Outcall massage at Bearing
Bearing is the edge of Bangkok proper, where the city runs into Samut Prakan. It is the longest journey we make on this line and the one most worth booking ahead.
- Arrival
- 50 to 75 minutes. Book well ahead in the evening
- Hours
- 24 hours, every day
- Therapists
- Licensed, named first
- From
- THB 900, pay after
The edge of the province. Our longest run, and worth booking before you want it.
Bearing is Sukhumvit Soi 107, and it marks the point where Bangkok stops being Bangkok. A short distance east the road crosses into Samut Prakan province, and the BTS carries on past it to Samrong and beyond, but administratively and in feel this is the last of the city.
What Bearing books most
Ordered by what people here actually choose, rather than by our menu. Every one is worked on your own bed with sheets and oil the therapist brings with her.
Traditional Thai massage
Stretching and acupressure along the body's energy lines, worked through clothing without oil. Firm, and on tight muscles it can smart. Worked on your bed, so there is nothing to clear.
DetailsRelaxing oil massage
Long, even strokes with warm unscented oil. The most straightforward thing on the menu, and the one to pick if you simply want the tension gone.
DetailsDeep tissue massage
Slower and heavier than an oil massage, aimed at the knots underneath rather than the surface. Say the word at any point and she eases off.
DetailsCoconut oil massage
Cold-pressed coconut oil rather than the standard blend. Lighter on the skin, absorbs rather than sitting on top, and it is what most Thai therapists use on themselves.
DetailsAromatherapy massage
The same slow work as an oil massage, with a scented blend chosen for what you need. Lemongrass to wake up, lavender to sleep. Most people book this one at night.
DetailsOffice syndrome massage
Targeted work on the neck, shoulders and upper back for people who sit at a desk all day. The one to book if your pain has a laptop-shaped cause.
DetailsFor years Bearing was the end of the line and the district still shows it. There is a park-and-ride pattern here, a lot of surface car parking, and a commercial strip built around people arriving by car to catch a train rather than around people living on top of a station. The housing spreads outward from that in every direction and it spreads a long way.
What you get for the distance is space. This is detached house and large townhouse territory, with plots and gardens that would be unthinkable anywhere west of On Nut, and a lot of two and three generation households living in them. There are condominium blocks near the station, but they are not what defines the area.
Almost nobody here is a visitor. The bookings are residents, they are overwhelmingly Thai, and a considerable share of them are for somebody other than the person doing the booking. Older parents, in particular, are a bigger part of what we do out here than anywhere else on the line.
The one thing to be straight about is the journey. Fifty to seventy-five minutes is the honest range and it is the longest we quote in this direction. Everything on this page assumes you would rather know that in advance than be told it cheerfully and then wait.
The journey, and why booking ahead is not optional here
Everywhere else in this city, notice is a convenience. In Bearing it changes the answer. With an hour of warning we can route a therapist who is already working in the east of Bangkok, and the journey is a train ride ending in a short hop. With fifteen minutes of warning we are sending somebody from wherever she happens to be, and that may be an hour and a quarter away.
The result is that two identical bookings can have very different waits depending only on when they were made. It is the single largest variable out here and it is entirely within your control.
The evening peak makes it worse in a way that has no workaround. Sukhumvit east of Bang Na between five and seven is one of the slowest roads in the greater city, and there is no parallel route that helps. If you want a treatment at seven in the evening, the time to ask is five.
Late is dramatically better. After ten the run out here is quick and the estimate frequently beats its own bottom end. A midnight booking in Bearing is often faster in practice than a seven o clock one, which is the reverse of what most people assume.
An hour of notice out here is worth more than anything else you can do. It changes who we can send.
What a house out here means for the treatment
Bearing has the largest homes of anywhere we cover on this line, and that changes the practicalities in ways a flat never does.
Space, and what to do with it
Space stops being a constraint entirely. Traditional Thai, which is compromised in half the hotel rooms in this city, is completely unrestricted in a house out here. If you have wanted to try the floor work and never had the room, this is the district where that is not an issue.
Air conditioning
Cooling is the thing to think about instead. Larger houses out here frequently air condition the bedrooms and not the living areas, and ninety minutes of physical work in an uncooled downstairs room in April is genuinely hard going for both people. Choose the cooled room, or have a fan running before she arrives.
Stairs
Two and three storey homes are the norm and lifts are nonexistent. Say which floor the treatment is on. She is carrying oil and linen up those stairs.
The household
Multi-generation households are common and completely normal to work in. Other people being in the house does not affect anything. If you want quiet, mid-morning on a weekday is when these houses are emptiest.
What Bearing books
Traditional Thai, without the usual compromise
Traditional Thai is the clear leader here and its share is the highest of any district we cover. The customer base explains it on its own. This is an almost entirely Thai clientele, for whom the stretching is the default understanding of what a massage is rather than one option among several, and who book it at the unhurried lengths the tradition assumes rather than at the hour a hotel guest squeezes in before dinner.
Gentle oil massage for older members of the household
Straight oil massage is second and a large part of it is booked for older relatives. This is the district where we most often receive a booking made by one person for another, and for a parent in their seventies the gentle option is nearly always the right recommendation regardless of what the rest of the household books.
Deep tissue, and the driving complaint
Deep tissue arrives on weekday evenings and the cause is the car rather than the train. Almost everybody out here drives, the commute is long, and the resulting complaint sits in the lower back and hips rather than in the neck and shoulders that the BTS produces further west.
Two hours rather than one
Long treatments are the norm rather than the exception. Once somebody has waited an hour for a therapist to arrive, sixty minutes can feel like a poor trade, and the two hour session sells better in Bearing than anywhere else on our list.
Finding an address at the edge of the map
Addresses out here are harder than anywhere else we work, for reasons that have nothing to do with the district being disorganised. It is simply newer, larger and less densely labelled than inner Bangkok.
Send a pin. This is the one district where we ask for it as a matter of course rather than as a nice extra, because the written address alone frequently is not enough.
Add the estate or village name in full. Housing estates out here have names that are not always signposted from the main road, and the guard at the entrance is the person who resolves it.
Give the lane and the house number, then a physical description. Plate numbers are often faded or absent and the lanes look alike, so the colour of the gate or the tree outside genuinely does the work.
Say whether you are in Bangkok or over the Samut Prakan boundary. It makes no difference to the price and none to whether we come, but it tells the therapist which side of the line she is routing to and that saves a wrong turn.
Have somebody able to answer the phone. At this distance a missed call at the gate costs a great deal more time than it does in a Sukhumvit lobby.
Therapists who cover Bearing
Every one of them trained in Thailand and holds a Ministry of Public Health licence. You get told who is coming before they knock.
Booking for an older parent
A larger share of bookings in Bearing are arranged for somebody else than in any other district, and most of the time that somebody is an elderly parent. It is worth setting out plainly what we need, because getting this wrong matters more than getting a room number wrong.
Tell us the age and the medical picture. High blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, a joint replacement, a recent fall, heart conditions, and any blood-thinning medication. For most people over seventy we will steer away from the traditional Thai stretching whatever has been asked for, and toward a gentle oil massage worked at low pressure.
Be honest about mobility. Whether the person can get onto a bed and back up again, whether they can lie face down comfortably, and whether they need help turning over. A therapist can work at any height she needs to, or in a seated position, and knowing that in advance produces a much better hour than discovering it at the start.
Be in the house for the first booking if you can manage it. Not in the room. It makes the introduction easier, it lets somebody answer a question the therapist would otherwise guess at, and it settles a person who may never have had a massage at home before.
After the first one it generally looks after itself. A significant number of our standing weekly bookings out here began as one adult child arranging something once for a parent who then kept it going on their own.
Crossing into Samut Prakan
The provincial boundary runs just east of Bearing, and the BTS continues over it to Samrong, Pu Chao and on toward Kheha. People living on the far side often assume they are outside our range, and they are not.
We cover across the boundary on identical terms and at identical prices. What changes is only the arrival window, which extends further the deeper into Samut Prakan you are. Samrong is barely different from Bearing. Kheha is a considerably longer run and is worth booking a good while ahead.
The housing over the line is much the same as it is on this side: estates, townhouses, detached homes, and a scattering of newer condominium blocks around each station. The practicalities on this page apply equally.
If you are not sure which side of the boundary you are on, it does not matter. Send the address and a pin and we will work it out. The only reason to mention it at all is that it helps the therapist route correctly the first time.
Where Bearing sits in relation to everything else
Westward, Bearing runs back toward Udom Suk and Punnawithi, and the housing gradually returns to condominium blocks as you approach those stations. Much of what is on the Udom Suk page applies to the western half of this district.
Northward, the sois off Sukhumvit reach up toward Srinakarin and the Bang Na Trat road, an area of large commercial development, hospitals and the expressway network. There is a good deal of housing tucked behind all of it and we cover the lot.
Southward the district runs down toward the Bang Na industrial fringe and eventually the river mouth. That is a long way and a genuinely different sort of journey, and it is one of the few parts of greater Bangkok where we will occasionally quote past seventy-five minutes.
Eastward, as above, is Samut Prakan, and the line simply carries on. There is no point at which we stop; there is only a point at which the wait becomes long enough that it is worth planning around, and out here that point has already arrived.
Everywhere we go in Bearing
Find yours below. If it is not here we almost certainly still come, so send the building name and we will confirm in a minute.
Stations
- BTS Bearing
- BTS Samrong
- BTS Bang Na
- BTS Punnawithi
- BTS Udom Suk
Streets and sois
- Sukhumvit Soi 107 (Bearing)
- Soi Bearing 1 to 64
- Soi Sukhumvit 105
- Soi Sukhumvit 109
- Soi Sukhumvit 113
- Bang Na Trat Road
- Srinakarin Road
- Thepharak Road
Landmarks
- Bearing BTS park and ride
- Mega Bangna
- Central Bangna
- Imperial World Samrong
- Thai Nakarin Hospital
- Bangna Market
- Bangkok Patana School
Buildings we travel to
Listed as places we deliver to. We have no arrangement with any of them and nothing here should be read as one.
Hotels
- Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Bangkok Sukhumvit 48
- Best Western Plus Sukhumvit
Condominiums and residences
- Lumpini Ville Sukhumvit 109
- The Trust Residence
- Regent Home Bangna
- Ideo Mobi Sukhumvit Eastgate
- Baan Klang Muang
- Aspire Sukhumvit Bearing
Who books in Bearing
- Multi-generation households
- The defining group out here. Often three generations in one house, and bookings for more than one of them.
- Adult children booking for parents
- The highest share of any district we cover. Gentle oil massage at low pressure, frequently becoming a weekly slot.
- Drivers
- Long car commutes rather than train ones, producing lower back and hip complaints instead of shoulder ones.
- Two hour bookers
- Having waited an hour for arrival, most people out here would rather not be finishing sixty minutes later.
- Samut Prakan residents
- Over the provincial line at Samrong and beyond, covered on the same terms and at the same price.
Questions about Bearing
- Is Bearing too far for you to come?
- No, and neither is anywhere past it. What is true is that it is our longest run on this line at fifty to seventy-five minutes. The price does not change for the distance. The only thing that changes is how long you wait, and how much that matters depends almost entirely on how much notice you give us.
- Do you cross into Samut Prakan?
- Yes, on identical terms and at identical prices. Samrong is barely different from Bearing in practice. The further out you go toward Pu Chao and Kheha the longer the window becomes, so those are worth booking a good while ahead rather than on impulse.
- How much notice should I give?
- An hour at minimum in the evening, and more if you can. Notice matters more here than anywhere else because it determines who we can send. With warning we route somebody already working in the east of the city. Without it we send whoever is free, and she may be an hour away.
- Is traditional Thai a good choice in a house?
- It is the best district on our list for it, though not because of the rooms. We work the stretching on your bed wherever you are, so the space was never the constraint. What is different here is the appetite for it: this is where it is booked most often and at the greatest length, and the therapists who cover the district are the ones who do most of it.
- I want to book for my elderly father. What do you need to know?
- His age, any medical conditions, particularly blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis or blood-thinning medication, and how mobile he is. For most people over seventy we would recommend a gentle oil massage rather than the Thai stretching, and she can work seated in a chair if getting onto a bed and back up again is difficult.
- How do I make sure she finds the house?
- Send a pin as well as the address, which out here we ask for as standard rather than as an extra. Add the estate name in full, the lane, the house number and one physical detail such as the gate colour. Plate numbers are frequently faded and the lanes look much alike.
- Is it quicker late at night?
- Considerably, and it is the reverse of what most people expect. After ten the road out here clears and the run is quick, so a midnight booking often arrives faster than one placed at seven in the evening. If you have flexibility about the hour, late is the better choice in this district.
- Do you charge more for the distance?
- No. There is one price list for the entire city and it does not move with the postcode. Nothing is taken when you book, there is no deposit, and you pay the therapist at the end. The figure in your confirmation message is the figure she asks for.
Near Bearing
Udom Suk
Suburban Thai Bangkok. Wide roads, family houses, and almost no visitors at all.
Punnawithi
Built around True Digital Park. The one outer district with a real daytime working population of its own.
Bang Na
The exhibition centre and the malls. Trade shows fill the hotels here and nothing else does.
On Nut
The first affordable stop, and thousands of condo units stacked around one station.
Sukhumvit
The road, not a district. Fifteen kilometres of it, so the soi number decides everything.