For those of you who follow Jill's blog you will notice that I do not post with the consistency or the frequency that she does. This is due partially to the fact that she is so exhaustive and as of right now our experiences are tied so closely to one anothers that for me to comment would be a bit redundant. If you have not checked her blog out, please do. As we get into our daily life the content of the two blogs will begin to differ more.
Even though she wrote about the Jim Jil Bang I have to write about it as well. If there is a single piece of culture that I have experienced so far that I want to integrate deeply into my way of living, jim jil bang is it. We only spent hours in the little slice of heaven on earth, but I can assure you there are many hours of jim jil bang in my future.
We went to a place called Dragon Hill Spa. It cost 10,000 won (roughly 7 USD) to get in. We were given key bracelets for our wrists, which would soon be the only things we were wearing. We took off our shoes and put them in a shoe locker. We walked to an elevator on heated floors and Jill left for the woman's floor and I left for the men's floor. They had also handed us cloth outfits to wear when we were in the coed areas. Once I reached the mens floor I went to the locker and took off my clothes. You start with a shower before getting in the spas, which is a little awkward for a germ conscious westerner with no sandals on his feet. I went into a main spa area and hopped in a tub that was 41 degrees C (105 F). It was green and called a health bath. I have no idea what made it green or healthy but it was cooler than the two next to it so I thought it was a good place to start. The bath directly next to it was called a hot bath; it was 45 degrees C (113 F). Across from me was a cold spa with three teenage boys playing in it. The water was 17 degrees C (62 F). The boys were splashing around like they were at the beach, which was kind of funny for me to see because as a teenager I don't remember ever frolicking around naked in the water with other guys, apparently I missed out. After I spent some time in the hot bath, with a father and his son, I ventured over to the body scrubbing area.
For reasons I will assume are obvious I did not take my camera in, this is the best I could find on the world wide web to illustrate what the scrubbing room looked like. There were a number of massage tables with men lying naked on the tables and men standing next to them in tiny shorts. If this was not intimidating enough, I had no idea what they were asking me if I wanted when I walked up. They started motioning with these rags back and forth on their arms. They wanted to know if I wanted a body scrub. In the I'll try anything once vain I hopped up on a table (or rather slid on the table, since it was wet). One of the men then poured hot water on me, grabbed an arm and started scrubbing. I had thought it might be a nice relaxing experience, like getting a massage. I was wrong. It was not as rough as sandpaper, but maybe rough green side of a sponge. The idea is to get all of the dead skin off and leave you feeling smooth. He worked over my entire body, with the exception of one part, although with his broad brush strokes I may have winced a few times. After the scrubbing I got a more
traditional massage and some sort of adjustment. I say this because I definitely heard some cracking and popping. After my scrub down I went and stood in a steam room that was 50 degrees C (122 F) . This was a bit more familiar for me so it was relaxing after my tense scrubbing experience. I had been their for just over an hour so I went down stairs to check in with Jill.
She was sitting in the common area watching a magic show (they also have a movie theatre). I sat next to her for a bit and then we got some food from the snack area. She had done all of the bathing she was up for so she decided to go take a nap in the Oxygen room, where you grab a pillow and lay down on a wooden floor in a room they pump with pure oxygen. I went back up stairs to keep exploring. I took another shower and went to the 6th floor to the salt sauna. On the outside it said 70 degrees C, which is 158 F! Needless to say I did not spend much time in there. I decided to try out sleeping on this block of jade. It was called an ion bed and apparently the large Korean man sleeping on one of them was getting a lot of ions because he was snoring pretty heavily. I decided to move on to something more tranquil so I went into the next room for the outdoor spa. Cold on your chest, hot on your legs is always a good combination. It reminded me of all the times I'd go hot tubbing at Vanguard.
As I said you could have stayed there a whole day. In fact you are allow
ed to stay their over night. It is a 24 hour facility and there were many people sleeping there. I decided to go back downstairs so I rinsed off again and put on the shirt and shorts they gave me. There were quite a few more rooms to try out.
There was a cold room.
A couple pyramid rooms; One with all of the walls covered in Jade and one with coffin like cubbies for people to sleep in.
and rooms that I never even made it into like a charcoal sauna and this sweat room.
Last night we found out there is an amazing jim jil bang in Pusan, where some of the saunas overlook the ocean. I can't wait!
