Treat Your Feet, Shanghai Style!

I don’t like feet, and I have a particular vengeance against my own. I’m not alone in the fight against feet either, one very close friend refused to let her boyfriend see her tootsies for two years, he had to sneak a peek while she was asleep and let’s just say they are no longer together. In boarding school my friends and I named our particularly ugly toes after teachers… usually the weird ones… who taught Latin.

So when I heard about a magical foot magician by the name of Samuel So who could transform my unfortunate soles into twinkly toes I was all a flutter and full of questions. I hailed a Hong Kong cab and hurried toot sweet as fast as I could to the old Mandarin Oriental and headed to the 24^th floor to meet the magician… who was booked out… for two weeks.

I made an appointment (that I would definitely not be missing) and trudged back to the office. Two weeks came and went, and in that time I had googled ‘Shanghai Pedicure’ and ‘Samuel So’ about a million times. Turns out that the So family have been at the Mandarin Oriental Salon churning out perfect pedis for generations. Samuel has been there for 17 years and is heralded as the best in the business by those in the know.

So’s special Shanghai service (try saying that five times quickly!), does not come cheap, but it’s worth it… that I can assure you. On the day of my appointment I arrived five minutes early and was met by a very Zen looking gent who did not have one hair out of place. He ushered me from the lush Mandarin Salon interior, into an immaculately clean white room with a black leather sofa, TV, and lots and lots of blades… and some OPI nail polish adorning one wall.

The procedure started with a nice little foot soak and a couple of questions before the magic began. For exactly fifty minutes Samuel scraped every single bit of dead skin from my feet and toes. I didn’t feel a thing and not only did he return my pieds (I’m running out of toe synonyms!) to their baby soft best … he also painted my nails perfectly too… in blood red OPI lacquer. I even put my pumps on fifteen minutes afterwards and everything stayed put. Quite frankly the man is a genius, and I have never been so happy to part with $750 in my whole life. This is foot therapy at its best and beats a traditional pedi every day of the week… get booking now or forever hold your peace!

The Shanghainese Pedicure costs $750 for 50 minutes.

Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong  5 Connaught Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
2522 0111

www.mandarinoriental.com/hongkong/luxury-spa/the-mandarin-salon