Day 2

So I got my first foot massage today. Since my parents purchased a private tour package for the four of us, most of our itinerary is planned by the tour company. They provide the translator/guide, choose the restaurants and recommend destinations for us to go to, set up our hotel and transportation. It's a pretty sweet deal when you can't speak the language and don't know the area. For the tour company, they get to guarantee restaurants and destination sites some business from their clientelle and in return, get some pretty awesome discounts. I totally understand the 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch your's mentality. We had a pretty excellent lunch at this herbal restaurant which also happened to be right next door to a medicinal herbal center where we were scheduled to have our foot massage.

When we walked into the place, they had pictures posted on the wall of all these famous/important people that had frequented the place including the last 8 emperors of China and chairman Mao. They lead us upstairs into a side room and sit us down on some chinese grandma furniture. Some people walk in and set down some tubs full of what looks like steaming soy sauce in front of each of us. They tell us to take our shoes and socks off and to soak our feet in it as a guy in a white medical coat walks in. He begins to tell us about the benefits of holistic medicine as the room empties, but completely in cantonese. So I'm kind of throwing looks over to my grandma and my mom while this guy is talking and I'm trying to guess what this guy is saying through an intense game of charades. Half way through the lecture, I look at my grandma and she leans over to me and says to me 'I don't understand what he's saying'.

When he finishes his spiel, the soy water marinade is starting to get cold and he walks outside. Our masseuses walk in. They're all in matching track suit uniforms with official looking badges. One of the girls was almost as big as I was and I kind of breathed a little sigh of relief when she went to work on my dad. My grandma and I got the two smaller girls. As they dry off one foot and begin the massage, that's when a translator and a man they referred to as 'the professor' walk in and they really go to work on my dad. They begin talking about how if you have any health problems that the 'professor' can help solve them. He looks at my dad and is saying how he needs medicine for high blood pressure and things to cleanse his kidneys and liver, and this is all from less than five minutes of just looking at him.

Meanwhile my masseuse has been working on my foot and whispering to my grandma's masseuse. I can only assume they were talking about me cus they begin to try to talk to me and quickly figure out that I have no idea what they're saying. Eventually I work out they asking me how old I am, and I'm trying to remember my numbers in mandarin, but just resort to counting on my fingers instead to say 'two nine'. They respond with a 'So old!' which I guess is one of the few things they know how to say. They hold up their fingers 'one eight' and I'm just like 'holy crap their young'. I just wish I knew how to say that in Chinese.

The professor and the translator, who really seemed more like a saleswoman at this point, are still trying to sell my dad on some herbal medicine which eventually comes out to being over a thousand bucks $US. I'm just thinking holy shit that's expensive. My dad's not really the best at resisting sales pitches and he asks my mom and me for advice. I'm just like 'It's up to you dad' and my mom says 'I'm telling you, anyone can sell you anything'. I think my dad was a little peeved by that and eventually tells them no and that's just about when our massage stops. He still manages to make some balloons for the masseuses before they leave with all smiles, and you can even see a group of girls outside the room's door looking in on the balloons.

This wasn't the first time anyone's really pushed a sale on us before. There're tons of dudes outside that are trying to entice tourists with promises of expensive bags and purses. And I don't really blame our guide for taking us to what really came down to a sales pitch, since after we leave, he'll still have to deal with these restaurants and massage parlors. I just kind of find it funny that we ended up in a place with a snake oil salesman who literally was trying to sell us snake oil.