Lao Saunas

Laos wouldn’t seem the most obvious place for a sauna, particularly not in the lowlands, during dry season, but after a pedicure from doctor fish in Cambodia, and a dose of Vietnamese nail art in Hue, a traditional Lao herbal sauna seemed like a great thing to do on a quiet afternoon in peaceful Savannakhet.

Z loves Finnish saunas, scampering from the dry, pine-scented heat into the snow, making angels in the snow with his arms and legs, then rushing back into the heat. So he was keen to experience the Lao version.

It’s strange how cultures from Ancient Rome to pre-colonial America, via Scandinavia, Russia and, yes, South-East Asia, have all evolved their own take on the steambath.

There’s a tradition among Lao women of using herbal steambaths and coffee scrubs to cleanse and lighten their skin. So we stopped at a little beauty place on Savannakhet’s main drag, run out of the back of her home by a young mum who’d studied English in Vientiane and sauna in Thailand.

I changed into a traditional print sampot, the wide tube skirt that you can knot around the waist or, in this instance, above the breasts; Z wore an appropriately miniature (and very sweet) check sarong.

We drank a traditional, deep red, herbal tea, which is supposed to strengthen the blood, on benches in the open air, then stepped out of the sunlight into a dense wall of steam, rich with lemongrass, ginger, mint, basil, bamboo, and forest leaves and roots.

The scent itself is cleansing, cooling the heat of the steam on the lungs and the skin, so much so that it’s surprising how fast the sweat begins to flow. It’s such an intense heat that even 30-odd degrees of bright sunshine feels like stepping out into the cool, and the bamboo slats feel smooth against the skin.

At the heart of the art of the sauna is the contrast between heat and cold. And here the Lao-style coffee scrub comes into its own. Ice-cold coffee grounds smeared on hot, sweaty skin provides a really sweet, sharp shock, even before you get to the luxurious massage-cum-scrub.

Star of the show for Z was, I think, a Western-style honey and yoghurt face mask, which he, essentially, ate. For me, it was returning to the sauna, coated in gritty grounds, and scrubbing away in the steamy heat, then finishing the cleanse with a cold power-shower (courtesy of my offspring).

As Z said, “If only you could make snow angels after the coffee scrub, it would be perfect.”