by Isabelle Taft

My general philosophy of the body is that it should be messed with as little as possible. Showering, face-washing, tooth-brushing — all great. Exercise and eating vegetables — I enjoy both. I have even been known to apply a face moisturiser with SPF, for sun protection. But barring pain, unbearably inconvenient and excessively awkward symptoms, or potential death, I try to avoid taking medicine. I scoff at nutritional supplements and “cleanses”. And I certainly don’t spend money so that other people can apply substances I don’t understand to my face, on the grounds that intervention of any sort might just make things worse.

In the case of the skin on my face, though, making things worse might be hard to do. Like many in Hà Nội (or so I gather from the desperate skincare-related posts in the Facebook group Hanoi Beautiful), I’ve found that something about the city makes my skin perpetually red and splotchy, with bumps on my forehead and blackheads on my nose. It’s bad enough that neighbours and colleagues ask what’s wrong with my face in a tone of intense concern. One time, a toddler at the Huế Airport asked her mother why my face was so red.

Thus, when asked to visit Le Aqua Skincare Center and Spa at 14 Thể Giao in Hai Bà Trưng in the name of journalism, I cautiously put aside my fatalistic, vaguely Christian Scientist attitude towards somatic intervention.

I went to Le Aqua on a weekday mid-afternoon. I hadn’t made an appointment, but I didn’t have to wait. Within minutes I was sipping a cup of herbal-infused water, my feet floating in a bowl of warm saltwater. In an effort to practice my shoddy Vietnamese and gather information to share with the public, I asked Phương, my aesthetician, about the organic matter joining my feet in the water. “There is ginger, right?” I said, haltingly. Yes, she confirmed, plus flowers and something else I couldn’t catch.

I noted that the woman sitting next to me, feet in her own bowl of ginger-water, had enviably luminous skin. “Have you come here a lot of times?” I asked. “A lot of times!” she exclaimed, looking at me as though she were Serena Williams and I had casually asked if she was any good at tennis.

I was going to attempt a follow-up question (“How can I make my skin look nice, like yours, instead of bad, like mine?”) but Phương was already whisking me upstairs.

Gentle potion: Le Aqua uses Dermatologica products.

The room in which facials are administered is dimly lit. There are three stations; one was occupied when I walked in and the other soon would be by the Serena Williams of skin. I was surprised to see that I apparently would be expected to lay down on a table-mattress in order to receive a facial, and even more so when Phương told me to take off my dress and put on a brown mumu-like garment.

At this point I realised that obtaining any kind of spa treatment in a country where you can barely speak the language carries a surprising advantage: You don’t even have to wonder if it would be appropriate or welcomed to make small talk, or to discuss the matter at hand — that is, your own imperfect body — because you are unable to do so regardless. And while I might, given the chance, have asked Phương if I really needed to take off my dress, it was kind of relaxing to just do what she told me.

The facial consisted of liquids and lotions of various viscosities and herbal scents being rubbed onto my face. At many points a hot, thick steam settled over me, making it somewhat hard to breathe but opening my pores in the process. It never occurred to me that a face massage would feel nice, but it did, as did the head and neck massage that came along as part of the package.

There were a few moments when I worried the language-barrier-turned-relaxation-booster would reveal a dark side. At one point, Phương left and I couldn’t see where she had gone because she had put some very heavy, damp cloths over my eyes. I began to wonder if some disaster had occurred on my face and she had rushed to call backup, not pausing to explain the situation to me because I am effectively a toddler in Vietnamese, but then I heard my neighbour begin to snore and concluded that this brief abandonment was all part of the plan.

When Phương returned, she began the one part of the experience I did not enjoy. This involved applying a great deal of pressure to my nose. Although it felt like something was definitely being sliced open, Phương wasn’t breaking the skin. Because I could neither ask what was going on nor politely request an end to this pain, I made a quiet groaning sound.  Phương got the message and stopped.

I later learned that she was performing extractions-- the removal of bacteria and other gunk trapped inside your pores. In my case, Phương was working on the blackheads on my nose. This is a normal part of a facial, as it turns out, and in fact all the prior steaming and massaging is geared towards opening your pores so that the extractions can be performed safely and effectively.  Some people insist that “a facial without extractions is just a massage,” and while I’m inclined to disagree, next time I will try to bear the pain.

At the end of the experience, I got a short back and neck massage, swapped my mumu for my dress, and received a complimentary cookie and one more mug of herby water. And my face? It felt a little tender for the rest of the day, but that’s to be expected when your usually-ignored skin has been rubbed, oiled, lotioned, steamed and extracted all in the span of an hour. And the next day I thought it looked healthier and a bit clearer.

Phương suggested I come back another time for a special sensitive-skin facial and said seeing real results takes time: one facial a week for a few months. I’m not sure I’ll be back quite that often due to the (totally reasonable but not insignificant) price — without a voucher, my facial, the ultra-calming service, costs 615,000VND for an hour and 15 minutes — and my lingering superstitions, but the hour I spent at Le Aqua was a great introduction to the art of the facial. And now that I know what extractions are and that the mumu is mandatory, I expect round 2 will be even better.