The Mandarin Oriental Beauty Salon and Barber shop is a short hop from the
hotel via one of the city's many elevated walkways across the busy
expressway. It's a bustling, functional salon housed on the second floor of
Jardine House, a Canary Wharf-like leviathan otherwise known as the Tower of
a Thousand Arseholes, presumably because of its circular windows not its
occupants.
The salon may bear the Mandarin Oriental name but there is no polished marble
or crystal chandeliers here. Rather, there are a handful of Formica-clad
cubicle-sized treatment rooms where staff are polite and to the point.
The big draw is Mr So. Women are said to circumnavigate the globe for his
foot-sculpting skills. The genial but taciturn Mr So can barely be much
older than 35 yet he has inherited the family reputation for peerless
Shanghai-style pedicures. There is a rash of neon-lit "happy feet"
parlours all over Hong Kong, many with able practitioners, but Mr So is the
genuine article. Ask anyone.
“It’s mainly men who play sport and women who wear high heels that visit,”
says Mr So, who stole the show when the Mandarin flew him to London last
year to appear at a spa event.
Sat on a chair on a slightly raised platform in the corner of a cubicle, I
remove my shoes and socks and soak my feet for five minutes in a washing-up
tub filled with hot soapy water. So far, so granny-style. But after a couple
of day’s pounding the city’s steep streets and a hike out to Stanley on the
South side of the island, the simple soak works wonders. My feet suitably
softened and doused with a splash of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion, Mr So
begins his work one foot at a time.
Equipped with a sterilised set of smooth chisels with razor sharp tips Mr So,
head bowed, chips away at the hardened patches of the soles and toes. The
hard skin falls away like snow flakes.
For the first foot I watch his every move, especially when he employs a
scalpel-like instrument to excavate the never-previously-excavated side of
my toe nails. I wait anxiously for the tickle factor to kick in and a nasty
accident to occur, but it is not to be. By the second foot though, I’ve
relaxed into it and, much to my shame and Mr So’s credit, read a magazine.
After about an hour we’re done: so thoroughly have my feet been re-sculpted,
filed and buffed that they hardly recognise each other. They feel ultra
smooth and restored to the shape that nature intended them to be. How do I
feel? Good… So good.
The Shanghainese Medical Pedicure (1 hour) costs HKD $660 (£45)
The Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong spa
USP The brand new Mandarin Oriental spa, which offers some
Chinese medicinal treatments, has spectacular 24th-floor views of the city
and harbour. Instructors are on hand to show you how to use the Kinesis (a
newly developed way to increase strength, speed, stamina and suppleness
using a floating pulley system) equipment in the gym. The old-fashioned
barbers on the first floor will be open in the New Year. As the hotel looks
set to pioneer no smoking in puff happy China this may become a male
grooming haven in which to sit back with a whisky and cigar for a wet shave
and head massage after a hard day’s banking. Yoga and pilates can be done at
the nearby sister Landmark hotel, a short jog through an interlinked
shopping mall.
AMBIENCE There’s a subtle 1930s Shanghai scene going on but
mostly it’s the immaculate marble corridors and wood-clad interiors,
changing and treatment rooms you’d expect at the Mandarin Oriental. The
men’s changing room has a cool spiral staircase that leads up to a herb
infused steam room, while the women’s area has a water-pebble walk of
enlightenment. Having been rebuilt over the past two years and recently
re-opened, the whole hotel is a sparkling and classy phoenix risen from the
ashes of the original Mandarin Oriental. There are eight treatment rooms
including two couples suites.
EXPERIENCE The studded plastic spa shoes that I was given at
the welcome ritual were painful to walk in – I longed for a pair of the soft
white variety (which I’m sure, had I commanded, would have been wished upon
me in a matter of minutes by one of the 700 super-efficient staff employed
at the hotel). No pain, no gain though in the spa world - I chose a Chinese
meridian energy line massage with cupping, thinking anything Gwyneth can
suffer I could survive.
At seven different strategic points the skin on my back was scrunched into
what looked like plastic wine glasses and left there for five minutes. It hurt like being pinched but was weird for its unfamiliarity more than
anything else. The cups correspond with vital organs – the lungs, heart,
kidney etc – and the colour of the mark they leave indicates to the
therapist each organ’s state of health. My therapist Kyo remarked on my
liver but this was likely linked to the volume of champagne quaffed the
previous night. Alcohol and ancient holistic treatments are not ideally
suited. Apart from my impressive polka-dot patterned back I wasn’t sure what
the treatment had achieved – though I felt an energised clarity of the sort
you feel after a good acupuncture session. The Chinese massage was thorough
and pitch perfect in terms of pressure – surprisingly the cupped circles
were not sore at all.
FOOD The hotel has several restaurants whose army of talented
chefs conjure up superbly crafted fusion food. A young, three
Michelin-starred chef, Pierre Gagnaire, oversees the 25th floor restaurant
Pierre, where the dining experience is as breathtaking as the views; there’s
also an excellent bakery and patisserie. Word is that even members of the
big five families who effectively own Hong Kong can’t be guaranteed a table
some nights without booking ahead.
IN CROWD A mix of Hong Kong’s movers and shakers and global
businessmen and women striking deals to fuel the Asian economy in the sort
of sophisticated comfort that would leave the average Chinese peasant
flabbergasted. We spotted Duncan Goodhew in the lobby.
WALLET WATCH Signature Time Rituals personalised to your
needs last for 170 minutes and cost HKD $2,380 (£165) on a weekday, with a
HKD $500 supplement at weekends; a 60-minute Chinese meridian massage is one
of the cheaper options on the list at HKD $840. A range of treatments
combining ancient and contemporary techniques last around 80 minutes each
and cost about HKD $1,100 each. The 20-minute honey, sesame and green tea
healing body scrub (HKD $450; £30) sounds delicious.
NEED TO KNOW The Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, 5 Connaught
Road, Central (+852 2522 0111; www.mandarinoriental.com)
