After having lunch with our host family Friday afternoon, I expressed my desire to get a Chinese massage. Immediately afterward, they took me to a massage parlor downtown. $10 for a 70 minute full body massage? Don't mind if I do!
They left me with a guy who took me back to my little room, he pinched his shirt and shook it up and down a little bit, supposedly motioning me to undress. He closed the door to give me privacy and I did just that. Only thing was, there were no sheets on the bed, and no towel. But there was this big brown blanket. So I thought, "Maybe they just don't use sheets here. Unsanitary, but whatever. And I guess I'll lie down and put this big brown blanket over my butt and wait for the masseuse."
And so I did. But when the lady came in, she looked surprised. She started talking to me in Chinese, and of course I had no idea what she was saying. God, what did I do wrong now? So I sat up, naked and covering my shame with this blanket, and she's trying to tell me what I did wrong. She points to her clothes and stares at me.
I try to say "I don't have," but of course I screw up and say, "I don't want."
She leaves the room.
Realizing my language mix-up I shout out the door, "I don't HAVE!"
In China, most massage parlors also act as minor prostitution rings. You've heard of the Chinese massage "happy ending," right? Well, seeing as how I specifically asked for a woman masseuse despite their parlor's normal policy, got completely nude when I wasn't supposed to, and then told her I didn't want any clothes, I don't want to think about what she thought I wanted.
She came back with some silk pajamas and bed sheets and then we started the massage.
Good thing too. Full body really does mean full body! Head, arms, legs, thighs, butt, stomach, back, neck, and hands. And they go HARD! I hurt really badly after but then the next day I felt pretty good.
I had a boat party to go to the next day. My friend who speaks fluent Chinese arranged a small 15 person boat to drink, eat, and go fishing on. On our way there in a taxi, a Jackie Chan song came on the radio. "Turn it up!" we demanded, and up she did turn it. Cruising down the highway, seeing the sights go by, Jackie Chan music blasting, felt pretty cool.
The good times were over quickly though. We ended up waiting 2 hours for the rest of the group on a street corner, and once everyone did show up, everyone started freaking out about money because some people decided to buy $80 worth of liquor for the group and wanted reimbursement.
Of course we didn't get picked up and had to walk with all our beer, water jugs, watermelons, and duffel bags across a bunch of construction for about 30 minutes.
The boat was the most ghetto thing I've ever stepped foot on. Creaky, disgusting, made of rotting wood, rusted. Everyone thought it was absolutely perfect.
The captains quickly broke into the booze. They started pouring us drinks and making us do shots: "Gan bei!" ("empty your cup") they cried about every 3 minutes.
Then they threw out the anchor in this bay area with oil rigs all over it. Really, we're going to fish here? It was no surprise that no one caught anything in that toxic water.
After a lot of drinking, the group decided it needed to go swimming. "Take us somewhere we can swim!" We demanded.
"No! You are all too sunburned," he kept saying.
It was only about an hour later that we realized the boat was broken, and that's why he wouldn't take us anywhere. However, every time we asked about what was wrong with the boat, they ignored us. Typical.
They tore up the floor boards, pulled metal chord with their hands, hammered in and out the rudder wheel. But of course nothing was wrong with the boat.
So there we sat, in the rain, for about 4 hours. I nursed some sea sickness while others drifted away into a boozy slumber below deck.
They called over a 3 man fishing boat, who eventually refused to tow us.
Then they called over a boat our size who agreed, but not before the captain handed over a couple cases of our beer to them!
Very long story short, they got us back to shore, but they refused to dock until we paid them the full amount. We woke my friend up (the master of arguing) and she drunkenly yelled at the captain, telling him there's no way we'd pay full price after he drank and gave away half our booze. He didn't agree, but he did ask for her to tutor his daughter in English and offer to dry her off with a wash cloth.
After agreeing to pay half on the boat and the other half when we docked and talked to his boss, we got back on dry land. The "Lao ban," or boss, agreed that we didn't need to pay full price and then we all ran away and pocketed the extra money for food later that night.
Then we got cake and pizza! Expensive, but yummy!
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