Me and Rob drew short straws and got two burley looking guys, my dude had forearms bigger than my biceps. They basically set out to see who could make which one of us squeal like a pig first. It HURT. The back / neck stuff was just bone-crushingly painful, then they slapped the crap out of our backs. My back was red-raw, and the two guys doing it were laughing their ass off. Rob speaks pretty good Chinese, and he was translating what they were saying while playing dumb that we didn’t understand. Everyone in that joint was having a good giggle at us. 

So, 15 years of bare-foot karate gave me pretty tough feet. The balls of my feet and heels are thick, numb leather… or… they were. The guy cut off my hard skin with his razor. It was as if he was peeling an orange. It’s strange, I can actually feel the texture of my sox now, but… I dunno, Ikinda miss my rock-solid skin, so I’m hoping it grows back.

Then the real pain started when the foot rub started. They have a load of posters on the wall of pressure points of the feet, but these guys didn’t need the posters. I was sweating buckets just from the pain. They’d ask (in Chinese) if it hurt, I’d say it didn’t hurt. They knew I was lying, I knew they were loving it, but I refused to tell them it hurt. The look of frustration on my guy’s face kept me going. Going there once a week would seriously raise your pain threshold.

I’ll spare you posting photos of my feet. :/