yet another korean adventure

i went to a spa/sauna last night. except for briefly offending my western sensibilities a few times...oh my gosh it was AWESOME!

when you first walk in, you take your shoes off, pay & they hand you 2 towels & a set of clothes. it's really thin shorts & a top. i guess maybe like what i imagine a gym uniform to be (never had those when i went to school). your shoes go in a locker & you go into another room & get a key for a second locker. and then the fun begins!

you take off ALL your clothes. every single piece. um, yes, that includes your underpants. you can put a towel in front of you but it's about the size of a handtowel so it only covers right above your boobies & then falls right below your other stuff. yeah, that means your butt is NAKED out there for the world to see. then you take your naked self and your itty bitty towel into another room with lots of other naked people. this one had 3 hot tubs & one cold tub. i hear that the idea is you get in the hot tub & boil yourself for awhile & then you go jump in the cold tub & your very open pores squoosh shut & force out all the ick. fantastic visual, huh? we did that a couple of times (except i wasn't jumping-i despise cold water). then we went into the wet sauna rooms. those were nice unless you leaned back against the walls which are all rocks and/or mud. they don't use concrete because toxins leach out of it what with it being exposed to heat/moisture at such high rates all the time. and then you jump in the cold tub again (or ease in so you don't give yourself a heart attack). and then we went & sat in the hot tub again until the massage/scrub lady came to get us.

out of all the people in there, the massage/scrub ladies were the only one with any clothes on & that consisted of a black bra & black panties. possibly so that when they either sat on you or stood on you or leaned on you during the whole process, "parts" wouldn't accidentally be touched. apparently it's not just my western sensibilities affected by that. they lay you down on a table & throw a big old bowl of hot water on you. then they put on these mitten things (you know those round scrubber things that you use on dishes? they are plastic & usually some bright primary color? that's about the best way i can describe those mittens) & they scrub you all over. by all over, i mean all over. i don't think i've ever had my armpits scrubbed before. ok, well, i've never had one of those scrubbings before but i've had massages & stuff & no one ever touched my armpits. wow. yikes. but "yikes-er" was the part where they scrubbed my butt. yeah, the whole thing. they scrubbed everything. have you ever heard an old person say "wash as far as possible & then wash possible" when telling a kid to take a bath? well, they scrubbed as far as possible & probably on the very edges of possible. this wasn't in a private room, either, so the whole time i can hear everybody in the tub room & people keep coming in to "sign up" for a scrub & stuff. i'd have to say i was more exposed in the scrub room that i was while giving birth. at least then i had a hospital gown on the top half of me! after she scrubbed every small bit of dead skin off my body & quite possibly some live skin, too, she rinsed it all off & then i had a massage & a cucumber facial. the massage sure wasn't as terrifying as that last one i had here. it was pretty nice & she washed my hair afterwards to get rid of all the oil. and, like i said, i was stood on, squatted on & leaned on. and a few times i felt like i was gonna slide off the table from all the oil. the only thing holding me on was the hand towel she stuck under my back (kind of like you put a damp dish towel under your cutting board to keep it from running away?) apparently for that very purpose. and then i took a shower & put on my gym suit. and went off on another adventure.

we went to the common area. the spa has a men's side & a women's side & then they have a common area for everyone to go to. and everybody wears their gym suits in the common area so it's cool.

they have a restaurant, a snack bar, a computer area, a sleeping loft & then a big open area that (i think) doubles as a movie theater & has massaging recliners, tvs & some big tree trunks that double as seats. they are all polished & everything so there's no danger of splinters in your butt. oh and there are 3 dry sauna rooms & a freezer room.

we got a drink & checked out the dry sauna room. the rooms are all different temperatures so you can choose your poison depending on how hot you want to get. the floors are covered in woven mats & there are wooden pillows. it's like a 4 x 4 with a notch carved in it for your head. and of course it is sanded so you don't get splinters in your neck. they're really concerned with splinters, i'd say. we sat around in there for awhile & then went into the freezer room. it greatly resembles a walk-in freezer, for those of you familiar with the backs of restaurants or stores. there are wooden slats on the floor so you don't freeze your feet off & benches lining the room for you to sit on. the walls are iced-over elements. so again with not leaning back on there. apparently that follows the same philosophy of open your pores, close your pores, squoosh the stuff out.

we hung out in the common area for a good while, just talking. there were quite a few people there, including kids. you can bring your children to the spa. i was told that women can bring their little boys 5 & under into the ladies area but then they have to go to the men's area. we even saw a little baby! it's quite common to go the the spa & stay all night. if we had sat in the dry sauna room much longer, i would have fallen asleep. but i figured i should probably come home. there were people camped out all over the floor in the common room & in the recliners sleeping. there was a flight of stairs in the ladies spa area that led to a sleeping room with a really low light & some sleeping mats. it was like home away from home but with the added benefit that you didn't have to clean!

we left my house at 6:30, had to go pick someone up, got to the spa at about 7:45 (stupid traffic lights). we didn't get home until 2:30. 1 called when i was on the main road, almost home. "what are you doing?" i told him i was driving home & he was all "i didn't think you'd be there all day!" heck, neither did i! i'm used to a massage appointment taking 1 1/2 hours! we did go get something to eat afterwards b/c by time we were all finished, the restaurant was closed & we were hungry. we had a great time & have tentatively decided to try to do it once a month. it was an awesome girls' night out once we got past the naked part. we might even take all the kids (there are 7 between the 3 families) & make a family day of it. we just have to talk 1 into it. he's not so sure about the naked part.