One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble

After a few days in the heat, and with beauty-salon touts papering our sticky bodies with flyers, Nazma decided we should go for facials. Now before the more manly readers out there start their lambasting let me tell you: it was feeling like my pores were soaking up every diesel fume in Bangkok; plus the idea of lying on a cushy table in air-con for 45 minutes sounded pretty good. In any case, I didn't put up too spirited a resistance.

Being a first-timer to this, I had no idea what to expect, while girls apparently are born with the knowledge from the womb. This is the only explanation for why Nazma failed to warn me of what was about to happen.

So you close your eyes, relinquishing all control, and they proceed to lull you into this false sense of security, right. They rub your face down with all these lotions etc. Then they stick this wand in your face and give you a good steam. Everything's going swimmingly for the first half hour, and I'm actually foolish enough to think I might make it out of this alive.

Then, with my eyes still closed, the lady starts going at my face with what can only be a dental pick. It was seriously like Marathon Man on my face. Or one of those garden forks they use for weeding. Holy crap.

I later learned that the stabbings were her picking out blackheads: mining for black gold, as it were. Since I don't have any blackheads, I can only surmise she decided to go prospecting all over my big stupid face. Note to manly readers: I didn't let out a whimper.

By now my futile writhing has left a Lloyd-shaped sweat stain on their nice clean table. Then. as if to make up for their assault, they start laying cucumber on my beleaguered visage, as they do at the finest buffet restaurants. Then they left me, laying there with the salad wilting on my face, contemplating how I was going to blog all this.

After all this, sure, I might look like a month or two younger, but I've aged about 40 years from the harrowing experience. On top of that, Nazma jokes that they might charge me extra for my extra-big face. Now wouldn't that have been the icing on the cake? Well, they didn't, so I suppose I got value for money. Cold comfort as I nursed my wounded pores all the way back to the hotel.