Friday jimjilbang

Last Friday Dallas and I decided to stay at a local jimjilbang to try it out. Earlier in the day, Jayden messaged us and told us that he'd been in a bus accident and was ok, but was in the hospital for a week or so having his neck checked on (more about that later). We decided to go visit him on Saturday, so we packed for Seoul as well.

We left after work and walked the 10 minutes to the sauna. We have to go in separate sauna areas, and decided to meet up again in 45 minutes. I went in and it was quite busy for after 10 on a Friday night. I scrubbed myself down, then sat in a hot tub for a few minutes. Then I chickened out of going in the outside hot tub because there were people in it. I waited until they came out before I went, but there were still two ladies in the tub. I sat with them for awhile and they just stared at me. Then I went inside and went in the cold pool and actually swam a little bit. It is definitely not as fun by yourself. After I got out of the pool, I rescrubbed, dried off some, combed my hair and got dressed in the jimjilbang uniform.

Then I went downstairs to meet Dallas. I thought we were going to go in the different rooms and relax/sweat, but he didn't want to get all sweaty before we went to bed. Instead, we went into the ac room and he plucked my eyebrows. Then we went into the crystal room and that was still too hot for him, so we went back in the main room where people were watching a Korean pop show similar to Idol. We sat in massage chairs for 10 minutes (at least I think that's how long it lasted) and they were somewhat painful because they really beat you. Then we decided it was time to sleep. Dallas ran downstairs and found a super dark quiet room and that's where we went. There are rooms upstairs for men or women, and in those rooms are piles of blankets and some weird cubes for pillows. I just grabbed 3 blankets - one for a pad, one for a blanket and one for my pillow. Then we went to sleep. It wasn't that bad, but I still didn't sleep well because I never do when I have to get up early the next day - I'm paranoid that I'll miss the alarm.

We got up at 7 on Saturday and went back to the saunas to shower and get dressed. Then we met up outside and got a cab to the bus terminal to go to Seoul. It was a new Korean experience for me and I think we might try it again when we don't have to get up early or if we need a cheap place to stay one night somewhere else. Although I've heard some of the bigger cities are quite crowded and I wouldn't like that.