barely dies out before another impressive clap takes its place. While Dagny naps, Brad and I sip coffee and watch the phenomenon so many people here have told us about: the endless amounts of lightning that fork the low ceiling of clouds, but never hit the ground. Maybe it has something to do with the skyscrapers, but I believe the locals just count themselves among the blessed.

The morning is relaxing, and when Dagny wakes up we go to Suntec City for lunch. It’s even busier than usual, not only because of the rain but there is an electronics showcasing as well (can I just say my favorite demo area was run by a group of guys selling pink vibrating stools to women, vowing they will lose weight just by sitting on them… Is it just me, or is this reminiscent of middle school when guys would ask girls if they could touch their elbows behind their backs?). Every open area in the 6-tower mall has a stage and a blaring sound system set up, all with men and women shouting in Chinese, trying to capture your attention above the other demo groups that are there. Dagny is in awe of one stage where a girl in pigtails and a guy in striped soccer socks suddenly break into song and dance… and who am I kidding? I’m in awe as well.

We try to get some lunch in the hawker center without success. It is such a jam of people that I begin to sweat, and while we wait in a line for laksa where, for some reason, people just continue to shove their way in front of us, Brad and I both start to feel a little nauseous from the stands on either side of us. One sells Indian food doused in curry and the other is selling fish head soup. And right behind us is a string of about 15 plucked ducks hanging by their necks from wire nooses.

After the third person in five minutes trips over Dagny’s stroller because they are attempting to text while walking, Brad about loses it and pulls us out of the hawker center.

The rain has stopped at this point, so we leave the mall and head home, where we swap out Dagny’s umbrella stroller for her BOB (or as we say, her zippy little convertible for her SUV) and go for a long, much needed walk along East Coast Park, which is only about a mile from our apartment. The sky is still cloudy but it’s not raining, which actually makes it perfect weather. The boardwalk is split in two, one side for bikes and rollerblades, the other for pedestrians. There are a lot of tandem bikes and funny little bike cars, which are basically two bikes molded side-by-side with a striped canopy covering them. We decide we’re definitely going to have to rent one at some point.



(Not a great picture of a bike car... I was trying to "act cool" and pretend I was texting as they came toward me)

The path is almost entirely shaded by trees (not really necessary today, but will be very nice during future trips), and along our left are several restaurants and bars, some touting the best seafood in Singapore (according to Frommer’s, DK and most importantly, the locals). On our right is the ocean, which is technically the Singapore Strait. It connects the Malacca Strait to the South China Sea. The sight of it is AMAZING, because it’s unlike any ocean I’ve ever seen. Stretching across the horizon, making the actual point where the water meets the sky impossible to see, is a virtually endless fleet of ships. They are all sizes, but mostly measure up somewhere between Big and Huge. Some are blocky while others are more streamlined, and some are covered with unusual towers and cranes, and from the concrete pier I stare at them and can’t help but wonder what all they are carrying. So yes, Singapore is a very industrial port. This doesn’t make the water great for swimming in, and I guess some people might think the hundreds of ships and tankers would make it ugly, but I love it! As we walk along the boardwalk, we keep stopping and saying, “Oooh, look at that ship. It’s so weird!”


This is only about 1/4 the number of ships that were on the water.



The boardwalk. On the left is the path for bikes and skaters. The right is for pedestrians (that's Brad's arm and Dags in her BOB). Just to the right of the walking path is the beach. It's nice white sand, but the water looks a little sketchy.


Restaurants and bars along the beach.


We stop for drinks and dinner at a restaurant along the beach, where we eat one of Singapore’s local favorites, chili crab. Dagny insisted she wanted some, so I let her have a bite, then tried not to laugh as she spent the next two minutes scraping her tongue with a napkin. Wasn’t there a scene from the movie Big like this? She was much happier with a plate of beef and vegetable pot pie. She also kept insisting she wanted to try my Corona, but don’t worry, I don’t give in to all my daughter’s wishes.


View of ocean from our table.


Me and my honey bunny.


An RC car race set up along the pier. At this point, the drivers had been racing for almost 3 hours! They really were incredibly fast and talented.


We walked home very slowly, and mostly in the dark. People driving past us probably thought we were drunk, but really we were just attempting to avoid hitting (or being hit by) the local wildlife that comes out once the sun goes down. No jaguars or monitors or anything quite like that (sorry), but we did find the sidewalk covered with frogs, lizards (the biggest one was maybe just shy of a foot long) and some of the biggest snails I’ve ever seen in my life. Their shells were about as big as Dagny’s foot (and pointed… hence the need to avoid them) and the bodies on some were about 6 inches long! I was so busy watching the pavement that I didn’t notice, until Brad elbowed me and nodded up at the street lamps, that giant bats where darting around just above our heads. I didn’t really mind them, since they were gobbling up all the mosquitoes.

It was only 9:00 when we arrived home, but it felt much later. We very rarely stay up to see the clock flip over to double digits anymore, and usually collapse into bed rather than climb into bed, for some reason feeling a little like we did back when we hiked the Grand Canyon (the 3 bruises I'm sporting on my legs thanks to my massage probably have something to do with it). I love finishing my days this way, where you wring every last bit of energy from your body and know you made every minute count while you were awake. 

As a side note, I've had several people ask if it's okay to pass my blog link on to others... yes! This is definitely okay with me, no need to ask my permission, and may I say I'm very flattered!

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