Thai Massage Models (Seriously, we're gonna need an agent!)

On Tuesday, we were invited to eat lunch with some new friends we met
our first day who work in Ladakh each summer and rent rooms at the
Meditation Center (Kelly- this is the main office for the place in the
book "Holy Cow" where the main character goes to do her 10 days of
silence). While enjoying a yummy home cooked lunch, we were invited to
go for a short motorcycle ride around the immediate area the next
morning in order to take in all the majestic scenery.

Wednesday morning started off good. We went for pastries at our
favorite "English" bakery ran by Nepali men (see Jeni's previous
post), then we were off to the Meditation Center to meet up with our
friends. Upon arriving at the Meditation Center, we received
unfortunate news -- one of our friends had to return immediately to
his home town because of family matters and he was catching the next
flight out. Also, our other friend forgot that he had booked an all
day Thai Massage Lesson for a Homeopathic Healer from Australia. We
thought to ourselves,"ahh this sucks..."

But then...we were asked to be models for the six hour intensive Thai
Massage class! After clarifying a few small matters -- clothes would
be worn at all times, it was a woman taking the class, etc, -- we
quickly agreed. We headed home to change into our comfy traditional
Indian outfits and returned for the class.
The experience was incredible! Mid-day we stopped for another home
cooked lunch and chatted with the Australian woman named Fae. She was
an amazing character and was taking the course as part of her yearly
curriculum for her practice back home. Me and Jeni could have easily
fell asleep at this point because we were so relaxed. I learned a lot
about Thai Massage techniques and even took some notes during the
class. Too bad it will be difficult to find volunteers to practice my
new moves on back home...ya right!

We had tentatively rescheduled the motorcycle ride for after the
class, but after changing into our regular clothes we ended up just
hanging out with several Indians that all have different summer jobs
in Ladakh. We played card tricks, told jokes (thanks mom for sharing
all your bar-maid antics with me ;), exchanged riddles like "how do
you spell 'hard water' without any R's," and just laughed like crazy.
Me and Jeni were on fire, with our combined brain power, there wasn't
a riddle or puzzle we didn't solve. I can't say the same for our
Indian friends! We carried on like this for hours and around supper
time decided to move to a restaurant half way between the Meditation
Center and our Guesthouse.

What followed was so typically Indian...We ordered appetisers, dinner
and beer. This was the first time we were out after dark (every other
attempt to go out in India has ended up with us sleeping through an
alarm or looking at each other and going "ahh I'm too tired!")
However, Jeni and I were unaware that Wednesday in Ladakh is an
official "dry" day. But Indian logic being what it is, rules are
always flexible. The restaurant decided it was OK to drink the beer
from mugs, but we had to keep the bottles under our chairs? This
solved the dilemma and we carried on, having political and religious
debates while listening to Eminem. Me and Jeni laughed our asses off
the entire (short walk) back to our guesthouse (only slightly buzzed).
We are guessing that the differences in our body mass (noted in an
early post) compared to Indians made a difference in the amount of
beer we could consume. The entire dinner we were longing for a nice
cold pint of Guinness from "The Pub," but settled on Kingfisher and
Godfather (India's Bud Light and Coors Light).

Burp, Jeeni