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When I first started, there was no guarantee that there would be a massage where I was going. It could be just a prank, so I was always nervous and kept my fingers crossed that the client would show up. I had a love hotel by the hour in D5 that I used quite often. Before a massage, I would call them and book a time and wait for clients in its  lobby without checking in the room first just in case if they backed out, I wouldn’t have to pay for it. Quite a few times, a client cancelled after I booked a room but I just needed to call the hotel and cancelled the reservation. All the staff knew me, and I got a couple of bottles of water and good rooms after some time. I just needed to say my number and they knew it was me calling them. Then the hotel got busier and the owner opened a second and a third one; the usual staff were transferred to new locations; I lost my privileges, so I started to look into new places after trying out different theme rooms (classroom, Egyptian room, Chinese room, etc.) in one of the new chains. For love bird hotels, if you book after 10 PM, you have to pay for the whole night, and naturally it’s a bit cheaper than a full rate. I sometimes stayed in the hotel; sometimes I came home depending on how late it was and how I felt that night. When I first started, I felt quite embarrassed entering a hotel and answering questions posed by receptionist. One would assume that the sole purpose of a visit paid by a woman to a man’s room is more often than not related to sex. Since Vietnam was quite strict on late hour visits and is still tough on unmarried people staying together, hotel staff scrutinized all female guests thinking that most female visitors are hookers of some sorts. Then I got over it by thinking that I had nothing to hide; it’s a service and it’s an art actually. I started to walk about as I owned the place. I also got better at sneaking in and out five-star hotels. The bigger the hotel is, the easier for me to visit clients’ room without going through the reception. I could always meet a client in the basement and ride the elevator together with him, or I could meet him at the entrance of a swimming pool or at a lounge, a bar and have a drink with him before going up to his room. I have never had to register my name at the reception in big hotels (Sheraton, Park Hyatt, Caravelle, Nikko, Reverie, Le Meridien, Pullman, Rex, Hotel Des Arts, The Myst, Majestic, Intercontinental, New World) except for Novotel and Renaissance. For the latter, I entered the client’s room without a hitch then he received a phone call from the reception to ask me to go back down to enter my name into their database. It turned out that they saw us on camera; my client promised to leave my name on the way out, but we never did. Novotel was a different story. There’s a guard in front of a glass door and there’s no way you can sneak in unless you can get a go- ahead from the front desk. Later on, when I couldn’t escape the reception anymore, leaving my ID was part of the job. I could understand why the law makes it that way; it is to protect the guests in case visitors are thieves. When I was in BKK, I told the receptionist to take down every guest’s ID before sending him up my room. Also, when I was in BKK, I let my guard down one time. A client came to pick me up in the middle of the night to take me to his fancy apartment in downtown for a training session. All I remember was there were maybe 4 apartments on each floor and he never locked his doors since he told me that he trusted his neighbor. There was a vespa in his apartment as a decoration. I didn’t know how he got it up there, but money might have found a way. Then Airbnb got my attention. I love going to people’s houses and looked at their decorations, their layout and tastes in art to get some inspirations and ideas for my future home. I combed through hundreds of Airbnb, hotels in my free time and saved them under my favorites, cities, districts, different massage packages. I have to say I have a quite exhaustive lists of nice Airbnb apartments and hotels to choose from for any purposes. I usually read the reviews written by other guests, examine the ratings and see which criterion gets the highest score; additionally, I look at the photos, the room size, its location on the map and what is offered together with the room, whether there is private parking or parking nearby, the wall color, the lighting, any unusual features. I became more sophisticated in room requirements rather than in personality. The first year into Sheila’s Approach massage training where I offered free practice on me if clients didn’t have a partner; lots of clients weren’t sold by the idea since when they looked at me in ordinary clothes and no make-up, they saw a pretty plain Jane. After they had sessions with me, they were all surprised since I looked different naked and always questioned the motive behind my action. I told them it’s a skill service not a beauty contest; the fact that I looked good was a bonus not a selling point. Also, people always love a nice surprise not a disappointment. One of the most memorable experience was the first session with a Brazilian in Majestic hotel; when the client saw me put on clothes the first time, he burst into laughing because he had never seen a girl wearing grandma’s underwear type. I hadn’t known what I was wearing was called grandma’s underwear till then. What an embarrasing moment. I have countless of such stories to tell but they will be the topic for another post.