I’m generally an anxious, high-strung person, so the idea of getting a great massage has always appealed to me.  Unfortunately, I’m way too cheap to pay more than $20 for one, so it’s likely no coincidence that all my massage experiences have left me even more tense than I was before I went in.  My first massage was at the famed Hotel Gellert in Budapest.  It cost $3.50 and involved me being forced to first take a cold shower and to then soak buck naked in a steaming “thermal bath” with 20 buck naked, elderly Hungarian women.  When I was finally ushered to the massage room, I was placed, still buck naked, on a long metal table, where I was hosed down by one husky woman while a second scrubbed me with a bar of soap that smelled a lot like Lifeboy.

I should have learned my lesson but I didn’t.  My next massage was in Prague and cost $9.  Although, I didn’t feel as much like a bovine as I did after my Hungarian massage, this experience still left much to be desired.  For one, my Czech masseur blasted the entire Thriller album throughout the massage.  Sure, Thriller is a fantastic, culturally significant album, but appropriate for a massage?  Not really.  I returned to my youth hostel without the relaxed state I had been seeking.

My third massage was in a small Missouri town and cost $20 (an opening day special).   The problem with this experience was that my masseuse talked incessantly throughout the massage.  The topic of her blabber?  Her husband’s skin cancer scare.  Being the hypochondriac I am, I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly she had seen on my back that had made her husband’s lesions so salient to her.  Yet again, the price was right, but the massage?  Not so much.

We’re in a really nice groove right now, and I’m thoroughly loving life in China.  The first six weeks, however, were very, very stressful.  Chris and I both suffered from physical effects of this stress.  Chris developed a nasty case of shingles.  As for me,  my back muscles became so knotted that I began to look like I should be shuffling around a bell tower in a Parisian cathedral.  I decided to take care of my problem by visiting a local massage parlor.  One of my tour books describes the place I picked out as “the massage destination for the budget-conscious international student.”  Why haven’t I learned that BUDGET + MASSAGE = REGRET?

When I arrived at the massage parlor, I was met at the door by my masseur, who showed me to my room.  There, he gave me a plastic cup of water, some beef jerky, and a blue paper outfit to wear.  He then left the room for me to undress.  Here’s what the room looked like.

I know, it’s a little seedy looking.  I still had hope, though.

The massage began with a rather long forehead massage.  So far, so good.  From there, the masseur moved to my ears and proceeded to give me what amounted to a three minute wet willy (sans the spit).  One China expert I know suggested that the masseur was trying to release my chi with those ear canal shenanigans.  As a Westerner, ignorant to all things chi, I can’t say to what extent my chi was liberated, but I can report that I thoroughly washed my ears soon after returning home.

Next came the abdominal massage.  I’m pretty sure my masseur learned his technique for this part of the massage from the postpartum nurses demons I was assigned after the birth of P and Wee P.  It hurt!  According to my friend Patti, it’s believed that massaging the abdomen in a clockwise direction helps with diarrhea, whereas a counter-clockwise direction helps with constipation.  Since my masseur and I couldn’t communicate, and he couldn’t ask me about the state of my bowels,  I guess he decided to play it safe – he massaged mine in both directions.  Bonus.

There was no Thriller this time, but there was a TV.  I guess there was nothing good on at that time of day, because my masseur channel surfed much of the hour.

It seems I accidentally agreed to get a pedicure at some point, because in the middle of the massage, a small man dressed in a white lab coat entered the room wearing a face mask and carrying a old-fashioned, red doctor’s bag.  He took a look at my feet, said, “bu hou” (not good) and proceeded to use a chisel to cut my toenails down to the quick.  I shouldn’t complain much.  I think I needed this treatment, as my feet had started to remind me of something I had recently seen at a supermarket.

I’m just glad I didn’t accidentally agree to the treatment I’ve marked with a white arrow on the menu below.

When I came home and told Chris that I could have had a renal massage, he said, “You mean, like, your butt?  Is that legal here?”  “A REEnal massage,” I replied,  “You know, like, your kidneys.”  Can someone please tell me what a renal massage entails?  I asked my one doctor friend, and she was as clueless as I am.

You’ll be happy to hear that I’m considering in throwing in the towel on my quest for a great discount massage.  I think I’m done.  Of course, I say that now, but we’re spending next summer in Greece, and I remember my friend Chloe telling me about getting a decent Greek massage for around 75 cents back in 1994.  We’ll see…

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