I do have a picture of how my Sunday started...brunch with the ladies.
It was fantastic: omellette tortillas with sausage and salsa, pancakes, fruit, cheese, coffee (much of the food was from the foreign food market). So delicious. After relaxing for a bit, we went to Bupyeong...a big shopping district in Incheon. We descended below street level into the concrete depths and entered a crazy-ass mall maze. Tons of tiny shops, with everything from shoes to cutesy stationery. Lots of fun. Lots of cash easily lost.And now we come to the nude bit (or bits?) of my day: an outing to a korean bath house. I would love to show you pictures (of the bath itself), but for obvious reasons, I can't. I couldn't find any good pictures on the internet either, so I will try my best to describe it here, because, really it was rather splendid.
Enter building, take an elevator up to the 3rd floor, and voila, front desk of bath house (see...I do need to learn to read, because you just never know what is hiding within these blinking buildings...restaurants, doctors' offices, secret tunnels to Canada). Acquire 2 mini towels and bright pink pajama-like clothing. Ladies go left, gents right. Take shoes off, place in little locker. Proceed to large room. Find mirrors and sinks for post-soak experience, larger lockers for clothing and belongings, and items like soap and loofas for sale. Also find clothing for sale. And flats of eggs. I swear, Korea is so random sometimes...
Ok, so strip off, leave clothes and pjs in the locker. Proceed into lovely bathing area: a large room with marble floors, stonework on the walls, stained glass on the ceiling. Directly to the right are showers (first stop). To the left there are 2 masseuses giving massages (you pay extra for that), and the scrub-down area. This area has little stations where you sit and scrub, do various beauty treatments, and hose off. They're sort of optional, but feel great. In the centre find a few hot tubs of differing temperatures, and at the back, a large pool of cold water. Along one wall there are 2 saunas. We sat in the tubs for a bit, cooled off, then went back to the main room. Donned said day-glo pjs, and went downstairs to the common room.
The common room is a large, open lounge area for everyone (men get white pjs, no fair) where you can sit on mats or massaging chairs and watch tv, socialize, read a book, or even doze off sometimes. Off this room there is a little restaurant, a computer gaming room for the kids, and several different saunas of different temperatures.
The hottest sauna (80 degrees Celsius-called the salt room) was beautiful. Enter and lay on the straw mats. Look up and contemplate the crystal-encrusted ceiling, designed with stones such as amethyst. Move to the various saunas, ending with an ice-box (not so pleasant in my opinion...but perhaps nice in the summer).
Most people who visit these bath houses make a day of it, and spend 3, 4, even 5 hours there. I think it's a great way to end the weekend...pleasant and restorative. Best of all, this one is directly around the corner from me, and the total cost....$5.
I can think of one or two frozen Canadian-sicles that might enjoy a thaw right about now...sound tempting? Come on over... ;)
PS It's not as weird as you think to be a nudist for a few hours. When in Rome...
