Rituals
Boreh, lulur or massage: choosing your first ritual
Three names you will see on every spa menu in Bali, doing three completely different things. A plain guide to which one your body is actually asking for.
Spa menus in Bali list boreh, lulur and massage side by side as though they were interchangeable lengths of the same thing. They are not. One warms, one polishes, one releases. Booking the wrong one is the most common way a first spa visit disappoints.
Boreh — for cold, ache and fatigue
Boreh is a warming paste of clove, ginger, galangal, cinnamon and rice powder, pressed into the body and left to work. It was a farmers' remedy long before it was a spa treatment: something you did after days in wet rice fields, when the cold had settled into the joints.
It heats. Noticeably. Most people feel it build for ten minutes and then flatten into a deep, even warmth. Book it if you ache, if you have been in air conditioning for a week, if you are fighting something off, or if rain has been coming down for three days. Do not book it if you overheat easily or are already sunburnt.
Lulur — for skin
Lulur is a scrub — turmeric, rice, sandalwood — that came out of Javanese palace tradition, where brides were polished for weeks before a wedding. It exfoliates and brightens, and it is usually followed by a yoghurt or coconut application and a soak.
Book it for skin that has taken salt water, sun and sand for a fortnight. Do not expect it to touch muscular tension; it is not trying to.
Massage — for tension
If what you actually have is a knot, a stiff neck or a lower back that has been in a plane seat, you want the massage, and specifically you want to say how firm you like it. Traditional Balinese work is medium and flowing. Deep tissue along the urat lines is firmer and more specific.
A simple way to choose
- I ache all over and feel run down — boreh.
- My skin looks tired and feels rough — lulur.
- One specific place hurts — deep tissue massage.
- I am tense but cannot point at where — Balinese aromatherapy massage.
- I have four hours and want all of it — a half-day package, in that order: scrub, soak, massage.
And if you are still unsure when you arrive, say so. Ten minutes of body reading before anything starts exists precisely for this, and the ritual can still be changed at that point.
