LIFE is full of little ironies. There I was a few weeks ago talking about Hugh Whatsisname's indiscretion on Sunset Boulevard, and on Wednesday evening at 8.30pm what should happen? I find myself in a massage parlour. The Sunny Paradise Sauna and Massage Parlour, if you must know, on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai.
The Sunny Paradise is not one of those dodgy places with boarded windows from which journalists make careful pre-coitus excuses and leave. It is a truly legitimate establishment which offers essential services as diverse as, obviously, sauna and massage for $310, 'Feat Knead Scrape' ($30), or the tempting 'Clean Ear' ($40). Go on, spoil yourself. Let a complete stranger stick a cotton bud in your ear.
To describe the Sunny Paradise is to describe a building out of its time. Architecturally-speaking, it must have taken its inspiration from great Chinese hotels of the 1960s, of which there are none. The spectacular lobby, with chrome trimmings, plaster-of-Paris fountain and alabaster pillars, is Early Shenzhen Economic Zone Period.
The imitation leather easy chairs I had also seen before, in the foreigners' waiting room at Shanghai Railway Station. Here you can slip out of your shoes and into a pair of plastic sandals provided by the staff, who are all charming, but mostly elderly gentleman in white shirts and bow ties who move at the speed of a tectonic plate.
The other thing about Sunny Paradise is that it provides a wealth of opportunity for cultural misunderstandings; for the kind of Canto-gweilo confrontation I have not been party to since a landlady tried to convince me that a 30 per cent rate rise was in my best interests because it would guarantee my tenancy for a further two years. In the event, my tenancy was guaranteed a further two minutes, long enough to pack a suitcase and do some surreptitious but hopefully expensive damage to the kitchen fittings.
My first Sunny Paradise faux pas began in the changing room and lasted until the spa bath. With no one to turn to for help, I was unable to work out what state of undress was acceptable at Sunny Paradise.
I walked confidently through the swing doors to the bathing area, ripped off my towel, and found myself in the company of 30 or 40 men who were all as naked as the day they were born. I still had my underpants on. Even worse, they were Wing On specials. Ninety-nine dollars for a pack of four and one size only - big enough to cover the modesty of a jumbo jet.