Since Cathy makes a living at giving great massages we decided we would take side tours of as many massage parlors as possible. I knew of a foot massage place in Xiasha so we started our tour here. Here in Xiasha Cynthia introduced me to a great massage establishment. I have lucked out and keep getting a guy named Shaopo (have no idea how to spell it in PinYin but that is how I pronounce it) who is really good. He doesn’t speak English but it doesn’t matter because my feet and legs feel like they belong to a 30 yr old person after he is done. In Kunming our guide and our wanderings did not provide any massage tour opportunities. In Dali Jimmy showed us a massage establishment that is sponsored by the Chinese government. They hire blind or deaf people and train them to be massage therapists. I got a deaf young man that was good but not as good as Shaopo. Cathy thinks she got a kid in training because other workers kept coming up and instructing him.
Since we were in LiJiang 2 days we decided to spurge and we had a foot massage the first day and a full body massage the next day. This was also another China government establishment. My masseuse for both sessions was a very talented blind guy. Cathy, again, got two different girls which were probably still in training because both of them were watching my blind guy very closely and copying his movements.
In Shangri-la we skipped getting a massage because our hotel room was so nasty I wasn’t crazy about using their other hotel services and had not discovered any on our walks in town. We skipped Shanghai but we tried a place we found in Hong Kong. It was our least favorite. A very large roach ran across the floor during our session and most of the time the therapists were watching a Chinese soap opera while they worked on us, so we definitely did not have their undivided attention. Out of all of them we toured, my Xiasha establishment was the cleanest, best and cheapest ($6 USD). But please note that we never paid more than $15 USD for any of the 60 minute or 90 minute massages.
