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The steam room at this Koreatown spa wraps the assembled soft-bodies, many descending from the Empire State Building across the street, in a blanket of dense fog and sandwiches them in hot slabs of marble and jade stones, which are believed to help the body detox. Hot air is filtered through a basket of Asian herbs and ginseng root (smelling, not unpleasantly, like broccoli), while the temperature remains a perfectly unbearable 120 degrees at all times. And unlike the Russian competition, Spa Sol never runs out of towels.

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