"The horror! The horror!"
The most famous line from Conrad's Heart of Darkness springs to mind whenever I'm confronted with the prospect of a resort holiday. Kurtz uttered them while lying on his jungle deathbed. The words come to my lips at the mere thought of lying on a beach chair sipping paper umbrella drinks and receiving toe massages in manicured surroundings that have as much relationship to the local culture as the Lion King ride at Disneyland has to Africa.
The same words apply to my feelings toward showers and baths. I confess, I hate bathing. It makes no sense. Never mind the selfishness of a solitary human being consuming vast quantities of fresh water and heating energy to indulge in a bath or shower once or even twice every day (or if you're either neurotic or Japanese, as many as four times a day), while all over Africa people die of thirst. How pointless is it, after a day hunched over a computer in an over-air-conditioned office, to rinse the dirt and sweat off your body...mainly because there isn't any! Why shower, when you can spend the time getting in some extra sleep? The comic strip Viking, Hagar the Horrible, bathes (under duress) once a year. He's smart!
So imagine my alarm when my wife came home one evening and slapped a colour flyer on the dining table. "This Japanese-style spa is having a special, including ferry tickets to get there. We're going!"
A resort holiday that consists of sitting in a bath all day? My definition of living Hell. Then I remembered once spending a full day with her shopping for purses. So, yes, maybe there is one thing more hellish. The only other thing worse would have been, well, the rest of my life, had I dared to say no to my beloved's need for a brief but pampered relief from the stress of work.
There was no relief from stress on the ferry from Hong Kong, up the Pearl River to Zhongshan. Departing in an unusually heavy fog, I shivered at the memory of all the collisions between mainland ferries and other boats, even during clear weather. I kept on hand on the floatation cushion under my seat and spent the next hour planning how to keep my MP3 player dry while bobbing up and down in the water waiting for rescue. Fortunately we arrived safely and, after an hour bus ride through alternating countryside and industrial wasteland, we pulled up to the hotel.
When a resort in China is promoted as Japanese-themed, I don't entertain high hopes of good taste. As we descended from the bus, a line of employees in matching yukata robes bowed and said, "Irrashaimase". It was the last word of Japanese I heard. However, worries about tackiness were ungrounded. The corridors were decorated, in an understated way, with Japanese ceramics and watercolours. The room itself looked like modern ryokan inns I've stayed at in Japan, with a thick futon, the only furniture being a couple of cushions and a kotatsu, a low table over a recess in the polished wooden floor.
But no Japanese bath. For those we had to venture outside. We were presented with freshly pressed yukata robes, which, the receptionist had informed us, were required attire; no standard clothing allowed. Okay, that sounded fun. We donned our matching robes and made our way through a long corridor toward the outdoor bathing pools. All Japanese-ness ended at the door to the hot springs.
"Sorry," we were told, in Mandarin Chinese, "no robes in the resort area."
"So we have to change back to our regular clothes?"
"Of course not!"
The doorman handed us locker keys, and told us to put away our yukatas and change our green plastic indoor slippers for blue plastic outdoor ones. Fine, it made sense to enter a bathing area with only swimming costumes and towels. We walked through lanes and over wooden bridges to the main hot springs area and decided to have a little snack before entering the baths.
"Sorry, you can’t enter the tea house."
"Hah? Why not?"
"You must wear the resort clothing."
"But we were told—sigh..."
Retracing our journey, we retrieved our robes and attempted to return to the tea house.
Our way was again blocked. "Sorry, no yukatas in the resort area."
"But we were told--"
"Yes, you wear the resort outfit."
I didn't understand a word of Mandarin and my wife was losing confidence in hers. The guard spoke none of the other three languages we tried. We attempted sign language. He mimed for us to lock away our gowns again and then led us to a small wooden changing room in which were stacks of Chinese-style satin trousers and waist-length robes, like those kids wear in Chinese New Year decorations. So that was it: from the hotel entrance to your room normal attire was accepted; Japanese robes required from your room up to the edge of the hot springs; then you transformed into Chinese, followed by the whole thing in reverse on your way out. It kind of felt like going through a carnival hall of mirrors.
Finally it was time for a bath. We discovered around twenty pools, ranging from swimming pools to little hot tub sized receptacles, arranged on different levels beneath banyan and palm trees. Each pool had a different flavour. One had wine added to the water; finally someone found a use for the HK$29 (US$3.70) stuff languishing on the bottom shelf at the supermarket. Another had coconut oil. Its neighbour had a large bag of orange peels steeping in the water. Each pool bore a sign listing its ingredients and their particular health benefits.
I spotted one that promised "extend life span." Good, I thought. If I can live an extra hundred years, maybe by then my pension fund will have finally recovered its value. It smelled faintly medicinal. Not surprising, since it had lingzi and other herbs in the mix.
So what were we supposed to do other than merely sit there? Just in case we had any other ideas, a sign warned:
No ungraceful or immoral behaviours in the public area.
Damn!
After boiling alive for fifteen minutes, we moved to the next pool, which promised "increase fitness." Hm, I thought. If I can get by without all those uncomfortable ab crunches, then maybe sitting in a bath isn't so bad after all.
I glanced across the path to another pool. Its sign was partially hidden behind a tree branch. I leaned way over to look.
"Come on!" I told my wife.
"But we haven't finished our fitness workout."
When she saw the sign for the other pool she shook her head. "I knew it."
I lowered myself into the murky brown water and released a melodious sigh of satisfaction.
Coffee.
The aroma reminded me of my mother's coffee, the kind she used to brew when I was a kid, Folger's brand, overboiled in one of those percolators where you could watch the coffee plip-plopping inside the glass knob at the top. A nostalgic smell. Actually, it smelled better—and stronger—than the anaemic sewage they served in the tea house. Maybe it was the anaemic sewage from the tea house.
For the next 24 hours, excluding a brief interlude of sleep in our Japanese-style room, we parked our hindquarters in a growing list of bathwater flavours: coconut, sea salt, millet wine, lilac, and a pharmacopeia of Chinese medicinal herbs. By the time we were through, we were immortal, fit, had skin as youthful as babies, were alert and calm, relieved of menstrual problems (not that I ever had any), and forever cured of athlete's foot. I couldn't find a spring that promised increased wealth, but anyway that one would have had a long waiting list.
I returned home with a new respect for bathing. I'll need a much much MUCH larger home coffee maker, though.