Funny story. I had mentioned to MD that I was super interested in trying the fish pedicure. The deal is, you stick your feet in a tank full of little fish who then eat all the dead skin off your feet. I’ve read various accounts of whether this is just for the tourists or if it actually does anything and thought it would be fun to try for myself. For the record, everyone I’ve asked says their feet really do feel softer after they take them out of the tank. Well, MD was seriously not keen, but we were headed to the massive MBK Center mall for food, so she said she’d wait while I experienced the fish pedicure before dinner.

So after searching what seemed like the whole mall, we finally found the fish pedicure place in the basement, and I forked over some baht for my 15-minute slot. Then I took my shoes off and sat down, preparing to stick my feet in the tank. While I was deliberating, MD decided to give it a shot herself, thinking she had to wait anyway. She grabbed a tank seat next to me.

I plucked up my courage and plunked my feet into the tank and realized this was the worst idea I’ve ever had. They were all over every millimeter of submerged skin. It didn’t hurt, but it tickled something fierce and was just plain weird. This is a classic mind-over-matter situation, and my mind was screaming that life is too short for this kind of thing. I lasted about 5 seconds before pulling my feet right out of there. Of course, many of the fish clung to my feet even after they left the water, which is not cool, friends. Meanwhile, MD had plunged her feet into the tank as well and was understandably put-out to see that I had removed my feet. I tried again a couple of times, but we both gave up after a few minutes. The Thai lady who took our baht was entertained and nevertheless encouraged us to stick with it for a few minutes. But that was simply not going to happen. Overall, I felt bad not only that this was such a terrible experience but that I had also dragged poor MD into the experience as well. But it makes a good story, so there’s that.

We then went upstairs and got a real pedicure for $15, and it was seriously the best pedicure I’ve ever had in my whole life. And I didn’t have to feed a school of fish to accomplish it.

Title quote: Mandy Hale