Purrrrr

We are now in Jakarta, with me lamenting the end of our Indonesian trip. As nice and free as life was in Bali, I suddenly feel right at home back at Le Meridien hotel in Jakarta.

The hotel is air conditioned without being cold. Everything is clean. I missed life without sand. Upon arrival at the hotel, I immediately arranged for a hotel spa treatment. They had a spa sampler that lasts three hours so I booked it for The Man and me.

We arrived for our appointment at 7 pm and were taken into separate rooms. The woman who took me was hefty and non-smiling, grumbling to the booking staff as if I was preventing her from going home early. I was scared of her. But once inside the treatment room, she became more pleasant and apologized several times for not speaking English while I apologized for not having learned any Bahasa during my stay.

Then she rubbed a healthy smelling gritty paste all over me. It may have been a blend of sea salt, ground coffee, cinnamon, and oil. She merely barked, "Good for skin." This was my body scrub. She went all over my body a second time to hand rub the grit off. I could feel the dirt and dead skin cells flake off. Then she sent me into the shower.

She next took me into a room with a whirlpool. The Man was in that room getting his body scrub. There were lots of dirt balls falling off his body. I got into a warm bath for my hydrotherapy of aromatic jet spray action. It was weird with four of us in the room, me half naked in water, The Man naked under a sheet.

The jet spraying felt kind of nice. But what made it great was when the therapist started massaging the furrow spot between my eyes, my eyebrows, my temples, and my hair. I felt myself melt into her hands and sink into the water. I heard myself sigh with umm, umm, umm. And when she finished and walked away, I was still sighing umm, umm, umm. That must be how cats purr.

Then she marched me back to my treatment room and I got on the stretcher again. She said, "No panty okay?" I said, "Okay." And really, I didn't care. I've lost all inhibition by this point and I think I will march down that hotel hallway stark naked later. She massaged me from head to toe, pressing down on all the right spots and doing whatever she does with her fingers and hands. I was glad she's hefty, strong, and no non-sense.

I showered again after the massage. She then led me into a room with loungers and a TV to work on my feet. My feet! Me who loathes anyone touching my feet. But I submitted with caution. Soon, The Man was brought into the same room and took the lounger beside me. So we sat there, each getting a pedicure.

"Colour?" said the therapist.

"No colour." I said.

"Paraffin," decided the therapist.

"Huh? What's that?" I said.

"Good for feet," said the therapist.

"But no colour," I insisted.

"No colour," agreed the therapist.

So she did her soaking, scraping and sanding on my feet and toes. After, she brought out a pan of pink liquid. "Paraffin," said The Man's therapist.

My therapist picked up my feet one at a time and dipped each three times into the pan. It was warm liquid wax. The wax hardened around my feet and she put a plastic bag and sock on each foot. The Man got the same treatment. About 10 minutes later, the therapists came back to remove the paraffin. When the wax was peel away, oh my god.

My feet were soft like new skin. They were smooth like liquid silk. They floated in the air. I was a fairy. What feet problem? I can't remember ever having had feet problem.

I glided out of that spa at 10:30 pm. And that's how we spent our first night back in Jakarta.