What to wear for a massage?

Thai massage: dressed, and loose

Shorts or soft trousers and a t-shirt. Anything you would be comfortable sitting cross-legged in is right, and anything with a stiff waistband or a zip in an awkward place is not.

Jeans are the one genuine problem. They do not let a knee bend fully or a hip rotate, which removes about a third of the treatment, and no amount of skill on the therapist's part works around them.

Belts, watches and anything in your pockets come off. So does a hard bra fastening if you are lying face down for any length of time, though a soft one is fine.

UNESCO's description of Nuad Thai as performed on a clothed recipient is the tradition rather than a modesty convention, and it is why the treatment travels so easily into someone's living room.

Oil treatments: underwear and a towel

Undress to your underwear and get under the towel. There is no expectation beyond that and there is no version of this where you need to be uncovered.

Draping is the term for how the towel is handled: only the part being worked is exposed, and the rest of you stays covered throughout. A therapist will fold and tuck as she moves, and you should never be lying uncovered waiting for the next section.

The therapist will leave the room or turn away while you get under the towel, and the same at the end. That is standard and you should not have to ask for it.

If at any point the draping feels wrong, say so immediately. It is not an awkward thing to raise and a professional will correct it without a word of discussion.

Deep tissue and office syndrome

Both use oil, so the same underwear-and-towel arrangement applies. Office syndrome in particular is worked on the upper back, shoulders and neck, so the towel spends most of the hour below shoulder level.

If you would rather stay clothed for a shoulder treatment, it can be worked through a t-shirt, though the strokes are less precise and the therapist cannot see what she is working on.

For a foot treatment you stay fully dressed and simply roll trousers up to the knee. It is the one treatment you can take in a chair with a laptop open, though the whole point is rather lost that way.

What to take off

Jewellery, watches and anything that will press into you when you are lying on it. Rings are the exception and can usually stay on unless the hands are being worked.

Contact lenses if you are likely to fall asleep, which for an oil treatment is more likely than not.

Hair up, especially for an oil massage. Getting oil out of long hair afterwards is the single most common complaint and it is entirely avoidable.

Everything out of pockets before a Thai massage. A phone in a back pocket becomes obvious the moment somebody kneels beside you.

What the therapist brings and wears

She brings her own uniform and changes if she has travelled in something else. She brings the sheet, the towels and the oils, and she takes all of it away.

Nothing about her arrival requires anything from you beyond the room. There is no equipment to plug in and no water to boil.

The professional standard she is working to is a real thing rather than a slogan. WHO published reference training benchmarks for Nuad Thai in 2010, and it is the framework the better training schools in Thailand teach against.

If anything about the setup feels unprofessional, that is information. A therapist who arrives without a sheet for an oil treatment has told you something.

Comfort, temperature and the small stuff

Bring a spare t-shirt if you are having a Thai massage in the afternoon. You will be moved around a good deal and the room will feel warmer than it did when you sat down.

Have something to put on afterwards that you do not mind getting a little oil on. Loose and dark is the practical answer for an evening treatment.

Shower before rather than after if you can. It relaxes the tissue and it means the massage is the last thing that happens rather than the second to last.

None of this is strict. A therapist has worked with every combination of clothing and room in this city, and the only genuinely unhelpful thing in the whole list is denim.