An Hour With Nothing to Do
A traditional Balinese massage in Kuta, booked for the day after the flight, which is when an hour like this does the most good.
The flight in is long enough that your body is still somewhere over the Bay of Bengal when you wake on the first full morning. Your back remembers the seat. Your neck remembers the angle you slept at. That is why the massage sits on the second day of the trip rather than the last: an hour now makes every early start after it easier, while an hour at the end only makes the flight home slightly less miserable.
Kuta outside is loud. Scooters, taxi horns, a surf shop playing music into the street, and somebody on every corner asking whether you need transport. Avenue Spa is a short ride from the hotel, and the change when you step inside is the kind that makes you realise how much noise you had stopped noticing. Shoes come off at the door. The floor is cool. Somebody brings you a drink and a glass of water, and a small card of oils to choose from.
Choose by smell, not by name. The descriptions on the card are all promises of one kind or another, and the one you will enjoy is the one you like when you hold it under your nose. The therapist will wait while you decide. Nobody here is in a hurry, which is the first sign that the hour has already started.
Before it starts
You are shown to a room and given a few minutes to change. Then the therapist comes back and asks two things: how firm you want the pressure, and whether anything hurts. Answer both honestly. The treatment you get depends on the answers, and a therapist who has been told about a stiff shoulder will spend time on it, rather than on the parts of you that were fine to begin with.
Balinese massage is older than the spas that sell it. It came out of village healing, practised in family compounds long before anybody built a hotel on this coast, and it uses the whole hand and forearm rather than just the fingertips. This one is booked for a minimum of two people, which is why most guests come as a couple or with a friend, side by side in the same room.
If you have never had one, the one thing worth knowing is that you can speak at any point. Firmer, lighter, not there. Nobody is offended. A therapist would far rather adjust than finish an hour in which you spent forty minutes wishing they would press less hard.
Say so if you want it firmer or lighter. Nobody is offended, and the hour is better for it.
The hour
It starts slowly, with long strokes up the back to spread the warm oil and find out where the tension actually is. Then the pressure builds. A traditional Balinese massage combines deep kneading with acupressure, thumbs working along the muscles either side of the spine and into the knots across the shoulders, and it is firmer than most people expect. It is also gentler than that sounds, because the pressure never arrives all at once.
The scent of the oil fills the room within the first few minutes, and the music is quiet enough that you soon stop hearing it. Somewhere around the twenty-minute mark most people stop thinking about the itinerary, the ferry times and the emails they did not answer before leaving. A good number fall asleep. That is not rude. It is more or less the point, and the therapist works around it without comment.
The legs, then the arms and hands, and finally the head and scalp, which is the part people remember afterwards and did not expect to enjoy as much as they did. Then a hand on your shoulder, a quiet word, and the hour is over far faster than an hour should be.
Afterwards
Sit up slowly. The blood takes a moment to catch up, and the room tilts slightly the first time you try. You change back into your clothes with oil still in your hair, and nobody expects you to do anything about that. There is usually a cup of tea waiting, and you are allowed to drink it as slowly as you like.
Drink plenty of water for the rest of the day, and plan nothing strenuous for the hour after. The massage has done what it was booked to do: the flight is out of your back, your shoulders have come down from around your ears, and you are, for the first time since you left home, properly on holiday.
Transfers to and from the spa are not part of the booking. The hotel desk will arrange a taxi in a couple of minutes, and in Kuta the ride back is a short one, which is just as well, because the afternoon has slowed right down and you have slowed down with it.
Booked for the day after the flight on purpose. That is when an hour like this does the most good.
The next morning starts early. Tonight, most people eat close to the hotel and are asleep before ten, and that is exactly the right way to spend the first proper evening in Bali.
Experience An Hour With Nothing to Do
An hour of traditional Balinese massage in Kuta, the day after you land. Tell us your dates and we will book the slot.
