Three naked men

Corbett | August 6, 2006 8:54 PM

My friend Tony and I were sitting at a folding table by this cool little park back behind the Asia Hotel near the center of town, having some tasty lamb kebobs and cold dishes with a good amount of beer. We both share an affinity for down market food and hangouts, and it was a good people watching alley. Young fashionistas strutting by, guys with their Beijing bellies hanging out, kids running around, people with their pants legs rolled up.

I mentioned this down market bath house I went to for my first cuo zhao, which can only be described as a complete loofa scrub down by some skinny guy in red underwear. They scrub all the dirt and skin off of you, head to toe, so you get sort of an idea what a dog feels like when they get washed. It's definitely not for the sheepish Westerner because the ole string and nuggets do get moved around a bit.

We decided it might be a good night to do the bath thing again, so I called Sean my Beijing colleague, who enjoys a good soak as well to join us. He mentioned the newly opened collosal Las Vegas style "Apartment No. 8" in Chao Yang Park across from the apartments we operate. This place from the outside looks part missle launch, part mausoleum, part Liberace-played-here-once. We're talking seven floors of luxury, a line of Mercedes out front, a disco palace next door, and a lot of neon.

Most up market service industries in China will make sure there is a large foyer with flowers, a dozen women in ball room gowns, a hotel style reception counter, chandeliers, flat screen TVs, and valet parking. This applies to KTVs as well as seafood restaurants. Apartment No. 8 was no different, and we were ushered to the left (being co-ed, women are ushered to the right), were issued these cool magnetic electronic locker key wrist bands, disrobed, and headed for the water. We all gasped in awe at the same time when we walked into the bath area as it's about six stories high, laid out in a Fantasy Island motif, a half dozen large pools with bridges, fauna, sitting areas, cascading waterfalls, and a ceiling with laser light stars that change colors. The only thing it was missing was Xena the Amazon warrior princess.

The steam room was this unusual egg shaped room, enclosed in a circular glass room, and tiled in red mosaic, which looked to me like a huge tiled penis trapped in a large suction device. The sauna was an enormous beautifully laid out pine carved room large enough to hold thirty naked sweating men, with a 2 meter wide heat factory/stone fireplace in the middle, and a large overhead ceiling shower. It had a fantastic wood smell and was hot as hell. The wide bay windows overlooked the entire weird futuristic jungle world before us.

The pools were all super clean, lots of cool jet shower devices, my favorite being the head to toe overhead jungle rain machine. You lie face down on a slab of granite, and overhead a 2 meter long shower tube jets a cascade of water onto your back. Very cool, and I did this many times.

After we were completely soaked, we went into the scrubbing area where a team of scrubbers waited to get busy. I chose the salt milk scrub which was sort of a combination of sea salt and coconut milk, and let the skinny guy in the underwear get to work. An hour later your skin is silky smooth, and you feel as fresh as a new born baby.

We then donned our Roman tunics and went into the grand dining room, a palacial 5-star hotel domed dining area with plush carpet, a full buffet, and about forty tables of freshly soaked bathers scarfing down food and beers. I passed on the buffet, carefully navigating past the silk worms, and grabbed a seat next to the entertainment. In the middle of the room was a young woman on a round elevated stage, wearing a white Cinderella gown, playing Debussy on the piano. We were the only people listening to her, and I commented on having played some tough gigs before, but never played a bath house buffet before. Tony told me that Barbara Streisand was discovered playing a gay bath house in New York, which generated some good back and forth discussion about whether this young woman had aspirations of being a star. Sean was convinced we could live for a month in one of these places, never having to leave, and Tony said we should think about doing a reality TV style blog about living in a bath house for a month, since they also offered free internet access. By this time, we had had plenty of beer and were totally soaked out. It was already nearly three in the morning, and we hadn't even explored the other four floors.

On the way out we asked about their VIP membership (another must have item for any Chinese service establishment), which was RMB10,000. I wonder how many of my friends have a VIP bath membership. Something to consider...

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (2)

Comments

---

cyn

August 9, 2006 6:17 AM

i love a guy who can enjoy
the spa. what is 10k rmb
in american dollars?

---

corbett

August 11, 2006 1:39 AM

RMB10,000 is USD$1250.

---

Add a comment

---

---

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.