On a Bali massage table, dreaming of a Caracas newsroom

I glanced through the curative properties of the different treatments on offer. This was a two hour affair including a full body massage followed by a cleansing body scrub. That latter was available in five different solutions that ranged from green tea to jasmine coconut to some unpronounceable Balinese spices. They vowed to counteract wrinkles, cure cellulitis and wipe away stretch marks. After sniffing a few small flasks I ultimately chose the green tea concoction, mostly because it smelled good. It also offered to provide ample anti-oxidants. I didn’t really know what anti-oxidants were, but a cursory familiarity with Latin suggested it was something that would help keep me from rusting.  This was a requisite part of the Bali experience that I couldn’t miss out on, particularly in the Ubud where you can hardly walk two steps without someone offering you a massage. We were to be rubbed down with jasmine oil, then being scrubbed down with something that would tone my skin.

Our early morning tour of Hindu temples had been called off on account a thunderstorm. My breakfast of Indonesia fried rice had been interrupted by a terse text message from my cousin in Jakarta – “check news” – effectively confirming that despite my best intentions, I had missed the biggest story of reporting career. Isa and I had spent an hour in front computers watching the unfolding coverage and associated Twitter feed until we decided it was time to get our minds off it.

Isa is a big fan of massage, but for me they’ve always seemed like a weak palliative for the muscular disarray of my lower back. A slight scoliosis went unnoticed for three decades or so had never been debilitating but had left a huge knot at the base of my spine and a loose shoulder blade. Two herniated discs left me constantly whining about back pain. Though nice in the moment, massages tended to feel like weak substitutes for intense abdominal workouts, focused Pilates exercises and regular stretching that actually has a noticeable effect.

The hope that day was that it would slow the churn in my head and calm me down as I ticked off the days left in my vacation, in an odd mental rush to get off holiday and back onto the job. We were given some tea in the lobby and led into a dimly lit room where we were asked to put on a speedo-like garment and lie down on a massage table with some Relaxing Music ™ in the background. I couldn’t really tell who was doing the massaging because the masseuse had covered my eyes as she wiped me down with jasmine oil. 

The pressure on my back was pleasant, but the setup left me exactly in the place I didn’t want to be – alone on a Bali massage table, dreaming of a Caracas newsroom. Twelve hours had passed since the announcement, and I was visualizing reporters opening the second day of the saga, chronicling the grief on the streets. There were 11 days left in my vacation.

The massage briefly pulled me back into the moment. It had been years since a woman who was not my wife had rubbed massage oil on my butt or just above my waistline. It wasn’t erotic, but still a bit weird. Maybe I had this massage thing all wrong, I thought. The effects might not have the lasting impact on my spine that I hoped for, but the value of enjoying the moment should transcend that. It’s what I was supposed to doing in Ubud anyway – enjoying my vacation rather than trying to be on the other side of the world. At that particular moment, I wasn’t doing great on either count.

Next came the body scrub. A solution of rust-prevented green tea was spread all up and down my skin and left there to dry for ten minutes or so. The masseuse came back and cracked the dried paste off, rubbing it up and down to remove dead skin.  I stared down through the hole in the massage table at what appeared to be a pillow, trying to use vipassana style meditation techniques to focus on my breathing and push the clutter out of my mind. Fracaso total. My head was back in Caracas, trying to work out what the next few days would bring. A good 20 minutes later, through some sort of consensus compromise with my brain, I managed to veer into a new topic by dreaming  of all the homebrew I was going to make once I got back home, fully exfoliated. 

I was told to stand up, at which point for the first time in my life I had yogurt slathered across most of my body. I then sat down to rinse off in a bath covered with flower petals. Isa and I rinsed off and toweled off, got dressed and walked back to the hotel to sit down for dinner. Despite all of the navel gazing, theorizing, contemplating what was going on half a world away and, of course, plotting how to sum the whole thing up in a cheeky but not overly snarky blog post, it was a nice experience. I told Isa as much as we waited for our satay.

“The only problem was I couldn’t stop thinking about Venezuela,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me either.”