Before You Book: One Night Alone at The Excellent on Macau's Long Weekend, and the Door That Closes at 4 AM

Sunday, eight in the evening, and Mr Morishita is putting his shoes back on in a hotel room in Macau. He is an office worker from Osaka, travelling alone, and tonight he is going to The Excellent Sauna. He is off for four days, Saturday to Tuesday: Japan’s Culture Day is the Tuesday, and he took the Monday for himself. Tomorrow has nothing in it. Of the four, this is the only night he handed to one house.

His message fixed the date, the hotel, the hour he wanted the car, and the 60-minute soft-style massage (柔式按摩) from the house menu. He had read how a booking works and our piece on going alone before he wrote. Who his therapist would be, and which two free add-ons, were left for the night itself.

Macau has the same weekend. Monday 2 November is All Souls’ Day, a public holiday here, so the city is off from Saturday 31 October through Monday. If you are spending those three days in Macau, from home, from Hong Kong, or already booked in, this is your Sunday night as well, with the same empty Monday after it.

From the car to the door

Just before nine, our private car is at the entrance of his hotel. The Excellent is inside the Grand Emperor Hotel on the Macau peninsula, the booking got there before the car did, and nobody asks him anything on the way in. The locker key goes on his wrist, he takes the bath, and then it is time to choose his therapist. The 60-minute soft-style massage was already fixed from the menu, and the one thing he wanted was his lower back worked on. Choosing a person made him nervous for a moment, until he put a hand to the small of his back and she looked at the place and nodded, once and firmly. That settled it, and the nerves turned into something closer to looking forward. She takes him to the room.

The hour behind the door

The hour has a simple shape: a dry bed, the massage on it, and a hot towel to wipe him down at the end, and at no point does he get up or tidy anything. He does not need to remember any of it, because she leads and he follows. The room is a bed and a door. The door closes behind the two of them and she is the only other person in the room, and he thinks: this is where the 60 minutes start. Not a minute before her first touch counts against these 60, and checking that, he feels he has come out slightly ahead. Then he is face down, with a single towel laid over him from the shoulders to the calves.

The first thing that reaches him is not a hand but soap. She showered before she came in, and it is still in her hair when she leans over him. That is the house rule, before every session and again after it. When the towel is folded down off his back, that is the moment a first-timer holds his breath. There is nothing to hold it for. She is a professional, and what she is reading is not his back but where it is stiff. Once his eyes are shut, the order is hers.

Her hands go first not to his neck or his shoulders but to the small of his back, the place he pressed. In Osaka he sits on this lower back from morning to evening and calls that his job. Here he realises for the first time that the back has been doing most of the work. The weight is deeper on the second pass than the first and deeper again on the third. It slows where he is tight and lightens where there is bone. From the waist it climbs the spine to the shoulders, where there is a hard place on top of one of them he did not know about, and on the third pass something in it lets go and slides downward.

On the way back down, when she reaches the place he pointed to, she stays. Her hands never fully leave his skin between one place and the next. The glutes do not feel pressed so much as loaded, something heavy set down and lifted away again, and each time it lifts, more of his lower back has gone slack. He cannot remember when he started holding it. His breathing has changed too, though he only thinks about that later.

Partway down the thigh his knee is moved a little outward, he understands where the next place is, and his leg braces on its own. It is over in a second or two, because his body works out before he does that there is nothing to tense against. To her this is one step of a night’s work. He shuts his eyes again and stops thinking about the rest.

The calf is followed down to the heel, and only when the heel is held does he notice how much he had been holding there. Each part of the sole answers differently when it is pressed, and the toes come one at a time, first, second, third. He has lost track of how far down she has got.

Whether she asked him to turn over, he cannot remember afterwards. What he remembers is the ceiling light suddenly above his eyes and the towel not having gone anywhere. The stomach is worked lightly, and lightly is enough to feel good. The front of the thighs gets the same light pressure, once up to the knee and back, and from there it is the arms. At the underarms he thinks, that too. The hands are last, each finger drawn out to its tip, and the order ends on the little finger of his right hand.

He knows it is over and does not move, because he cannot think of a reason to. The idea of lifting an arm surfaces and drifts off again. What time it is has not crossed his mind once since the door closed.

A hot towel settles on his chest and moves down over his arms and legs, and each place it wipes turns dry and light. “You don’t need to move,” she says, and he does not. They step out of the door together, and there they part. She goes on to the shower, as she did before she came in.

Afterwards, a recliner in the rest area

Outside the door is the recliner rest area. He sits back into a chair, and from here a different masseur takes over. The two free add-on services that come with booking through us happen here, not in the room, and he picks two on the spot from a list of eight: ear cleaning, a body scrub, head, leg, foot or hand massage, fingernail or toenail care. He chose the foot massage and the ear cleaning, because his legs still did not feel like his.

The Excellent opens from 12:00 to 04:00, and therapists are on duty from 12:00 to 04:00 as well. It is not a house you stay in until morning. At four the door closes and the night is over, and before that our private car took him back to his hotel. Monday has nothing in it, and he has not decided when to wake. His body is still carrying the weight of the hour, and on Tuesday he flies home to Osaka.

Settled before you book, decided on the night

A message fixes the left column. The right column is decided in the building, by you. We do not pick a therapist for you and send a name over.

Three questions people ask before booking this night

”Is The Excellent all right for a first visit?”

Our venue page lists it under “Returning guests”. That does not mean you cannot go alone. It means the house rewards someone who already knows the sequence, which is why Mr Morishita read two articles before he wrote to us. If this is your first Macau sauna, start with the first-timers page and the six-venue guide.

”Do I have to say anything in the room?”

You do not. A word or a gesture for where you are tight, your lower back, your shoulders, is enough, and she works from it. If you would rather say nothing at all, that is fine too, and the hour is no thinner for it.

People also ask what it costs. The figures are on the venue’s page in our venue list, and the exact amount comes from the current menu confirmed when you book. The rest of the FAQ covers the smaller questions.

One message covers it

Send us the date, how many of you, the hotel and the session you want, in one message on WhatsApp or LINE through the contact page. We fix the hour for the car and brief the house. The therapist and the two add-ons are yours to choose once you are there.

Of his four days, Mr Morishita gave one house one Sunday night. The door closed, she began, and on Monday morning nobody came to wake him until the light did.