Saturday, January 8, 2011

My Islands Massage Adventure

What better way to end a year than a relaxing day at the spa for an unbelievably low price.......NOT!

After the stress from work, holiday shopping and left and right parties, it was such a relief knowing that we were about to treat ourselves to a spa day for a very cheap price of P500.

P500 voucher
Thinking it was such a good buy, my friend bought 2 vouchers from CashCashPinoy for this Balinese Coffee Scrub, manicure, foot treatment and pedicure from Islands Massage Mobile & Day Spa.  So waking up early on the last day of the year, we headed to Makati to have our day in the spa.
I  started having trepidations when we walked into this small dusty establishment.

reception area
Going in, we were asked to wait for a few minutes as they prepare the room.

couples room?
This was our treatment room.  See those colorful bedsheets?  They aren't actually plastic bedsheets to protect the massage bed but shower curtains.

Another angle of our treatment room.  I wish they invested a little more on the curtains for the window so it's not "bitin" and blackout linings wouldn't have hurt too.  Because Islands Massage Mobile & Day Spa is along a street where jeepneys ply, the zen-ish background music was barely heard amidst the sound of jeeps passing by and hip hop music that is being played somewhere down the road.
Balinese Coffee Scrub
The coffee scrub they used.This doesn't look anything like what was on the photos at cascashpinoy.

bathroom / toilet
This is the only shower/bathroom on the 2nd floor.  Wondering where the shower is?  It's that bidet that is hanging on the sink.  Because of the short hose of the "shower"  I had a very hard time rinsing off the scrub.  I had to bend down and twist to get most of it off.  I felt like I was doing Yoga!  Though I think I should be thankful that the bidet was attached to the pipes under the sink instead of  the toilet! 
And speaking of toilet, because the facility had only one on the 2nd floor, it was a his and her bathroom.  What you don't see in the photo is the male urinal that wasn't flushed properly. Yuck!  The toilet on the first floor was no better since there were spiders and baby cockroaches playing around.
After rinsing off, we were given malongs because they ran out of towels!  What?!! A spa that didn't have towels?  Seriously?!?
After quickly changing back into our street clothes, we headed back down to the reception area where we were to get our foot spa, mani and pedi. Yup, you read right, we were getting our mani and pedi IN the reception area - the 2 black seat on the bottom left of the photo of the reception, to be exact.  What I liked about the foot spa was the really warm soapy water they used.  It is such a luxury for me to dip my feet in warm nearing hot water. Most of the time, I had to ask the therapist to heat up the water a little more.  After getting our foot scrubbed and massaged, only one manicurist was present and instead of getting our nails done at the same time, we each had to wait while the other is having her nails done.  This, despite the fact we made an appointment and we were the only customers at that time.  We were really famished by the time we finished.


I would love to tell you what is in those jars the manicurist used, but when I asked, she didn't know what they were.

Islands Massage Mobile & Day Spa
1764 N Garcia St.
Valenzuela, Makati City
4037008 ; 3774717 ; 0908-1376565 ; 0915-8944909
www.islandsmassage.ph
info@islandsmassage.ph

Update: I told my friend from cashcashpinoy about our experience and she was shocked and promised to look into it.
Update (1/25/11):  My cashcashpinoy friend told me that they normally do an ocular of the place they feature on their website.  This one, unfortunately, was the only establishment that was not checked out.  So rest assured that all establishments in the future would be visited and be given a thorough once over before it is featured on cashcashpinoy.

12 comments:

  1. We had a very diferent experience,the place is actually nice and the owners were very accommodating.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @anonymous: I am glad you had a very different experience from ours. Unfortunately, I have not met the owners so I cannot say if they were nice and accommodating or not.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @anonymous: Are we talking of the same Islands Massage in Nicanor Garcia? I have the same experienced with the notablogger. I asked the attendant where is the shower room and she told me it's the same room with the toilet. I was confused since I didn't see any shower head. Yaiks, it's the bidet on top of the faucet.

    ReplyDelete
  4. hi , just want to ask , if u asked permission from the owners to take photos or use their logo ?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi John/Jane Doe,
    Pardon my oversight on disclosures.
    To answer your query, No I did not ask permission nor do I see the need to for a number reasons.
    Firstly, the logo was taken from the fliers that are being given out to the public.
    Second, all the photos were taken by me and most of them in the presence of the spa's staff. There were no objections raised nor was I told that it was not allowed. No photos were lifted from any other sites - otherwise I would have done a photo credit. I've also seen 3 blog sites where photos of the establishment were posted, granted their articles were very different than mine, exact opposite in some cases in fact, but I did not see any questions raised about permissions - unless they were sent privately (?)
    And most importantly, the photos and logo are not being used for commercial purposes. I am not making money nor have I made money out of this.
    So, I do not see me violating any kind of intellectual property rights.
    May I add, as a full disclosure, that I am not affiliated nor do I own any kind of spa business.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very efficiently written information. It will be helpful to anyone who utilizes it, as well as myself. Keep up the good work - for sure i will check out more posts.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Chiropractor Seattle: thank you :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. damn! I am starting to regret i bought that shitty voucher!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. @udi, it's been more than half a year since I wrote this piece and hopefully the management took this constructively and made some improvements. Let me know how it goes :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. I was surfing net and fortunately came across this site and found very interesting stuff here. Its really fun to read. I enjoyed a lot. Thanks for sharing this wonderful information. brisbane massage gumtree

    ReplyDelete
  11. Always good to know where to go get a massage that's clean! I always ask friends first. I never walk in a strange place with out checking out reviews First! I'm sorry your experience wasn't good ! Hope you find a better clean place. 😁

    ReplyDelete