Spa day
I’m a bit scared of all this spa shit that goes on nowadays to be honest. I know that people love it, and it’s a thing, but it’s just not for me. I’ve been to one during my lifetime – at the Berjaya Tioman Island Resort in Malaysia. We’d been backpacking around the Malaysian Islands for a few weeks after giving up our shit jobs, and selling the house, and were coming to the end of our adventure. The stress of finding places to stay on a daily basis was getting to Tina, and the last straw was when we checked into a wooden hut (with only a loosely hanging straw mat separating us from the shag-happy Australian couple in the next bungalow) on Tioman Island after a nightmare day of travelling via small fishing boats to get there. She threw a wobbler, and demanded that we go somewhere else. Having stopped off at a private hotel beach earlier, we (she) decide that we were going to have a final week of relative luxury there, so we commandeered a fisherman to take us there before it got dark, and paid him his average monthly wage for a 10 minute speedboat ride. Tioman was relatively untouched by mass tourism at the time, and this was the only real hotel on the island.
We managed to get a suite using a credit card, get changed, and had a huge buffet tea – which made a change from the bowl of fish curry and Sprite which was the usual meal of choice of the backpacking bungalow fraternity. There was alcohol available, unlike in the rural areas of Malaysia, and the hotel even had it’s own airport – complete with ancient, unsafe-looking turbo-prop plane for daily shuttles to KL, and the big bird home. This meant we could just relax like grown-ups, enjoy the final week of our trip, and not worry about the 2 day tortuous journey via fishing boats and motorbikes back to KL.
The hotel took great pride in it’s spa facilities, and Tina was eager to put some more onto the credit card. I wasn’t keen, but went along with the plans for a facial thing. I didn’t really see the point of spending £100 on my face being treated in the humidity and tropical heat, when it was going to be a horrible, sweaty mess within 5 minutes. Earlier in the trip, I’d been subjected to the torture of Reflexology in Langkawi, while being sat in a PVC chair amid an inch deep pool of my own sweat ( I kid thee not). Anyway, we had to begin by stripping off to our kex, and getting into some spa pool thing. Unfortunately there was some other couple in there – model types, who were caressing, and looking into each other’s eyes and all that shit. I now realise that all couples who go to a spa together are exactly like that. I’ll bet the narcissistic idiots didn’t last another 2 years though.
We were taken through to the treatment room, robed, and laid on the couch things. The women put fruit on our eyes or something, then left us there for ages in a silent, dark room. The giggles were obviously in order. The facial lasted for about an hour, with various lotions and creams stripping stuff off, and adding things. It was quite relaxing, but my face was an oily sugar-puff at the end, and the second I left the comfort of the air-con, I turned into a ball of raging sweat production, with melted face-cream dripping down to my tits. Perfect couple were sipping cocktails, whilst caressing and staring into each other’s eyes without a bead of perspiration in sight. they must have had the sweat-gland removal and personality extraction treatments.
I digress.
When shooting the Ramside park footballer pads, I was asked to get some shots of the Ramside Hotel Spa and Golf Course at some point. I rang the place, and spoke to the General Manager who asked me to go in before the guests arrived for the day.
“ok – what time do you open?”
“Six o’clock, but guests start getting here a bit earlier sometimes”
My alarm went off at 4am the next day, I got in the car at 4.30, and got there at just after 5.15 – in early July. The sun was just rising, and there were already people booking in. Who does that for god’s sake? Who ARE these people? I’ll tell you:
It was perfect couples – they’re like clones. There were also perfect boys having perfect swims. There were couples lifting weights in the gym – at 5.15am! LOL. Because the shots were promotional, I couldn’t depict any people as I’d have to obtain model licences etc. I did get a bloke’s profile in the pool, but hey-ho.
It was clear that I needed to use my time to whip round and do a “Grab n Run” type of job. I chose my D800 due to it’s superior dynamic range, and snapped some nice views using the rising sun as an inspiration.
I got everything shot in about 40 minutes, and drove home for breakfast. Nice being finished work by 7.30am. The whole experience reminded me why I don’t like the whole spa thing. It’s the perception of being “pampered”, and our western view on being able to buy people if you’re wealthy. I’ve never been comfortable with this sort of thing – I’ll leave it for gangs of Hen-Nighters and perfect couples if you don’t mind.
