History disagrees.

Spas in one form or another have been around for almost 4,000 years now, originating, as far as we know, in the city of Mohenjo-Daro India around 2,000 BC – and patronized mainly by men. About 1500 years later, soaking and steaming bath houses became an important social center for the men of Ancient Greece. The Romans followed suit.

Spas were also very popular in Europe throughout the 19^th century with both genders.

In this century, no less a macho figure than Hitler himself ranted and raved on about (among other things) the wonders of the yellow sulphurous hot springs of Bad Nauheim in Central Germany. So therapeutic were these urine-colored waters, that after just a few treatments, a man felt as if he could take over the world.

Nothing to Fear but Feeling Good
And yet for some reason many modern men are still scared of spas – or at the very least, skeptical. Somehow, being slathered with essences of seaweed and papaya, scrubbed, polished, steamed, simmered, kneaded and generally treated with kindness offends some men’s sense of masculinity.

While it is true that the majority of spa patrons are still women, the world is changing. In 1987, 91% of spa-goers in America were women and only 9% men. By the late nineties, this had swung to 73% female and 27% male. Maybe it’s health, maybe it’s vanity, but whatever the reason, men are getting over whatever hang-ups stood in the way of surrendering control on the massage table. Spas and spa-based holidays are booming all over the world, with both genders enthusiastically joining in.

Time for a Change
Now, I’m not what you’d call a trendy guy. Black jeans and T-shirts have comprised the bulk of my casual wardrobe for about 20 years now. I have the same basic haircut, (if not hair color) as when I graduated high school. I refuse to adopt any non-technical word that hasn’t been in use for at least 50 years and formally approved by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nonetheless, I decided to try a spa treatment. After all, I do fancy myself as open minded, and the mental image of lying buck naked under a thin sheet with a perfect stranger spreading seaweed paste on me with a wooden paddle admittedly held a certain appeal. Besides, my boss told me I had to. And when your boss levels his finger at you and says “go get pampered”, you go.

Into the Deep End
The venue was one of the “day spa” genre, meaning one without a major hotel attached to it, or at least no live-in accommodation -- Pirom Spa in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit soi 1.

Walking through the doors into what appeared to be a traditional Thai house, it felt at first like I was in church. There is an atmosphere of gentility and quietude that one imagines is pretty central to the relaxation theme that underpins a spa’s fundamental purpose. It took a minute or two to adjust my booming voice to this little island of calm in Bangkok’s swirling sea of madness.

Pirom Spa is the brainchild of Ms Kornsuang Pirom, the gracious hostess, managing director, namesake and grand visionary of the establishment. The beauty of this sort of spa is that unlike major megabuck hotel chains, they are highly personalised. Pirom Spa was clearly the product of Kornsuang’s conception of what the ideal spa should be. Every person and thing in the place, from the decor to the post-treatment wicker recliners to the beatific staff (gliding silently over glowing wooden floors), were handpicked by this one person, giving it a unified, balanced feel. All the details fit.

I was shown a menu of specialized treatments for all manner of ailments. It was as baffling to me as the wine list at Claridges. There are special programs for jet lag, sporting injuries, reflexology, spot massage, back and shoulders, tension relief. These are accompanied by a range potions containing of essential oils, seaweeds and clay-based detoxifyers. If you want to order a la carte, there are facials, eye contours, milk baths, hand rejuvenations – more therapies than body parts.

Kornsuang, sensing my tense discomfiture, had put me down for a three-stage anti-stress program all based on marine products and lasting about 2½ hours. This was to include a body scrub, hydrotherapy bath and an oil massage. It sounded lovely.

Let the Pampering Begin 
One of the gently smiling female staff members led me to a softly-lit room containing a massage table and a metal and wood clothing valet. I was instructed to remove my clothes (you mean all of them?!), and crawl under the sheet, and she would return in a few minutes when I was ready. I did as I was told, placing my clothes on the hangers provided, and in a sudden fit of modesty, stuffed my underwear in the pocket of my jeans. There are some things you just don’t share with strangers under any circumstances.

I crawled under the sheet front side down, and placed my face on a sort of padded doughnut. To my pleasant surprise, instead of a view of the bare floor, I looked down into a bowl of floating orchids. (Kornsuang later informed me that it’s a bowl of fish in the daytime, orchids at night.) She had thought of everything.

After a gentle knock and with my grunt of permission, my therapist re-entered the room with a little dish of “revitalizing seaweed scrub”, and started rubbing it on with a cloth, exposing isolated bits of me as necessary and covering them again with the sheet when it was time to move on. The purpose of this exercise was to detoxify, remove dead skin, soothe, and increase the elasticity of my skin. Maybe so, but the main thing is it feels great. This went on for about 40 minutes, (involving a slightly tricky and embarrassing interlude of turning over without dropping the sheet and exposing my ugly bits for all to see.)

Boiled in Oil
When this was complete, I was wrapped in a plush robe and led to the hydrotherapy bath – a frothing hot tub of pulsating massage jets, coursing with salts, topped with fragrant bubbles and surrounded by aromatic candles. I lowered myself in with a few pained “oohs!” and “ahhs!”, and once submerged, was handed a remote control enabling the selection of various massage patterns and adjustment of the water’s rather steeping temperature.

I was left to my massage-surfing for an intense half-hour of water jets urging me to let go of the week’s tensions while the heat opened my pores as wide as mine shafts, allowing the evacuation of toxic substances accumulated over two decades of misspent youth. I briefly feared that if all the toxins were removed, there’d be precious little left of me, but as it worked out, I emerged from the water a distinctly pinker, sweatier and I believe marginally healthier man.

Getting Rubbed the Right Way
After my heart slowed down a bit, I was once again led to the massage table and resumed the prone position as the young woman who had scrubbed me earlier now applied a heady mixture of grapeseed, safflower and jojoba oils laced with the essential oils of lavender, tea tree, juniper and marjoram.This was definitely the best bit of the evening’s ministrations, partially because it made me smell like a Bombay gin martini.

If I may wax on for a bit, the benefits of oil massage are myriad. The main thing is that well-guarded secrets are revealed to you about your own body. The therapist’s skilled hands seek and destroy ropes of muscular tension that you didn’t know you had accumulated, and knead them away into oblivion. Not only that, the very laying on of hands provides the welcome service of defining your physical boundaries – where the outside world stops and you begin, if that makes any sense. It was over all too soon, and yet, I don’t know if I could have stood another minute of such bliss.

A New Man
I lay on the table gathering my diffused wits for a full five minutes before summoning my limbs to action, pulling my underwear from its hiding place and getting dressed. Heading downstairs, Kornsuang greeted me with a cup of rather tasty herbal tea and asked me how I felt. I was positively helpless from the physical attentions, and could barely recall my name. “Ask me tomorrow,” I said, “I don’t really know.” The fact was, I actually felt great -- it’s just that the world of the grappling intellect that is responsible for articulating these things had faded into unimportance.

So there you have it. At no time during the whole process did I feel my masculinity was under threat. I admit that for at least an hour afterwards, I was in no state to pick a fight, mow a lawn or build a sailboat, but that is a small price to pay. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that were world leaders forced to indulge in a regular course of such treatments, fewer bombs would be deemed necessary in the course of interntional diplomacy.