Every so often my dear ol’ wife will come across an online coupon for a meal or a movie or a store that we check out. This has gotten a lot more prevelant with the rise of Groupon and, especially in Thailand, Ensogo. She recently came across a deal on something called a salt cave – indeed, it’s name is literally the Salt Cave. Bangkok is a city with no lack of trendy, often goofy fads, fashions and manias, and I figured this was one of them. Go and sit in a room full of salt…sure, why not, it’ll be a laugh. But I did a bit of research online and, whaddya know, it’s an actual thing! So, putting my cynicism aside, we went to the Salt Cave to sit and breathe the salty air.
Apparently, people have been hanging out in salt mines for thousands of years and many have sworn by the efficacy of the treatment. Well, I hesitate to use the word ‘treatment’ as you literally just sit there and do nothing while you breathe, but apparently the tiny salt particles in the air go inside your lungs and absorb mucous and all kinds of nasty things so you can easily spit it out onto the ground if you’re Chinese.
The lobby.
So off we went to Sukhumvit soi 39 to the Salt Cave, where we were given a package containing a robe, little cloth booties, and a shower cap. For obvious reasons if you see my header, I didn’t need the shower cap, but we donned the other gear and headed inside the cave.
Back that booty up.
At least their advertising was legitimate – it was literally a cave of salt. The floor had a few inches of loose salt on it and felt much like walking on a beach. The walls were somehow lined with a thick coating of the stuff too, and the air (which is apparently infused with tiny salt particles) felt…greasy but dry, if you can imagine that. Three chairs awaited us inside, so we sat down and…well, that’s about it.
The Cave.
There isn’t a hell of a lot to do in the Salt Cave except sit and breathe. I played with my phone for a while but soon noticed it felt like a fine dust was starting to collect on the screen. Probably not a worry, I mean, it was almost too fine to notice, but it was there. So I put the phone away and was just left alone with my thoughts for a few hours which, let’s be honest, isn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.
Nice And CLean (see what I did there? No? Capital N, A, CL? NaCl? It’s the chemical formula for salt!)
After our two hours were up, we gave back our gear, breathed deeply and went home. They say it takes multiple visits to get any real effects, of course, and it wasn’t like a single visit would have any huge effects anyway. I didn’t feel any different, but I didn’t feel any worse, so that’s something I guess. Personally, it didn’t do anything for me, but then again there are legions of people who swear they can remove my negative energy by plucking it out of my aura…maybe I’m just not not tuned that way.
One story I read during WW2 had a makeshift hospital set up in some old salt mines which turns out ot be pretty much the perrfect environment – bacteria/virii/fungi can't grow on salt so it acted as a natural hospital wide disinfectant.
So maybe you could book the salt 'cave' next time you required an operation?
They have Groupon there now? Welcome to weekends spent doing things for the reason of "because I have a Groupon".