Ong's Thai Massage School

About the school

Ong's is the best value-for-money option among the established Chiang Mai schools, and after twenty-plus years and a claimed 20,000 certificates issued it is not a fly-by-night operation. Its range is unusually broad for a mid-sized school: alongside standard northern Thai massage it teaches tok sen, stretch massage, jap sen nerve-touch work and karsai - the abdominal and groin therapy that few schools will teach openly to foreigners at all. Class sizes are small and start dates flexible rather than locked to fixed Mondays, which makes it the easiest school in Chiang Mai to fit around a travel schedule. It suits budget-conscious students, people who want to sample several modalities across a couple of weeks, and therapists hunting for specialist material like karsai or tok sen that is hard to find elsewhere. It suits less well anyone who wants a single deep lineage taught with reverence: the breadth of the menu is the point here, and depth in any one stream is your own responsibility.