Clients take a licking in Malaysia 'cheese' massage: report

Dodgy Malaysian "spas" are dispensing with the massage oil in favour of cream cheese in a kinky new offering in the country's bustling erotic massage industry, AFP says citing a report. The weekend edition of the Malay-language Harian Metro said reporters from the tabloid discovered that some spas near the capital Kuala Lumpur were offering customers the option of being smeared with cream cheese. The cheese is then licked from the customer's body by their scantily-clad "masseuse", usually a likely sex worker from China, Indonesia or Vietnam, the paper said Sunday in what it billed as an investigative report on the sex industry. Prostitution is illegal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia, where conservative attitudes toward sex prevail. But the country's media regularly portray a thriving sex industry involving prostitutes from China, Vietnam, Thailand and other less-developed countries in the region, and often disguised as massage operations. In a follow-up report on Monday, Harian Metro quoted an official in the Kuala Lumpur suburb Subang Jaya, where a spa was reportedly offering the cheese treatment, as saying massage parlours would face stern action if found to be offering "irresponsible activities". "This activity is a serious disease in today's society," said Subang Jaya town council official Azfarizal Abdul Rashid. Most Malaysians are relatively conservative Muslim ethnic Malays but the country also has sizable ethnic Chinese and Indian communities. Police raids on prostitution operations are a staple of tabloids like Harian Metro, but authorities are widely viewed to generally turn a blind eye to the industry's activities.