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Originally uploaded by silverlantern

The most interesting ‘bath’ at the Yunessun by far was the fish spa. We almost passed this one because there was a line when we first passed it. The line was much shorter when we passed by it a second time so we went in. From the picture it seems like you get to put your feet in with some fishes… ok… interesting… I guess it’s supposed to make you feel like you’re in the ocean?

First we were given some instructions. It was totally in Japanese so we just stood there. Pretty sure they talked about no eating, drinking, splashing, or squishing the fish. Then we were lead to a foot bath. Understandable, gotta clean your feet before putting it into the fish habitat. Then we were given a towl and lead to the pool. The pool was about 2 feet deep with hundreds of little grey fishes. Following the Japanese girls in our group we laid the towel down, then sat on it and put our feet in.

!

The fish immediately swam up to our feet and attached itself! OMG, I’m being fed to plecos! Well I don’t know if they’re plecos, but they kinda look like it, their mouths are on the bottom and they scraping at my feet as it was a nice bed of algae! (later found out they wern’t plecos but a fish called doctor fish, Garra rufa, that are sometimes used to treat skin issues) I don’t know if it was because we were Americans, but the fish loved us, they totally ignored the group of 5 Japanese girls on the other side of the pool. They especially loved Jason’s feet, swarming it to the point where we couldn’t even see him. The sensation was very tickly, like tiny tiny scrapers.

They were a bit shy and scurry away at the slightest movement. Keeping our feet still the fish came and did what no pedicure could do, eat away tiny bits of skin roughened by our 3 days of walking. Under the feet, between the toes, and even up the legs. The fish were so engaged that their heads came out of the water when I slowly lifted my leg up. Jae is ticklish and tried to hide from the fish by clasping his feet together, the fish instead latched on to the top of his feet. I tried to direct the fish to the spots that are needed most.

My feet feel so much smoother already!