Bangkok Massage
Some time ago Stick mentioned a massage place in his column. That doesn’t happen often and the name sounded interesting — Exotic Massage — in soi 22, with the comment that “the website … offers a more candid description of what goes on inside”. I had to see what it was about so I navigated to the website and quickly found their price list which makes interesting reading http://www.exoticmassagebangkok.comprices/. On a recent trip to Bangkok I thought I’d go and explore.
The first thing to know is it’s hard to find. I thought it would be a few sub-sois into soi 22 but it was further down the street than I expected. They have a diagram on their contact page http://www.exoticmassagebangkok.comcontact/ that I fortunately looked at otherwise I would have given up without finding it. The map says it’s past Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel. That hotel has been extensively renovated and now goes by the name of the Marriott Marquis. Go a bit further down the road, maybe the 2nd sub-soi on the left past that hotel, and you’ll find the place. But even then it’s a bit hidden and I wouldn’t have been confident I found the right place without the photo of the shopfront on their Contact page.
If you’ve followed any of the hyperlinks above you’ll already have noticed the worst feature of their website — an annoying “nag” page that wants you to enter an email address. Seriously, I am not going to give them an email address. Is anyone? But what’s worse is the nag page comes up every time you navigate to a new page. It may be too much to expect of a business establishment of this type but web etiquette is not to display this page after you’ve indicated you’re not interested.
Now here’s a piece of bad news. When you walk in they ask what service you want, I made my choice and the price was different to the nagging web page. Hhhmmm. The nag page gave prices for 60 mins and I wanted 90 so I didn’t complain but I noticed the printed price list offered for 60 mins was different to the nag page specials. To be fair those specials may only apply if you give your email address, which I didn’t, so I chose not to make a fuss.
Now there’s more bad news. This is the type of place that allocates women to you as opposed to allowing you to have a choice. Again, it could be because their price list outlines a number of service specialties and not everyone will be appropriately skilled. But at this point I did comment. Given my choice of service the owner / manager / cashier called 4 women to stand before me and I made my choice — which turned out to be the same one allocated in the first place! But, hey, at least she’d become my choice.
They promise a private room with facilities. They delivered on this. It wasn’t the best room I’ve been in, far from it, but it was clean, functional and the shower was OK, but not big enough for 2 people.
I’m not going into the type of massage I chose but the services I ordered were delivered. Not with any amount of commitment but they were delivered. No conversation, no jollying of the customer, no fanfare but I got what I ordered.
All in all it wasn’t the best experience of my life, or even of my recent visit, but it wasn’t the worst, either. They were ethical enough to provide the service they advertised but I don’t feel motivated to go back.
Speaking of that, about a year ago I tried another massage place mentioned once by Stick — Mitu Bangkok — and that was an enjoyable experience. Again, they delivered what they advertise on their website but it was so much more fun. Mitu appears to have 2 places, No Hands (which I went to) http://mitubangkok.comnohand/ and Wet Massage http://mitubangkok.com which I didn’t try. Again, Mitu is a bit hard to find and you need the website Location page to get there http://mitubangkok.commassage/location/ but in this case I felt it was worth the effort.
To get to the No Hands place you need to go down soi 33 and find the Sakura Sky Residence which is on the left hand side of the street. Enter using the car entrance and the massage place is on the right hand side of the driveway. Even though I didn’t try it the Wet Massage place seems to be clearly marked on the Location page.
