Taking care of myself

I did two amazing things this weekend that I can't believe I haven't become addicted to before this moment. The first was on Friday after the Fulbright biweekly meeting. Ruby thought that I could really use a hairwash, which is to say a shoulder and head massage with shampoo. I sat in a warm beauty parlor not far from my house and had someone rub my head and shoulders for the low price of 99NT. That translates to about $3US. I left with silky, though very flat hair, and relaxed head and shoulders.
The other self-indulgence was even better. I took a 20 minute train to Jiaoxi Sunday evening, walked ten minutes to a spa. The whole city is filled with hot springs and in the cold winter air you can see steam rising up from the oddest places. They even have a little public, covered hot springs pool out infront of the train station and workers will dip their feet in a smoke a cigarette when they get off work.
The spa was set against the mountains and was basically a set of corregated metal leantos with man made pools underneath. One could choose to get a private family pool though on Sunday night you had to wait in lin for that, or you could choose the naked or bathingsuit pools where women and men were divided. Catherine and I inadvertantly choose the naked pool, though in truth it's how I prefer hotsprings. We moved from hot to scalding to way too scalding and relaxed for some time in the presence of maybe only 7 other people. By the time I got out I had that wonderful jelly body feel and a quickened heartbeat. The whole thing cost only 50 NT plus an neccessary 10NT shower cap so a total of less than $2US dollars. Afterwards we found a cute Japanese restaurant which was significantly more expensive than the spa and I had some amazing salmon sushi.
It occured to me last night that these things can really make my life infinately more comfortable and relaxed for almost no money at all. I wonder why I have not yet incorporated them into my weekly routine.