Hot foot wash leak

Up at 12.40, which was a bit later than I could really excuse, other than the fact I was on holiday. Except that I had to catch up on work for most of the rest of the day. But in the evening one of Haiwei’s friends pinged me to go and eat with them...I’d met them last year at Haiwei’s reunion so thought “why not?” of course, so went to their shop, the coordinates of which they’d send on WeChat. I tried to work out what they actually sold there, and worked out it was something between beauty products and medicine. My bullshit feelers started tingling but I thought better of it, and some woman started cooking just outside the shop on a stove, and we drank tea inside the shop to the accompaniment of air conditioning.

Damn I still have two bottles of whisky I need to give away...

It was actually quite a nice meal, especially the fried sweetcorn, and refreshingly no beer. It also gave me the opportunity to chat with new people, and people who didn’t really know me so couldn’t “translate” local language to a version of Chinese I understood.

Later in the evening I noticed a foot wash/massage place opposite, and asked if it was any good. They said the one next door but one was new, but better. Then they said that they hadn’t actually been to the one next door but one, so they decided we would go to one that was tried and tested some distance away. It was late and it looked like they were closed but we’d called them and they were expecting us. Oh the water was boiling and I looked like a right wimp when I could barely put my feet in. But the ladies working there laughed and said I should not move my feet. I’ve had a few foot washes here but never had that advice. And strangely it sort of worked. At least when I tested the strategy by moving my feet it was torture so I managed to keep as still as a statue.

It was a lovely experience once I’d learnt to keep me feet still, and they did a full body massage for around half an hour until I heard a bit of a scream. It turned out one of the women working there had left the tap on since we arrived, and the place was nearly flooded. We had to wait a good 10 minutes while they dried it up, but it was a pretty funny interlude to a sort of weird evening I hadn’t been expecting.

Cleaning up after the overflow at the foot wash place