"Hot sand therapy", a specialty in Turpan City in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is proving popular with tourists who claim being buried gradually in hot sand brings a myriad of health benefits.
With temperatures in Turpan City soaring above 42 degrees celsius, the sand therapy season is in full swing.
At the sand therapy center at the Uyghur Medical Hospital in Turpan, tourists dressed in light clothing carefully lie down in excavated sand pits and gradually cover their bodies with hot sand, leaving only their heads and hands exposed.
The claim is that this protects the body from some diseases thanks to the combination of heat, arid conditions, the sun's rays, and minerals from the sand.
"As soon as I lay down, I felt it was extremely hot. After about 10 minutes of being buried, I started to sweat slightly, but my body felt fine overall and was quite comfortable," said a tourist.
Tourists seeking sand therapy are also supporting local hospitality businesses, spreading the benefit of this unusual summer activity.
"Hot sand therapy" draws tourists to Xinjiang
"Hot sand therapy" draws tourists to Xinjiang
The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.
The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.
Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.
"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.
Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.
Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.
"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.
Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight
