Friday Night jjimjilbang

Jjimjilbang is the Korean word for "bath house". What a treat! We've decided to make it a Friday night tradition. I and three other women (Jen, Jazmin, and Catherine) took the shuttle into Chilgok (the closest medium-sized city, and first stop on the DGEV shuttle) then a short taxi ride to the jjimjilbang. It was on the sixth floor in a busy shopping area of town. You pay 8,000 wan (about $6.50) to enter and stay as long as you wish (most jjimjilbang are open 24/7). You can opt to pay an additional 17,000 wan (about $14) and get a "scrub". Cat and I chose not to get one (still waiting for our first paycheck). Anyway, once you enter you remove your shoes and place them in a locker. Then you get another locker and two small hand-sized towels and a quaint pair of orange (think prison garb) cotton shorts and top (think scrub top). The clothes are for phase two. The first phase is the pools. But before you can enter any of the pools, you begin by showering thoroughly from head to toe--using soap, shampoo, the works. You must be clean to enter the pools. Everything is in one VERY LARGE room, high ceilings. Lots of women (and children) walking around naked--but very comfortably, no one felt out of place.

There were a variety of pools--some very HOT, some extremely COLD; some contained mineral water, ginseng, or salt. Along the side walls were sauna rooms, one was very hot, with some type of aroma (smelled like chamomille to me) that was almost impossible to breathe; another had bowls of coarse salt which you rubbed all over, then sat under some intense heat lamps and sweated like a pig! After this one, you could come out and stand under an intense quick very COLD shower to rinse off. I tried just about everything--and enjoyed every experience!

I ended up having a small companion for most of my visit--a young Korean girl about 6 years old with two front teeth missing. I would try to get her to practice her English with me, then she started trying to teach me some Korean! It was a hoot! Most parents encourage their children to come up to us (Americans) so they can get some experience speaking with a native English-speaker. It's quite fun actually.
After soaking until we were prunes, we showered again, this time being offered shampoo and cream rinse by the woman who did Jazmin and Jenn's "scrub". We towelled dry, then two of us got into our "jammies" (the orange things) and headed upstairs for phase two. Upstairs, which was co-ed (hence the clothes) there were again multiple rooms, most of them "hot" (and dry), some with TV's, one for sleeping, and (my personal favorite) a COLD room, with ice-covered pipes lining the walls. I spent a few minutes in each room, enjoying the "soap opera" on one of the TV's. Then we headed downstairs to join our other two and get ready to catch the shuttle back to the Village.
But the highlight of MY evening happened in the elevator on the way down. I was the last to get dressed and was feeling a bit warm and sweaty. So I grabbed my sweater, wearing just a tank top and headed out, thinking I'd put on my sweater in the elevator. It would just be us girls, right? Well, the men's jjimjilbang is up on the eighth floor--and yes, you guessed it, when the doors opened we were greeted by about 5 or 6 men, who of course insisted that we pile on in for the ride down. As I tried to cover my chest as best I could, one of the men in the back looks at me and says "beautiful". There was no smirk on his face, no learing look in his eyes--just a very sweet, simple complement. It's been tooo long since someone appreciated me in that way. Needless to say, I smiled all the way home. (And no, I did not ask him to come home with me--but maybe I should have. . .)
Many Koreans make jjimjilbang a weekly thing. Kiri, you would LOVE these!! I will definitely plan to go back. We intend to try some of the others in town. They're all just a bit different.
And sorry guys, no pictures from jjimjilbang night!
Namaste,
Connie