roganjosh

For my last night in Korea I decided to give the bars a miss and head for a Jjimjilbang – a Korean sauna. It’s always a bit nerve wracking heading into the unknown in a foreign country, especially when you have to do it naked, but luckily I found one with lots of English signs up everywhere, and it’s been excellent! The building itself looks a bit like a 70s leisure centre, but the with far more hot baths. Some contain herbs, some mud, some salt, but they are all very, very hot, with the one exception being the very, very cold bath you throw yourself into at the end. There are a couple of things that set this sauna apart from the ones in other countries. The first would be that in the bath area you can get a korean guy to scrub you down with some abrasive looking sponges if you so desire. Being a filthy backpacker this probably would have been good for me, but I couldn’t work out if you had to pay for it, and I didn’t have my wallet on me at the time. The second thing is that you can spend the night here! Upstairs there’s a restaurant, a PC room, some karaoke rooms, an oxygen room and more importantly, a sleep room where you can crash out on a slim mattress with a blanket. Slept pretty well for about 12,000 won (6 pounds?) and now I’m a stone’s throw away from Seoul station, which is just as well because I have to rush off to get the train to the airport. Bye!

(It was this one, in case you’re ever dirty and sleepy in Seoul – http://www.silloamsauna.com/site_en/main/main.asp)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under travelling, uncategorised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.