My First Girls' Day...Doing What???

I received an SMS (they don't call them texts here) from Shayne (yes, our boarder) asking me if I wanted to hang out with her and the girls on Wednesday.  They were going to Sunway Pyramid Mall (one of the many gigantic malls) to have lunch and do a fish spa.  I asked her what a fish spa was.  Her reply was that is was something that I would like and I should try it.  Even though this whole conversation took place via text I could practically hear the smile coming through.  I agreed to this mainly because I was tired of being in the house and really needed a day out...especially with "the girls".  After the conversation ended I looked up "fish spa" on the internet.  It is where you put your feet in a pool of water and a bunch of fish basically swarm them and nibble.  Seems harmless...

Wednesday came and I took a taxi to Sunway Pyramid Mall.  This mall is huge!  It has a condo attached to it.  It also has a resort and a water park.  The Indian holiday Deepavali was approaching so there was a beautiful display not too far from the entrance.

All of the colors at the base of the statue are done with flowers.  This entire display stretched pretty far and it smelled so good!!  There were so many different types of flowers throughout that you would have thought it would have been overpowering and the smells would have been too much.  But somehow they made them work.  Since I was a little early I spent a little while just walking around in this...it was very relaxing!

Once Shayne and Novi showed up (it wound up being just the three of us), we went to lunch.  I didn't take a picture because I didn't want them to think I was too weird right away.  I want to save some of that for when they get to know me a little better.  We went to a place that does Italian with an Asian flair.  It was very interesting.  I had spaghetti with teriyaki chicken and a half boiled egg.  It was actually very good.  The egg gave it a very interested flavor that worked very well.  They love adding egg to things here and most of time it is half boiled.  It is definitely something that you have to learn to like or do without.

After lunch we went to the fish spa.  It was a very interesting set up.  After we paid we had our feet rinsed off.  Then we walked up some steps to what felt like a stage.  The area was open so we could see out into the mall and they could see in to us.  I'm sure this is a marketing gimmick.  The tanks the fish are in are down in the "stage".  The way it worked was that we sat on the floor and put our feet in the tank.  They had it set up really nice.  There were comfortable backrests around the tanks so we could lean back.  As soon as we put our feet in the tank the fish came to us.  The initial feeling of having the fish start to nibble is kind of a shock.  It doesn't hurt at all but it is a feeling like no other I've ever felt so it is very hard to describe.  It is tickly and almost like your foot being asleep...that kind of a shock.  But after a few minutes it becomes very relaxing.

Doesn't that look relaxing???  I'm not really sure exactly what the purpose of this is but I would go back and do it again just because it was a cool experience.

When this was over we explored the mall a little.  We stopped at a popcorn stand called Planet Popcorn.  Apparently Novi owed Shayne some popcorn for her birthday.  So we sampled some different flavors.  Most of the flavors were the same as what you can get back home with one exception...seaweed.  I can now say that I have tried seaweed flavored popcorn.  It is not one of my favorites but it was not that bad.  It was the one that Shayne picked for her bag though.

After that we finished our girls' day and I headed home.  Actually, I headed to 1 Utama to meet Patric and do some more shopping for the house and to have some dinner.  Dinner was nothing exciting...TGIFriday's.  At this point I'm wondering if we will ever be done with shopping for the house!!!

Looking forward to Thursday...I will get to go to my first coffee morning with the American Association of Malaysia (AAM...the expat assoc).  Hopefully I will get to see the ladies that I met at the first Friday lunch again and meet more!

See you next post!

Monkey update:  They weren't at Sunway Pyramid Mall...  =)