Beauty
Fish Pedicure
For the past year or so, stories have been popping up about the “fish pedicure,” a pedicure treatment that is popular across Asia.
The premise of this treatment is to remove the calluses from battered feet by submerging them in a tank of carp called garra rufa, or more commonly, “doctor fish.” The fish then eat off the dead skin, leaving your hooves baby’s-bottom-soft, without an afterthought of the hygienic hazards traditional tools can pose. This particular fish ostensibly has the ability to keep eating even when full (how American). To me, it sounded a little, well, fishy.
First, being a runner, I doubted anything could remove the hard skin accumulated over many years and thousands of miles on my soles. Second, how can a tank full of fish be clean? The water has to be kept warm enough to be comfortable for your feet, but wouldn’t that breed all the bacteria and moldy stuff you’re trying to avoid? Do the salons simply filter the water constantly? Third, it sounded expensive.
I decided to give it a try when in Thailand recently, where the fish pedicures have been in practice for hundreds of years (or so this particular salon claimed). Plus, Thailand is cheap, so I figured I could at least afford this sort of pseudo-chic-exclusive treatment here. A half hour dunk, followed by a 40-minute hot stone foot massage set me back about $10 (gotta love Thailand). It was somewhat frightening to plunge my feet into a tank teeming with carp and watch the fish immediately latch on.
The sensation was completely unexpected though. It tickled like nothing else in the entire world. For the first five or 10 minutes, I could only stand to keep my feet in for no more than a few seconds (forget holding in squeals of laughter). Eventually, I got used to it and let the fishies go to work; soon it enough, the half hour was up. (For those unable to relax, the spa did offer beer.)
The post-plunge hot stone massage proved the perfect antidote to the tickle fest the fish had inflicted. That too, passed quickly, but not before my new and improved super smooth tootsies introduced themselves. Well, hello there. My, aren’t we soft and silky?
While the fish pedicure is effective, I think I’ll stick to eating fish instead of having them eat me. For the ticklish of feet, this is not.
*The jury is still out in the sanitation of these fish tanks (in certain states, this type of exfoliation is outlawed; Virginia is fine with it, so dunk at your own risk.