Chill Belfast by Chris Hoey

15/03/2026

14/03/2026

Years ago, while I was living in Thailand the King invited the staff and students from the Wat Pho Massage School to the palace to see his famous herd of white elephants.

White elephants in Thailand are sacred creatures. Symbols of royal power.. good fortune and general national prestige.

So there I was standing in the palace grounds, moments after attempting to address the King in what I believed to be Thai, but which …judging by the sharp intake of breath from my fellow students was probably something else entirely.

Retiring quietly and with what dignity I could salvage, I turned my attention to the elephants.

They were enormous pale grey creatures with pink patches, wandering about with the serene confidence of animals that knew they outranked everyone present and I remember feeling a surprising sense of kinship with them. It had been ages since I’d been surrounded by that much white skin.

Meanwhile, my brain was conducting a frantic internal inquiry into one rather urgent question…

What the f**k did I just call the King?

13/03/2026

Tailored massage @ Chill

Many places offer a massage menu.
Deep tissue. Sports. Relaxation. Hot stone. Swedish. Thai. Aromatherapy. And a few others that sound like they were invented during a long lunch.

Menus are useful. They give beginners a structure and help people pick something that sounds about right.

After a few decades in the craft though, something changes.

You stop thinking in styles.
You start thinking in people.

Bodies rarely fit neatly into categories. A shoulder that’s been arguing with a laptop all week doesn’t really care what the treatment is called.

So instead of pulling a routine from a menu, the session starts with a quick conversation and a look at what’s actually going on.

Then the tools come out.
Pressure, stretching, heat, slower work, deeper work, whatever helps on the day.

No rigid routine. No fixed style.

Tailor made for you.

12/03/2026

10/03/2026

09/03/2026

British Club, Bangkok, 1991

A wee memory from Bangkok, 1991, back when I was working for a diamond cutting company to keep myself afloat while I stayed in Thailand learning massage.
For reasons that still escape me, I ended up as a member of the British Club … a colonial relic stuffed with middle to upper class expats who behaved like the Empire had only stepped out for a smoke.

The caption in their magazine summed it up beautifully:

“Christopher Hoey managed to avoid me.” …

08/03/2026

100%

07/03/2026

Mama Lek

I was fortunate to spend several years learning from an extraordinary woman known to everyone simply as Mama Lek.

At the time I was based in Bangkok studying at Wat Pho temple. Every month I would travel north to Chiang Mai to spend time training with her. Bangkok offered the temple and institutional perspective on the craft, but in the north there was still a strong village tradition. Visiting Mama Lek allowed me to touch base with that older way of working and to experience a slightly different perspective on the art.

Lek Chaiya came from the mountains north of Chiang Mai, from the village of Jom Thong. Her first teacher was her mother, who had learned from her own mother before that. In that part of Thailand massage, herbal medicine and midwifery were not separate professions. They were simply part of village life. Knowledge passed quietly from one generation of women to the next.

Mama Lek continued her studies throughout Northern Thailand and became a master of J*p Sen, a powerful regional style of Thai massage known for its depth and precision. She later became head of the massage clinic at Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai and was recognised as a lineage holder of the J*p Sen tradition.

She eventually opened her own school and clinic in the centre of Chiang Mai, where she treated difficult and often debilitating conditions. Her skill and dedication earned her national recognition, and she was invited by the Traditional Thai Medicine Association in Bangkok to teach prenatal and postnatal massage.

Mama Lek was small in stature but formidable in practice. Calm, practical and deeply skilled. The sort of practitioner who didn’t need to talk much because the work spoke for itself.

I feel very fortunate to have spent time learning beside her.

In this craft we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Mama Lek was one of the giants.

06/03/2026

06/03/2026

University Street.