not that kind of massage

I've been hearing rumors that you can get an hour massage for around 100 yuan (the equivalent of $14 US). So one of my classmate/apartment-mate and I decided to go get a massage after dinner. I have not been able to explore the area around our new apartment in Beijing and was relying on my classmate to lead us to the massage place. He wanted a female to come along with him so that the people at the massage parlor didn't think he wanted something other than a real massage.

Little did I know he would take me to a "massage parlor, " if you know what I mean.

First of all, there was this HUGE, FlAsHiNg sign that had "MASSAGES" in English and Chinese. You could see the sign from blocks away, so we should have been skeptical when we were not able to find the front door when we reached the location of the sign. But we looked further into the adjoining hotel, saw another flipboard sign that said "Thai Massages, Deep Tissue" and thought "Score!" and high-fived one another. However, we still couldn't find the entrance to this massage place, so asked the first guy we ran into -- who happened to work at the "massage parlor" -- and followed him down a set of stairs leading to the basement As soon as I walked through the door, my alarms were going off and I knew we should have ran out of there as quickly as we were being shoved inside.

Clues that this massage parlor was meant for "happy endings":

1. As soon as you walked through the door, a wave of cigarette smoke washed over your entire body.

2. There were only men in the waiting area, and only men came out of the door leading to the other rooms, and only men were going in and out of the bathrooms.

3. "Full Body Massage", "Resting Room", and "Help Bath" were among the options on the actual list of services.

4. The other men in the room kept staring at me with a sick, icky smile on their faces.

5. When asked if we could see the rooms, the manager said that my classmate and I could have our massages "together."

6. When we saw the actual room where a massage supposedly took place, the room looked like a hotel room, complete with a king size bed, bathroom, body oil and other stuff. Even better was that there was a guy changing out the sheets to the bed.

So yeah, after we saw the king size bed, we ran out of there. Along the way, we saw a few scantily clad women walking down the stairs into the massage parlor. I think they were the providers of the happy endings.

But, our night didn't end on a sour note--a very weird kind of note I guess--because we walked to a "Beautyful Angle Face" salon and inquired about their body massage services. They looked more like a spa than a house of prostitution, which made me a lot more comfortable in negotiating a price with the manager. For some odd reason though, they have different prices and services for females and males. My classmate, the male, was able to get the 60 minute full body massage for 100 yuan -- but he had to keep his clothes on and he had to stay in the small massage room on the ground floor.

I, on the other hand, was taken upstairs into the floor of paradise. Once inside my own personal massage room, I was instructed to strip down and take a shower before lying on the massage table (the real one with a hole on one end for her face), and then I actually got a hot oil massage. The tiny, little lady who did my massage was super strong in kneading my muscles because now the muscles in my shoulders and back hurt as if I had an extra hard work-out. The final difference was that my hot oil massage lasted only 40 minutes and it cost 120 yuan. It felt damn good so I'm not complaining.

The manager told me that for a female, a 90 minutes full body hot oil massage is only 480 yuan, roughly $62 US. Sold! See you next week!