Dr Fish

While in Jakarta I had a chance to experience fish spa therapy.  Fish spa is a therapy by dipping your feet into a pool of “Dr Fish” and let these little healing creatures clean your feet and nibble away your dead skin, leaving your skin glow in health.  This fish spa treatments are growing in parts of Asia such as Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.  Most of there spas employ Dr Fish species which originate from Turkey, called Garra Rufa.

Garra Rufa is a special fish with natural healing properties.  It started in Kangal, Turkey: where people discovered the fish’s ability to cure skin diseases.  Garra Rufa is a fresh water fish, and their usual habitat is in hot springs, where these fishes can withstand temperatures ranging from 0 degree Celcius up to 43 degree Celcius.  They are also known as Dr Fish, feeds only on dead and problematic areas of the skin.

 The benefits of this are natural exfoliation of dead skin, smoother and healthy blowing skin, promote blood circulation, lightning of minor scars, etc etc.

I did this just for the curiosity, but as I proceeded to the fish pool I was having a second thought.  I really didn’t want to dip my feet into those vigorously moving little fish…  Looked gross. :p  But, we have already paid for 30 mins, so no choice!  I sat down on the bench and dipped my feet slowly into the water.  !!!

Those little creatures were really really tickling for the first few minutes, and I was screaming..  but as I tried to calm down myself and ignore the fact that there are thousands of fish nibbling on my skin, I felt ok.  I dipped my feet in a pool of small fish first, and then moved to the pool of larger size fish.  Lager fish has bigger suction but less aggressive compared with the little ones.

After the therapy, my feet were very smooth, soft and moist!  I couldn’t help but touch my feet in the car on the way home 🙂  It was an interesting experience..