I decided to dedicate a day to relaxation when I was in Ubud. First, my friend Noreen and I checked out a Vinyasa class at an open air yoga studio. This was the view from the studio. You could hear the leaves wrestling in the breeze, birds chirping, and a light rain falling. The teacher also played my favorite Bon Iver song during class and ended with a Pablo Neruda poem. It was basically the most relaxing 90 minutes ever.
Next, we decided to book an appointment at a spa to get massages and a body scrub. Before I begin the next part, I have to explain something. I grew up in a pajamas all the time house. You could walk into my mother's house at any hour of the day and you would never find anyone hanging out in the family room wearing their underpants. My aunt claims she accidentally walked in on my grandmother changing one day years ago. My grandmother apparently then let out a loud shriek and jumped into the closet. Needless to say, I'm just not a naked person.
Actually my feelings about nudity are a lot like Tobias Funke's. He's the David Cross character on Arrested Development [if you haven't seen this, please watch it immediately] who is a never nude. This means that he can never be all the way naked, therefore he has to wear a pair if jean shorts at all times. He even has to wear them in the shower and during visits to the doctor. My friend Noreen also has a Tobias Funke-esque feeling about nudity. This is why perhaps we should have asked some more questions before booking our massage/body scrub relaxation afternoon. Right before we went in the lady told us we would have a massage, body scrub, and an exotic flower bath. She then asked if it was ok for us to take the bath TOGETHER. We nicely said, "not really". She said two baths would be no good because the water would be too cold. She said it would be no problem. She said the tub was really big. We hesitantly agreed. Noreen and I get a long great, but we've only known each other a little over a month. It felt a little early in our friendship for a joint exotic flower bath. But we didn't want to seem like super uptight American never nudes, even though, the bath really wasn't really that big and we are sorta uptight American never nudes.
We were placed in the same room for the massage part, which was fine because we were given sarongs. I was a bit thrown off at first because the masseuse straddled my back. It felt, well, a bit intimate to have a little woman on your back when the only thing between you and the world is a pair of paper underpants. She then rubbed me with warm scented oil. I sorta felt like she should have bought me a drink first.
Then it was bath time. It was hard to relax because we got the giggles. The lady said we had 30 minutes. We cut it a bit short. 30 minutes seemed like a super long time for a bath with a new friend while wearing paper underpants. But we had to take some pictures because it's pretty rare for 2 never nudes to take a bath together. Apparently, people all bathe together in Bali and it's cool. In my home town of Worcester, Mass., not so much.
