Scrub a dub dub

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After visiting the DMZ, I was exhausted. So instead of going back to take a nap, I went to a Korean bathhouse! There's one on the same mountain as Yonsei's campus, near a Buddhist temple. It only cost 8,000 won, towel service included.

Let me break this down for you- first off you remove your shoes and place them in a locker near the front doors. Then you take your bath outfit and towels down to the locker room and strip. Then you go into this big room with tons of showers and whirlpools and hot pools and cold pools and saunas and massage tables and go crazy. I circulated from the 43 degrees C pool to the 50-something pool and back again for a bit after taking a shower. I sweated it out in the 86 degrees C room for a bit and hit the cold pool as well. Didn't do a massage though.

I got my bath outfit on after about an hour or so and went upstairs (because this thing is multi-levels!) to visit the coal room- kind of a campfire-meets-sauna experience. I got a fresh strawberry smoothie at the snack bar and chilled out, slurping strawberries and watching a Korean baseball game. They have these mats laid out that you can just plop down on to watch TV or eat or nap or talk. I almost fell asleep I was so relaxed. It probably also helped that I couldn't understand what the people around me were saying. It acted like white noise.

This was definitely a case of Sarah stepping out of her comfort zone. I know the same experience, probably a hundred times better, is available at SpaWorld in Virginia, but it was a lot easier to be naked with the ajummas and grandmas at this bathhouse, since I know I'll never see them again. I think I'm much more likely to run into people I work with at SpaWorld (which disturbs me slightly).

If you ever have the chance to visit a Korean bathhouse- do it! So much fun and very relaxing. I slept like a baby Saturday night.

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