Ear Candling

Hmm.. Taiwanese is a pragmatic lot. No spa experience, no daintly beautician girls fawning over your face. This stall is run by a couple of gruff guys who look like they clean your ears by nite and could be working as fishmongers by day. You need to have some courage to have a burning candle stuck inside your ear while in a contorted sitting position and looked upon by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Well, if something goes wrong, you have dozens of eye witnesses.

A couple of americans were adventurous enough to try out the treatment and looked quite pleased at the end, when the stall man cut open the remaining candle and showed them the powdery clumps of wax in the tube. Quite disgusting. As you can tell, I was quite kaypoh and had sneaked a look at their results.