No Cameras Allowed: Part 4

Jeez, this is the longest part-series-post I’ve ever done. Well, a lot happened on Saturday, I guess.

After escaping David’s oily clutches, I decided to ensure he wouldn’t be following me by going straight to a bathhouse. (Traditional bath houses are segregated according to sexes. So unless he was willing to hang out in the lobby for 2+ hours–something I wouldn’t entirely put past him in retrospect–he couldn’t follow me back to my hostel.)

Now the bathhouse recommended to me by the front desk lady was a tiny hole in the wall directly across from the police department. Most definitely not a place for the typical tourist, because the more anglicized gentleman who ran the desk in the morning gently but insistently recommended against going there.

Here’s why.

As the night desk lady so delightfully put it: “You go nak!”

Me: Uhm, naked?

Her: Yes! (Her overall enthusiasm was more than this particular conversation usually warrants.)

Me: Oh. Okay.

Her: You not mind?! (She was kinda like talking to Princess Peach.)

Me: Nope, I’m cool.

Her: Oh! Okay! So surprising! (I’m serious. Princess Peach ran the night desk at my hostel.)

She gave me a coupon for a free bath, and that sealed the deal. Traditional Japanese bath house. Technically everyone’s naked, but I’ve seen movies. People wear those little white towels like mini-sarongs. You only actually get naked when you’re in the steaming pool or if you’re rinsing off at the end. Pretty sure I can handle that.

I rocked up, still feeling a bit dodgy from my near-boyfriend encounter, and was admitted to the bath house no trouble. I was half worried that they wouldn’t admit me, or would make a fuss at least, because I was a laowai.

I shouldered my way through a heavy wood door, then a cloth curtain split down the middle.

The mists parted to reveal…

…at least a dozen fifty to seventy-year-old Chinese women, butt naked.

The only towels visible were wrapped around their heads. Women sat alongside the pools, not bothering to modestly fold their legs. One particular woman of considerable girth sat like a sumo wrestler, robust thighs spread into the splits, her meaty hands braced on each leg. If she’d been forty years younger, she would have looked like she was about to give birth. Her most formidable feature was a scowl and the gargantuan clip holding a mountain of hair and towel on her head like a raja’s turban.

I timidly began to strip and kept one eye on her.

There were three pools. Boiling hot. Deathly hot. Freezing cold.

I wandered aimlessly around between all three before one ĀyÍ (aunty) decided that I needed to be taken in hand. She unleashed her kung-fu Iron Tiger Grip and pulled me into the Deathly hot pool. A fountain of instructions followed which I attempted to comprehend and mostly failed miserably. Something about five minutes and drink water and something, something, something else at a hundred miles an hour.

Grabbing my arm again, she dragged me up out of Deathly hot into Freezing cold. Lots of tongue clucking and insisting that I should drink more water. Repeat last instructions. Obivously my ‘un-un-un’ (yes, yes, yes) were not convincing her.

Towed out of Freezing cold into Boiling hot. Instructions shifted to washing myself off after all of this was through. Something about hair and shampoo and towels. I think she was concerned that I didn’t have a towel on my head.

Over to the squatting stools and rinsing spigots. She stood over me as I rinsed until finally, dissatisfied with the job I was doing, she began scrubbing my back herself. Someone poured shampoo into my hands, so I dutifully began scrubbing my head. At this point there were at least three or four Chinese ĀyÍ clucking, tut-tutting, and throwing in bits of advice, how I should scrub my skin, admonitions to drink more water, etc, etc.

While I rinsed again, my ĀyÍ dried off, dressed, and headed out.

I finished a bit slower as the other ladies doubtfully eyed my shorts and subsequent bare legs. Luckily no one insisted I wear their pants to prevent my death by cold calves.

Waving goodbye, I said, “Xie-xie!” And “Zaijian!”

They all waved back. “Bye-bye!”

Priceless.

No sooner had I gained to front doors, however, then there was my ĀyÍ sitting on a bench. She leaped up with a “Aiiiii!” (Now I know why the Chinese for aunt is ĀyÍ.) Iron Tiger Grip on my arm again and back into the building. Straight to a tiny room with blow driers.

Clearly I was not going to escape the building with a wet head.