Forget the standard full-body massage, or the typical spa pedicure. These are the spa experiences that are designed to not only relax you, but also to amaze and impress your friends. Or just gross them out.

Top 10 Crazy Spa Treatments:

1) Fish Nibble Pedicure - this treatment is extremely popular in Japan, and is starting to stir up a feeding frenzy here as well (sorry, couldn't resist). The Yvonne Nail & Spa Salon in the Washington DC area offers this organic treatment, where you soak your feet in a shallow, warm pool for 15-30 minutes while the little "doctor" fish nibble off the dead skin. This sounds a little gross at first, but if you think about it, it's totally natural!

 
2) Beer Bath - Chodovar Beer Spa in the Czech Republic creates a spa treatment straight out of a frat-boys' dream. The client is immersed into a bath, enriched by a batch of active beer yeast and a mixture of dehydrated crushed herbs, for 20 minutes. "The agreeable temperature of the water causes mild and gradual rise of the heart activity and activation of blood circulation in all the vascular system. The bath warms the cuticle and releases skin pores through which, due to moderate sweating, unhealthy substances are scoured away from the subcutis." We would recommend they serve brats and pizza to immersed clients, for supplemental nourishment.

3) Ear Candling - This is an unusual treatment that originated in Egypt around 2,000 years ago. A combination of pressure-point sinus massage and aromatherapy oils creates a treatment that is purportedly very safe and relaxing. The suggested result is that you will have a heightened sense of smell and taste and an ability to breathe and hear better, as well as diminished earwax, migraine headaches and sinus infections, and lessened allergies. Experience the miracle at Elemur Day Spa 56 in New York, NY.

4) Chocolate Fondue Wrap - NOW we're talking! The brilliant minds at the Hotel Hershey have created a number of chocolate-related treatments, one of which is the Chocolate Fondue Wrap. Of course, they don't wrap you entirely in chocolate (which would be my idea), but rather a mixture of healing mud and essence of cocoa. After the Vichy shower rinse, you can go find some actual chocolate fondue, that you haven't been able to stop thinking of since you first read about the treatment.

 

5) Fanny Facial - Put your best cheeks forward. This is a mis-named treatment, in that it has nothing to do with the face. So many of us delight in the fact that we rarely, if ever, have to look at our posteriors.  This treatment may help us embrace the view of the booty. The Smooth Synergy Day Spa in New York offers this process, involving exfoliation, microcurrent therapy, and a spray tan for your bum. The microcurrent therapy allegedly helps reduce the appearance of cellulite and tones your backside, and the spray tan enhances the tone. 

 

6) The Geisha Facial - Write your own memoirs after your Geisha Facial treatment at the Shizuka Day Spa in New York. The facialists use “traditional and natural Japanese ingredients” to make skin vibrant and soft. What might these "traditional and natural Japanese ingredients" be, you ask? Well, if you must know they include nightingale excrement, and we do hope that is the most unpleasant of the ingredients. Apparently nightingale droppings contain natural enzymes that act as exfoliants and skin brighteners, so what you try to avoid in your hair actually makes your face look great.

7) The 24-carat Gold Facial: The Eldorado Hotel & Spa in Santa Fe uses gold to slow down depletion and to stimulates cellular growth. Eldorado means "the golden one" in Spanish, so this is a natural fit. Gold is supposed to calm inflamed areas and lessen the appearance of age spots.

 

8) The Flour Scrub: The spa at the Molino Stucky Hilton in Venice, Italy offers a cheeky nod to the hotel's past, as a flour mill, in the 19th century. The flour scrub is an exfoliating treatment, which uses Indian corn to polish skin. We would like to point out that corn is not the same as flour, but it's Italy and they gave us Gelato, so we won't complain.

 

9) Caviar Facial & Body Treatment: You can now be coated from head-to-toe with caviar at Rome Cavalieri Hilton’s Grand Spa (in Rome, Italy). The spa offers a Caviar Facial and a Caviar Body Treatment, both of which incorporate the skin-firming properties of caviar extract.

 

10) Snake Massage: If you suffer from ophidiophobia, this will not be your massage. For 300 shekels (around $70), clients at Ada Barak’s spa in northern Israel can have six non-venomous, but very lively serpents slither and slide across their aching muscles and stiff joints.  This sounds much more therapeutic than having spiders crawl around on you.  Potato, potahto.