✈️ Chiang Mai Part 3: Pan's Hands and the Miracle I Didn't See Coming

What you’ll find in this issue:

🏖️ Thailand - True Story

Pan's Hands and the Miracle I Didn't See Coming? (Part 3 of 4)

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The massage parlor wasn't what I expected.

No spa music. No luxurious robes. No cucumber water in the waiting area. Just a simple shopfront tucked between an electronics store and a noodle stall, with a hand-painted sign showing a foot and some Thai script I couldn't read.

But then, nothing in Thailand had been what I expected.

I'd asked at my condominium's front desk about a massage for leg pain. The young receptionist had written down an address and drawn a small map, insisting this was the place I needed. "Very good," she'd said. "Auntie Pan. Very strong hands."

So I found myself removing my shoes at the entrance, my weak leg throbbing after my adventures in Chiang Dao and navigating Chiang Mai's markets & sidewalks.

Pan was perhaps seventy. Tiny, barely five feet tall, with silver hair pulled back in a bun and hands that looked like they'd spent a lifetime working. She gestured for me to sit, then examined my leg with a series of prods and presses that made me wince.

She said something in Thai, shaking her head.

"Not good?" I ventured.

She waggled her hand in a so-so gesture, then pointed firmly at the massage mat.

But then, as I lay down, doubt crept in. What was I doing? I'd been to physiotherapists, even neurologists back in the UK--trained professionals with degrees and modern equipment. They'd all said the same thing: nerve damage takes time, if it heals at all. Some weakness might be permanent.

And here I was, trusting my damaged leg to a woman I could barely communicate with, in a country I'd been in for only a few days.

So I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

Pan's hands were not as gentle as her kind smile!

She worked my calf with her thumbs, finding knots I didn't know existed. I gasped. She made a satisfied sound and pressed harder. It hurt--not the sharp pain of injury, but the deep, intense ache of something locked being forced open.

She moved to my foot, manipulating each toe, pressing into the arch with what felt like supernatural precision. Then back to the leg, working up toward the knee, then the thigh.

Time became strange. I drifted in and out of awareness, caught between discomfort and something else--a sensation of things shifting, realigning, waking up.

But then she did something different.

She placed both hands on my shin, just below the knee, and held them there. Still. The pressure was firm but not painful. She closed her eyes. I could feel heat radiating from her palms--or maybe I was imagining it. The moment stretched out, suspended.

When she finally released, she patted my leg twice and said something that sounded approving.

So, I sat up, dizzy and disoriented, and tried to stand.

My leg felt... different.

Not healed--I wasn't naive enough to expect that. But different. Lighter somehow. Less like I was dragging dead weight.

I took a few experimental steps. Pan watched with her arms crossed, nodding.

"Good?" she asked in English.

"Good," I agreed, though I wasn't entirely sure what had just happened.

I paid her--the fee was absurdly cheap, maybe a tenth of what I'd paid for physiotherapy sessions back home--and she pressed a small card into my hand with the shop's details.

"You come back," she said. "Then very good."

But then I stepped outside, and the skepticism returned.

It was probably just the massage relaxing the muscles. Temporary relief. By tomorrow, everything would be back to normal--back to the familiar weakness, the compensating limp, the acceptance that this was just how things were now.

So I walked back to my apartment, trying not to get my hopes up too much.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

Not from discomfort--the opposite. My leg felt alive in a way it hadn't in two years. Tingling. Active. I kept flexing my foot, testing the strength, feeling for the familiar weakness.

It was still there. But diminished.

I told myself I was imagining it. Placebo effect. The power of suggestion combined with jet lag and the general disorientation of being in a foreign country.

But then morning came, and the feeling persisted.

I stood in the lounge of my condominium, weight on both legs equally--something I hadn't been able to do comfortably in months!

I walked to the shower room without thinking about which leg to favor. I climbed the stairs to the rooftop terrace and felt my left leg engage properly, pushing me upward instead of just going along for the ride.

I smiled to myself and felt relief & a hope I hadn’t felt in years!

My second massage session was even more intense than the first.

She seemed to know exactly where to work, as if she could see the damaged pathways beneath my skin. At one point, she pressed so hard into a spot on my calf that I actually yelped. She just laughed--a warm, grandmotherly sound--and eased off slightly.

"Pain good," she said. "Mean something wake up."

After an hour, she helped me to my feet and made me walk the length of the small room. Back and forth. She watched critically, occasionally adjusting my posture with a tap of her hand.

Then she smiled--a real, genuine smile that crinkled her whole face.

"Better," she announced. "You see? Better."

And I did see. I could feel it. The strength returning, not completely, but undeniably. Like water finding its way through a long-blocked channel.

But then she said something that surprised me.

"Not just leg," she said, tapping her chest, then her head. "Here also sick. You come Thailand, you fix everything. Not just body."

I stared at her. How could she possibly know? We'd barely exchanged a dozen words. Yet somehow, this tiny woman with strong hands had seen straight through to the truth I'd been avoiding.

I walked. Not perfectly--there was still weakness, still recovery needed. But the improvement was undeniable. I could feel muscles firing and a nerve in my left quad was tingling weirdly!

Pan nodded, pleased with her work.

"You go home England," she said. "Keep getting better.”

“But you remember--Thailand give you gift. You say thank you by living good life. Yes?"

My throat tightened unexpectedly. "Yes," I managed.

She patted my hand. "Good. Now go. Enjoy Chiang Mai. Eat good food. Not too spicy." She grinned, and I realized the receptionist must have called ahead of my arrival & told her about my first encounter with Thai spicy food!

So I left Pan's massage parlor for the last time, walking straighter than I had in two years.

But then, as I made my way through the evening streets, something else happened.

I realized I wasn't just walking differently. I was seeing differently.

The stray dogs lounging near the night market--I saw how the vendors cared for them, how they were part of the community's fabric.

The tuk-tuk drivers who'd taken me to wrong addresses--I saw their genuine efforts to help despite language barriers.

The rain-soaked market vendors--I saw their resilience, their refusal to let circumstances dictate their day.

And Som and Preecha, who'd sent a stranger into the mountains with nothing but handwritten notes and encouragement. And the woman on the scooter who'd shared the best coffee of my life. And Pan, who'd somehow known I needed healing that went deeper than nerve damage.

So I understood what Pan had really meant.

Thailand hadn't just given me back strength in my leg.

It had given me back something I'd lost long before the injury-
-a sense of possibility.

Of connection.

Of being part of something larger than my small, controlled, predictable life back in the UK.

I'd come here thinking I was too old to change. Too set in my ways. Too damaged.

But then Thailand had proven me wrong at every turn.

The question now was: what would I do with this gift?

[Read the conclusion next week in Part 4...]

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