Bathhouse blues, Busan, Korea

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After the depressing tone of the last post I thought this one would put a few smiles on peoples faces.
Korea is known for its spa's and bath houses or whatever they are where you take off all your clothes and relax, jump into hot baths, cold baths, steam rooms, saunas, get massages. Sounds great.
Anyway along with my pal John from Hull who said no other Westerners would go with him, I decided to take the plunge. Before i got here i read about these places, I had a vision that they would be unisex, flesh everywhere, nothing sexual about it whatsoever. But I was told that they aren't unisex, men in one part, women in the other, and it comes from the old customs.
Anyway John goes every Sunday with the legendary Mr Gwack who goes with his family. We get there and the one thing which made me laugh was the fact that it would be a pure sausage fest. I had a few jokes with John about playing the good old man game of 'willies' but to be honest, I didn't feel nervous, awkward or anything like that, after all in places like this, nudity is normal, its only us in the west that use sexy thongs to cover up girls and lacy bra's (i honestly don't care about guys) to give them sex appeal. I think it has its pluses as well the whole sexual feeling of it makes it more fun and secretive rather than living in a society of naturists, but then it gets to the point where it all seems forbidden and here they just let it all hang loose. Going to the bathhouse is a family event. And the whole point of it is that you cleanse yourself and feel revitalised.
Back to my experience. Off came the shirt, pants and the boxers. There I was stark bollock naked in front of a load of Korean men and that was in the changing room. I proceeded onwards to the main area of conflict where one must take a shower first incase you are a tramp with diseases and jump into a bath and spread those diseases or just a dirty boy in general. Luckily im neither of those and I took a shower regardless and turned around, the white boy standing on his own with asian eyes investigating me, out of interest or out of being gay ill never know but that was the only moment i felt lost as i didn't know what to do or where to go until i heard John call me and I jumped into the first pool, a pretty damn hot bath. I felt as if i couldn't relax as much as I should but basically the whole session lasted 2 hours and consisted of jumping from a hot place, be it the bath or sauna, steam room or the other bath which i didn't dare jump into as I was lead to believe that if i did so, I would come out medium-rare, possibly aldente.
The cold bath seemed to be the most pleasurable. In the past i have enjoyed saunas and been able to tolerate the heat but here it appeared that I was more content when it came to the colder option. Normally I hate cold water unless its for drinking, jumping into the sea is something I don't like, nor swimming pool either but once in the cool pool it felt great, and they had jets in there which massaged your back, front and possible groin region is you wanted to get wood in a room full of Koreans. I didn't. After you are finished sweating and finished with Korean men staring at your cock, you sit down and wash yourself and scrub yourself. John told me about scrubbing your face, drying off and squeezing your blackheads out, this was somewhat appealing and I over scrubbed til my face hurt, and then i did the black head part and today i have never had skin so clear and soft.
Definitely an experience I will embrace many times during my stay here in Korea and in the bigger ones, afterwards you can get pyjamas and sleep in a hot room with loads of other people. Different to say the least.
Things I learnt from this experience: Nudity is natural, Koreans have small penile objects, this is definitely the one time where you can be glad of western attributes and most importantly, this whole experience unnecessarily reassured me that once again, I am not gay.
Just to add one of the funniest things i've heard in a long time, i was speaking to my friend Thomas from San Diego about the bath house. He said he would never go again. I made fun of him and asked why. He said that the first and only time he went he was doing his thing and some kid ran up to him and tugged on his penis and ran away and the whole place erupted with laughter. I'm still laughing now. Apparently girls have it much worse though, they get groped all the time. Isnt life hard.

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