I’ve been in China for about a week now (I think). Spent some time in Beijing, chilled after NK, did the domestics (washing etc), visited Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City. I then hopped on a plane and arrived in Xi’an where I saw the Terracotta Warriors and then jumped on a 15 hour sleeper train to my current location, Suzhou before moving on to Shanghai and Sanya (Hainan island) over the next few days.

Kung Fu Show in Beijing

Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City

So China in a nutshell is NOT one of my favourite countries. I hate the pollution. Can’t bear the fact that you can never seem to see blue skies. Hate the constant view of power plants and industrial plants spewing copious amounts of smoke and smog into the air. I hate to think of how many of these plants exist here. Xi’an alone has 6 power plants.

Terracotta Warriors

Of the places I have been to so far, Suzhou would have to be my favourite in China. At least the sun was trying to get through the smog. Anyway, this evening for lack of anything else to do I went for a wander around town. It’s been about a week since my last foot massage and I decided I could do with another one so I spotted this sign for a massage place and went in.

I spoke to the woman in the front and we agreed a price of 60RMB (about £6) for a foot massage. I was taken up stairs and as I got to the top of the stairs a fellow came out of a small room doing up his fly. I admit to being a little suspicious at that but you do have to take your clothes off to have a massage so it may have been legit. I wasnt sure at that stage.

The woman took me into a room with massage chairs in there and left me there. A few minutes later an extremely dressed up woman in a very short skirt and 3 inch heels arrived with a bowl of water to soak my feet. Now if the clothing and shoes didnt give it away, the finger nails certainly did. I’m not sure I know of to many masseurs who have long red fingernails. By this point I was already committed and there wasnt much I could do apart from lie back and think of England 🙂

I’m happy to report that there was no happy ending and that the foot massage was pretty good…