This is one of those not-uncommon “Spike is an idiot” posts.  I don’t need people to comment and tell me what I already know!

With my gf going out with friends tonight, I decided at the last minute to do a Shenzhen run.   A massage, sitting in a jacuzzi, shopping for a jacket – seemed like a reasonable thing to do.  So off to Lo Wu.

On arrival, shopping first.  As always, I was amused by the attempts of various sales girls to prove to me that jackets that were 3 sizes too small were really a perfect fit.  Eventually I found something I liked in my size … and of course a few other things here and there.

Hungry, went back to, I think it’s Choi Dip Hin?, been there several times before, not gourmet by any means but cheap and tasty enough.  3 dishes, chrysanthemum tea and a coke for 90 bucks, such a deal!

Then outside the mall.  Stood there, smoked a cigarette, looked around.  Realized that all the massage places I know in easy walking distance of the mall I don’t like.  And didn’t want to go into the train station to talk with the sauna touts, as good as many of those saunas were, because I didn’t want to get into a long van ride to spend a long time at the sauna and risk missing the last train back.  (Yes, I know, I can take a taxi to Huanggang, bus across the border, and then taxi back to Sheung Shui to get my car – as big a pain in the rear as it sounds.)

So back into the mall, figured I’d pick one of the massage joints there and get a foot massage and shoulder massage.  Picked on that was large, clean, busy.

One guy goes to work on my feet and of course they look to upsell you while you’re there.  Do I want a manicure?  It’s just 10 bucks, why not?  Scrape the calluses on my feet?  Sure, have a ball.

And even though I’ve lived here a long time and have done Shenzhen runs too many times to count, at this point I think I fell into a scam.

After the guy scrapes my calluses, he calls another guy over.  That guy takes a look at my feet and tells me that I have corns.  He sees 4 corns and says he can remove with Chinese medicine, no pain.  He tells me the price and tells me it would cost three times more in Hong Kong.  I believe him.

So he goes to work, yanks four disgusting things out of my feet, shows them to me, offers to give them to me (I think).  And then he finds two more.  Does those.  Finds four more.  Does those.  Then he looks at the other foot, repeat ad infinitum.  Uses some Chinese medicine, digs around, pulls stuff out.  “Loosey-loosey!” he keeps saying.  (No, I didn’t bother to tell him my name is not Lucy.)  In total he yanks out 20 of these things.  And carefully band-aids up all around my feet.

To be honest, I’m not paying 100% attention.  There’s a lot of cute women in this place.  And a Stephen Chow movie on the TV – Love on Delivery, which features Christy Chung, often wearing little more than a towel.

Actually, they turn the movie off halfway through.  It’s time for the boss to deliver his nightly or weekly pep talk to the staff.  All of them gather around, except the ones working on me.  Some of them take turns saying something.  Silence after each one.  Then the boss starts in.  He sounds kind of stern.  I don’t really care about the freaking pep talk, I want my Chow Sing Chi movie back!  I get them to put it back on, no sound.  I apologize to the boss, who says it’s quite okay.  He continues with his speech and concludes with applause from all the staff.

Then I find out that the price that my guy quoted, that I thought covered 4 or 5 of these things … that was the price for each of them.  Times 20, it was a damned hefty sum.  (No, don’t ask, I don’t feel like telling.)  More than I can comfortably afford.

Now they’re giving me care instructions – how long I should keep the band-aids on, when it’s safe to wash my feet again, a discount card that once I get 5 $30 foot massages, I get the 6th for free.  And one of the women there holds a mirror up to my face and starts pointing to certain blemishes and spots and suggesting that she should go to work and remove them for me.

What was I gonna do at that point?  Try to walk out of a place that had 20 employees, at least half of them male, mostly half my age and presumably stronger than me?  Call the cops, who wouldn’t speak English and I don’t have enough Mandarin or Cantonese to really explain what’s going on?  And to be fair, for all I know, the guy was telling the truth and I really did need this.

But I don’t feel good about it at all.

I headed back to HK.  For what it’s worth, my back and my legs were feeling significantly better on the trip back than on the trip up – perhaps only because my wallet was so much lighter.

Like I said up top, no need to leave a comment telling me I’m an idiot.  If you wanna leave a comment along the lines of, “No, that guy was probably right, you weren’t scammed,” that might help.

Anyway, I’m happy with the jacket, happy with my meal, got a couple of things for my gf for Xmas that I think she’ll like.  So, that’s that.