Thai Spa Treatments

Good morning from Chiang Mai, Thailand - home of pad thai, Singha beer and ladyboys.  My family's been here 2 nights now but today was the first day my parents and I did some actual fun things.

The first day we just checked into the hotel (Le Meridien Chiang Mai) and walked around the neighborhood looking for a late afternoon Thai lunch before passing out from jet lag at 5PM.

The second day, my mother wanted to walk around the Old City and see some Buddhist monks and temples and then check out the local night markets.  Perhaps that's fun for adults, but for a 15 month old, it's BORING!

But the third day (this afternoon) was pretty interesting.  After waking up my parents up at 7am by crawling all over them like (should I say it?) white on rice, we got ready and head out.

After about 20 minutes of dodging tuk tuks and rolling my eyes at the hordes of smelly Euro backpackers, we came across an interesting looking shop called Dr. Fish.  My parents started to talk to one another while I sat there in the 90 degree heat waiting for them to get me inside with the A/C.

Upon entering, I saw several large tanks of water with tiny fish inside. Then my mother started to take her flip flops off as my father sat down on the large bench on top of the fish tank. I'm surprised the water didn't turn brown after my father put his dirty feet inside, but instead the fish got all crazy and started to eat his dead skin.

Apparently, these little fish love to bite people's feet and toes even more than Rex Ryan. They say the fish don't have any teeth so they can't bite that hard, but I remember when I didn't have my 8 teeth and I could still bite the crap out of my steamed organic green beans (ugh, I'm such a stereotypical New York baby).

For 100 Thai Baht ($3.36 USD), your feet got 20 minutes in the fish tank.  My parents had never done this before, but they do recall seeing the prices of $30-40 USD in New York and Israel. The fish took down enough dead skin from my parents' feet that my mother remarked how soft her feet were afterwards.  I just liked watching the feeding frenzy.

Later on, we passed one of the thousand massage places that line the streets all over Thailand.  My mother had been complaining about her lower back after holding a lap child for 30+ hours of plane rides in the past week, so we went inside for a traditional Thai massage.

You always hear how cheap things are in Southeast Asia, but it really doesn't hit you until you pay $6 USD for an hour long Thai massage.

In New York, $6 won't even get you a cab ride across midtown Manhattan or get you anything in the overpriced store Buy Buy Baby, but here in Thailand, you'll get a tiny Asian woman stretching your body and hitting all your pressure points for 60 minutes (yes, I'm talking about massages).

Apparently, being 15 months old is still too young to get my own massage, but I refused to let my age or lack of fine motor skills get in the way of participating.  So when my father turned his back on me for a second, I jumped out of my stroller and ran to my mother to help a sister out.