Orchard Road

Well, despite being sick for most of Friday night and Saturday, Sunday I mustered up enough strength and Gabe and I went down to Orchard Road.  When they said it was shopping, they weren't kidding.  It was block after block of shopping malls and expensive boutiques.  It reminded me of a less-expensive Champs de Elysse in Paris...

We walked around a couple malls, took a whole bunch of ridiculous escalators to the top of another mall, and had "authentic" German food from a street stall.  The kebap ("schwarma") was not nearly as good as that in Belgium, but it was still delicious.  Gabe had a sausage when we passed the stall on the way home, and it was equally delicious.  The impressive part was the true German beer he had with it. It was particularly tasty.

The day was uneventful except for one other thing - we had a fish pedicure, but I'm going to let Gabe talk about that... (See below.)

Gabe's addition:

"We walk into the spa and are immediately directed to the foot washing station. Unknown to us, a man was making his way towards preparing himself for the inevitable. He sprayed down our feet with a red substance, it smelt like a mix of flowers and malt. I have my suspicions that it was that very substance that made our feet so appealing to the fish we were soon to feed. We were then shuffled into a relaxing room. It smelled nice. It also had light music playing in the background. Several people of the same family were already enjoying themselves there. We turn to our left and tank a seat in the flat bamboo mat and gently lower our feet into a long open tank filled with human-eating fish. They were about 1 inch long or so (that's 1/12 a foot-long) and had gills and fins and other things you expect fish to have. Their first reaction was to immediately leave the already cleansed feet of the older man sitting next to us, and attach themselves viciously to my feet. As they consumed my flesh, tickling me to very core, I watched them. They hovered around my ankles taking large bites at a time, the would scrape along the tops and bottoms of my feet like vacuum cleaners, removing layers and layers of dead-dirty skin. Yes I was tickled, and yes they did wiggle in between my toes and try to get that skin too. Michelle had my same reaction at first: being amazed and constantly tickled. Soon however, we relaxed, and came to appreciate the treatment. It was oddly relaxing to just sit there with your feet in the water and have small fish eating small bits of you. We only had fifteen minutes, but it was fun, and my feet came out white, the cleanest they have been for about 20 years or so."