Mud Wrestling

The penny will drop...
Some people, largely men I suppose, expend an inordinate amount of mental energy picturing lithe young things messing around in mud baths. Messing around usually means wrestling, grappling, sliding about wearing nothing but bikinis or Speedo swimming trunks. Or so I've heard....

The reason these things are only imagined is simple. In the West, the only people who can afford to go to the exclusive health farms where you can find mud-baths are rich, middle-aged-and-over folks with waistlines bigger than their bank balances. And who wants to picture an Anne Widdecombe type mud-wrestling with a Norman Lamont type? The cheap option of wallowing in the mud of the Thames estuary watching dying whales and shipping vessels pass just isn't the same.

But....in Vietnam the fantasy is a reality! Thanks to globalisation and international exchange rates the mud bath experience is open to any Tom, Dick and Harry hailing from the developed world. 50,000 VND will see you into the Thap Ba Hot Springs, a health-spa on the outskirts of Nha Trang, where you can live the dream.

Or have it ooze away like the melted-chocolate-esque mud.

You see, it may look like melted-chocolate, but one accidental mouthful and it won't be Cadbury's Milk Tray you're thinking of. You'll be thinking: hmm, tastes like gritty mud...bit like that time I was two years old and decided garden soil might be edible. And then you'll think: am I really sitting up to my neck in a bathful of mud? Cold, clammy, itchy mud that in normal circumstances I wouldn't contemplate letting the tip of my shoe touch, never mind my skin. And then: damn, this is foolish.

Advanced capitalism at it again.

All these thoughts put a bit of a dampener on the lithe-young-things-mud-wrestling idea. I got to thinking of the liposuction-to-expensive-soap process in Fight Club. Rich people spending vast amounts of money siphoning off excess fat only for Brad Pitt to steal it and sell it back to the same people as high-class soap.

To be fair, I did feel pretty relaxed after the mud-bath, but I still wonder what it's all about. Good as a one-off experience I think. I showered and then moved onto the jacuzzi...

In the evening I went to the 'Crazy Kim' bar where I got talking to a Dorothy, a Dutch girl taking a month's holiday in Vietnam. We drank a lot of beers and cocktails and shots and had a fun time discussing God knows what. I've always liked the Dutch people I've come across and Dorothy was no exception. She was bright, articulate and attractive. I would've been attracted to her if I hadn't been in a great state of confusion about the relationship I'd left behind in England.