Not without reason. There's hardly any apartment door her business card has not been slipped under. But she's not alone. Dozens of similar cards sporting images of buxom beauties are doing the rounds here brazenly offering "room service" massage. Or so their shady operators would have us believe. Understandably, the residents are not amused, with many alleging that the unnamed "massage centres" are just fronts for a thriving door-to-door sex trade.
But this is something new. I suspect these massage centres are just a cover up for something else," said Rawat, who lives in the England cluster. Art, an American engineer however, dismisses the business cards as a pesky garbage issue.
You'll never know what they are up to," he said. Dubai has more than registered massage centres offering everything from Thai, Chinese and Swedish massage to siatsu and ayurvedic therapy. Most hotels also have spas offering massage therapy of one kind or the other. International City has three licensed massage centres, but in recent times they seem to have been dwarfed by door-to-door freelance masseuses. Pandit, another Indian resident said the mobile masseuses try to upstage each other by giving the fanciest visiting cards.
Ali, manager of a Perfect Line Massage Centre in the China cluster of International City, said they follow strict guidelines and have separate massage centres for men and women. He said, roaming masseuses are "unusual" and are spoiling the business and image of legitimate ones. By law, massage centre workers must be licensed and must follow Dubai Municipality Public Health Department's hygiene and decency guidelines.
They are also periodically inspected. Dubai Police have in the past advised those who want to get massage treatment to go to licensed massage centres and warned the public not to allow strangers to enter their homes, as some may be undocumented or have criminal intent. In November , a clash among rival Asian gangs suspected of operating brothels in International City left one gangster dead and another seriously injured.
