Fish Therapy

When I saw this sign I was surprised and a little bit curious. I thought maybe it was a slip in translation but soon realized that the sign was completely serious. One of my first evenings walking through the night bizarre I learned exactly what fish therapy was: clients put their feet in large fishtanks and small fish suck away all the dead skin from their feet. Apparently they don't eat your skin, they just help remove it for you so your feet are silky smooth. I wanted to try this for you but was more then a little freaked out about it to say the least. A few nights later, after (stupidly!) confessing this to another student, she dared me to try it and practically dragged me in.

So, for you, for research purposes, and with a little side of peer pressure this is how it went:

As usual in Thai culture, we took our shoes off before entering the "fish zone", which was basically a medium sized stall in the night bazaar set up with 3 large fish tanks, a foot washing station and a tv monitor. You could choose from either 15 or 30 minutes and we chose the former and were glad we did! It cost us $120 baht (about $4 each) and we were instructed to have our feet washed and scrubbed by an attendant and then sit on a bench and place our feet into one of the tanks. I think I probably held my breath for most of this and was panicking a little, its a bit bizarre to say the least and more then a little troubling!

My friend Sandra from school had tried this once before in her country, Holland, because her clients kept raving about it. She at least had an idea of what this was going to feel like and didn't seem scared at all. Me on the other hand? Well - just look at this picture to get an idea of how I felt!

I kept putting my feet in and pulling them out because it felt so strange and tickly and was screaming like a little girl, so much so that the guy running the place actually got mad because I was discouraging his potential customers. I think I was doing just the opposite - it was a crowded market and my hysterical screaming and laughter drew quite the crowd! People were asking "How does it feel?" and the only way we could describe it was somewhere between tickling and a bubble bath, although its hard to ignore the fact that fish are knawing away at your feet. A couple of people did end up trying it at our "recommendation" so I can't have been that bad! And for the record, the people in the video playing behind me were screaming too!

Eventually, you kinda do get used to it and we managed to keep our feet in the water for longer bits at a time. I'm not sure I would do it again but I'm glad that I did do it, at the very least so I could write about it and share it with all of you. That and my feet were surprisingly baby smooth....