pantone801

No. 8 Hot Springs Club

// April 7th, 2010 // Travel

Not an actual image. Image courtesey of weegolo.

Over the weekend I had a day off in Beijing and spent the day exploring Sanlitun, and area of the city I have not spent much time in. After a full day of walking and a spot of shopping I was exhausted, and headed off to No. 8 Hot Springs Club (No. 8 Chaoyang Park Road, near the west gate of Chaoyan Park [map].

The club is a modern Chinese bathing house, and is as gran and oppulent as what I imagine ancient roman baths would be. These over-the-top bathing houses are all over China. To the left and right of reception are separate areas for men and woman, and after agreeing on the entry price of RMB¥158 my shoes were taken off for a polish and I was walked to the change rooms by an attendant.

After disrobing and grabbing a towel I was shown me to the bathing area, a marble area the size of large supermarket with a massive heated pool meandering through the centre with an island accessible by footbridge, surrounded by showers and many smaller hot and cold pools, as well as a Swedish steam-room, and dry sauna with large glass windows overlooking the outdoor hotpools. The setting is very tropical, and every rock and plant is fake, including a grove a palm trees. It’s like a roman bath designed by Walt Disney.

The highlight was hopping into the small hot pool filled with thousands flesh eating fish. These little fellows then swarm to [mostly] your feet and hands and nibble off your dry skin. It was a bizarre sensation, quite ticklish and not painful. Even more strange was that I was nude, and had to shoo a few errant fish away from my nether-regions, and also that I was sharing this pool with two other Chinese men.

If you like fish, then you should try the Fish with Sundried Tomato Crust I made last week.