The Emperor's New Clothes and His Naked Adventures

Actually, I wanted to make this post yesterday - Thursday, my favourite.

It seems like there’re more reasons to love Thursday as the weeks pass. Intellectual Property class was cancelled, again. Even though I only saw the notice on the chalkboard after cycling to school, there wasn’t really any reason to complain, is there? I think you’d agree with me.

Cheers to Thursdays!

THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
Back to the actual post. Melva and her friend Haylie (ethnic Chinese from Hawaii, which is kinda exotic) came over to Beijing over the weekend, so we played quasi-hosts to these 2 chee-seen-por (crazy women). I think they are chee-seen because they made me do chee-seen things with them - like dressing up as a Chinese emperor when we visited the Forbidden Palace.

The photo-taking costs 40 yuan (S$8) per person and you get 2 shots each. The guy can choose to be a general, an emperor, a court official or, (gasp!) an enuch. The lady has a choice between the queen mother, the empress, or the gege (princess). Mel and Hay chose to be the latter, but it turned out they were concubines.

I was not unhappy because they made me don silly clothes. I was just trying to look stern. But I still looked unhappy and when I look at how the pictures turned out, the make-up was ultra-horrendous and that made me really unhappy. PUI.

But it was still fun until we were to collect our photos.

CHINESE CHEATERS!!

They bring you behind closed door and without uttering a word, put your photo into a stamping machine and stamps the date. Then they laminate the photos and ask you for 10 yuan per photo. HELLO! WE ALREADY PAID 120 YUAN AND YOU WANT ANOTHER 60 YUAN?!

No way were we going to pay 60 yuan. Besides, we took own photos and could jolly walk away without their lousy shots – which Mel thought we should. After some deliberation and telling that cheater it was daylight robbery, we managed to bargain to 30 yuan. Goodbye. NO MORE touristy-shots for me!

Let’s move on to another interesting story.

MY NAKED ADVENTURE
The entire gang of us came over to Tianjin on Sunday and we went to a public bath that night.

Not counting public shower facilities, it was my first time in a paid public bath. To give you an idea, everyone goes into the bath area au naturale – stark naked. You can shower, shampoo, shave and even get a body scrub for 30 yuan, which I kindly rejected. Not ready to let another man touch my NAKED body, lah! So salah! Haha.

After a nice shower, you dip yourself in a hot pool 42 degrees Celsius. Shiok. Of if you really love pain, there’s another 38-degree pool with overhanging showerhead. Done with the hot water, you move on into the cold-water pool. Lagi shiok. Basically you move in and out of the hot-cold pools until you shiok enough. Done with the bath, there’s a hot steam room, which really steams you like a pau. Tak boleh tahan, this one.

This is not over yet. On the top floor are 3 hot sauna rooms with varying temperatures and another ice room. These are laden with bamboo mattresses for guest to rest on. You essentially move in and out of these rooms freely to enjoy the Korean-style hot-cold therapy. For the less adventurous, there are 3 sleeping rooms with inclining couches, pillows and blankets.

The best part? The price, lah! Flat rate 26 RMB. Cheaper than my youth hostel in Beijing, lor! Massages come separately but please don’t expect extra services, hor.

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