EPTNow, my expectations for the bathhouse were: a large pool of hot water, and naked guys sitting around the edge sweating like pigs, and... that's pretty much it.
When we arrived at the bathhouse at night, the building was HUGE. 6 stories tall, covering maybe 1/2 an acre of premium downtown land. When we went in, 6 greeter girls dressed in medieval dresses welcomed us, with 2 guys beside the them dressed in full body steel armor. We went up to 2nd floor, a modern looking hotel lobby where we received our wrist keys to our lockers. Once we got to the lockers, everyone stripped and we arrived at the bath area.
As I entered the pool area, my jaw dropped to the floor. 3 large pools, with 3 different temperature settings were located in the center. The first was a cool water pool, with a mini whirlpool in the center, and it was for cooling down after leaving the sauna room. The warm pool had water jet chairs in a row, with TVs on the other side for relaxed viewing and there was another bubble pool in the center of this pool, which had facets that spit out bubbles which strongly reminded me of the Prefect's bathroom in Harry Potter. As for the hot pool, I couldn't stay in there for long, as the water was almost unbearably hot, and one is supposed to submerged completely in the hot water for as long as possible, then immediately jump into the cool water pool and this process of rapid heating/cooling is supposedly good for one's skin.
After probably a good hour sitting in the pools, my friends took me for a scrub. Now this would be really, really, really awkward by Western standards, as I was lying down on a platform completely naked with my dick in full view while a male scrubber scrubbed me down with soap. Next, the scrubber applied some aloe extract all over my body with his hands, after which he gave me an acupuncture style massage. Lastly, the scrubber again smeared a moisturizing body lotion over my skin, and off to the sauna room I went.
My friends told me that I was supposed to leave the lotion on, and wait in the sauna room until I sweated enough that the lotion dripped off, but the sauna room was way too hot and I left to jump into the cooling pool after only 10 minutes, after which we all showered and got dressed in bathhouse-provided bathrobes, a pair of new underwear included.
I thought that was the whole bathing process, but there were much more to come. After getting dressed, we were taken to the 3rd floor resting hall, where hundreds of lazyboy recliners with personal touchscreen monitors beside them were placed in rows. We picked our spots and sat down, and the four of us ordered some beer and fruits, while I started watching the new X-men movie. My friends also treated me to a pedicure/foot massage, and it was just pure bliss to be watching a good movie, lying down on a lazyboy recliner, drinking ice cold beer, while getting my feet rubbed by a pretty girl.
After all of this, it was time to hit the KTV. We went up to the 4th floor, where we picked out 4 "singing escorts" from a long row of girls and went to a private KTV room. I'm not sure what kind of "escorts" these girls were, so I was getting nervous. In the end, they were just there to sing and drink with us, basically to party and let the guys have a good time.
At midnight, we went up to the show floor, where various performances were held. The largest show room displayed a normal dance/singing type of show, with a comedy act in the middle and a model show at the end. However, I was led to one of the smaller show rooms, where we picked out a table close to the stage, order some more cold beverages, and enjoyed an hour-long strip show watching hot Chinese babes tearing off their leather outfits.
Once the show was over, a complementary buffet was provided and by the time we finished eating, it was 3am. The top floor offered 5-star guest rooms, but we decided to cheap it out and went down to the resting hall, then slept on the lazyboy recliners. In the morning, we went back to the bath floor, showered, shaved, got back into our own clothes, and got on with our day.
In the end, averaging between the four of us, it cost 450 Chinese yen per person($60 USD) for the night's entertainment. No wonder bathhouses have become so popular, especially for out-of-town tourists, as spending the night in a bathhouse is much cheaper than getting a hotel room, not to mention the entertainment that comes with one's stay.
I'm definitely going back again, again, and again. Chinese bathhouses are teh orsum. ^_^
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