Ear Candling

Apart from extreme sports and adventure, it's nice to wind down and just get pampered once in a while. Other than going to dingy massage parlors and painful facials, what other parts of the body is there to pamper?

Here's one, your ear canal.

Ear Candling is the process of sucking wax out from your ears using a vacuum suction created from burning a candle over your ear. Read in a magazine that a guy sucked out a dead cockroach from his ear!!! Went for an ear candling session immediately after reading that.

It was tough searching for a cheap ear candling service in Singapore. I just wanted the experience, not so much pay $30 to actually clean my ears. Cotton buds work just fine.

After walking round the whole of far east, my friend and I settled on the cheapest shop we could find. On hindsight, maybe we should've invested a teeny bit more for a better experience... This was our opening conversation:
"Excuse me, could you explain the process of ear candling?"
"Yes yes. Ear. Fire."

So, we set our ears on fire, and it came with a complimentary ear massage, to soothe the burn I guess.

No, she didn't really set our ears on fire.

While the whole ear candling process was going on, I could really feel junk dislodging from the sides of my ear canal and flying out. So, I guess it worked? At the end of it, they cut open the candle to show the junk that got sucked out. Here's the result:

No cockroaches! Hurrah!

I'm not too sure about the science behind this process or whether it really does work. There are some reports of wax melting and falling into people's ear drums, making them go deaf, etc. So do choose your shop wisely and not go for the cheapest like we did. Choose a place with a good reputation.

Pretty interesting sensation to feel stuff getting sucked out! Plus it's always good to check for dead cockroaches, you never know.

Cost: Anything but the $10 ones
Fun: :) (not fun, more of interesting)
Friends: Go yourself, or with a friend. Shops can only tend to so many people at once.
Location: Far East Plaza. A few of the wellness shops there provide this service.