South Korea Voyage: JJIMJILBANG (Hot Baths)

Note: Long post.

Note: This post has no photographs at all. *wink*

This is my first time going for a jjimjilbang 찜질방 (hot bath/hot spring).

I have never in my life been to a hot bath /hot spring, or to anything that requires you to walk around fully unclothed and share a bath/tub with five or more fully naked ladies. I have also never seen my close friend (knew her since I was eleven years old) unclothed before, and vice versa. So you knew how toe-curling and butt-clenching the thought was.

We knew what we were getting ourselves into. While in the planning stages of the trip, we had a mini discussion between ourselves about seeing each other naked: about how awkward it will be because we have been friends for so long; how we will never look at each other the same way again; whether a Brazilian is needed because the forest is unsightly no?; how going with people that you are not so familiar with is better because you will not see them after the trip; whether or not I can sneak in my own towel or even a swimsuit; and generally how awkward and frightening the experience will be.

ALL unnecessary.

We went to the Dragon Hill Spa located at Yongsan (龙山/용산). You can find out more about it here: Dragon Hill Spa. Stop at Yongsan station and ask for directions on how to get there. It is about a 5-minute walk from the subway station, but because the station is huge, you need to get to the right exit. Dragon Hill Spa is probably one of the biggest in Seoul because the place itself has six/seven levels of spa and health facilities, a café, a common area, a small arcade, a small garden with a small cinema (shrugs), and a small LAN shop (SHUT UP).  It also encompasses indoor/outdoor baths and sleeping areas for both genders. Even the driver who transported us from the ski resort to Seoul commented that it is a big jjimjilbang.

YES you read right, sleeping areas. One of the reasons we chose to go to the jjimjilbang was because you can actually spend the night there. You only have to pay for the bath, which is 12,000KRW (about SGD14) and you get to bathe, relieve your bowels and sleep! There are two rates. Daytime fee is 10,000KRW which allows you to be in there from 5-10pm. Nighttime fee is 2,000KRW more (12,000KRW) and lets you stay there from 10pm-5am. Any extra hours after will be charged (I can’t remember how much).

For some reason, we neglected to book our hotel for the transition from the ski resort to Seoul, so the jjimjilbang is the perfect solution. It is affordable and a very well-equipped place to crash. What we did was to leave our luggage with the hotel that we are supposed to check into the next day, took out the toiletries and clothes we needed and headed for the jjimjilbang. Be sure to bring your own toothbrush or you will end up brushing your teeth with your fingers. Like me. Toothpaste is provided there. Toothbrush is your own.

I am not sure if all jjimjilbangs has sleeping areas or allow overnight stays, so be sure to do your research before going to one only to find that you have to crash on the streets after.

The entrance and reception lobby of the Dragon Hill Spa is a fusion of Bali-style resort and the Orient. It is loud and somewhat, gaudy. Be sure to have your dinner or do whatever shopping you need before going in, because once are in, you will not be able to leave and reenter (unless you pay again). Although there is a café in there, the food is not very good. This is not my opinion, but information volunteered by the receptionist there.  So we had our dinner at Noobul Restaurant at iPark Mall (as reviewed in the South Korea Voyage: The Food Part 2), then whiled the time away at the shopping mall. We waited till it was 10pm before heading in.

After checking in, you will be given a key attached to a stretchable bendy loop that you can wear around your wrist or ankles. The key accesses your shoe locker and the locker in the bathing area. It is all very convenient. You will also be given two narrow strips of towels and a t-shirt and shorts. The lady’s bathing area is on the third floor and there is a lift just to access that level. That lift is out of bounds to men because as you exit the lift, your eyes will immediately be greeted by nakedness of all shapes and sizes toweling themselves, blow-drying their hair, plucking their brows, applying lotion to various body parts and walking around.  I now know that no one has the same shape or size. My eyes have been opened.  The absolute nudity, the sheer amount of it and the utter lack of self-consciousness shocked my eyes into gluing itself to the floor until I got to the locker area, where women in various stages of being dressed are there. There are the young of an estimated five years old to the fairly elderly.

All the while I am hoping to see someone in a bathing suit or with a large towel but no, everyone is comfortably doing their many tasks unclothed. But maybe because everyone is naked, and no one is acting weird or ashamed about it, which made me feel alright about getting undressed (even though my friend and I warned each other not to look while undressing). After stripping down to nothingness, I forgot to mention that the place is wonderfully heated; we quickly put on the given shorts and tee. Then we trooped down to the bathing area (one level below) only to find out that we cannot wear clothes in there. So we have to make the trip back to the locker area, remove all clothing items, arm ourselves with a strip of narrow towel as shield (laying the towel vertically on our body so that it covers the important bits) and return to the bathing area in double time.

The bathing area consists of two sections.  There are about 6 huge bathtubs of water with varying temperatures and properties (by properties I meant that some tubs had some herbs or minerals in it while others are just normal baths). The highest temperature is 45 degree Celsius and the lowest is 20. As you enter, the temperature rises, the air is moist and misty. Then the mists parted and you see a row of cubicles for standing showers. There is also a little fountain there with a small stone statue just for little girls to soak in. As you venture in further, you see the about four to five rows of seating shower, each row consisting of about ten seats.

So what you do is to go for a quick rinse at the standing showers and then head for the hot baths. After having a soak at the hot baths, you proceed to wash off at the sitting showers. But we did it all wrong and went for the sitting showers first. We grabbed a short white plastic stool, a few white plastic basins of different size (only big and small) and then head to an unoccupied shower. They have a shower head and a tap where you can fill up your basins. They also thoughtfully provided a bar of soap (BYO shampoo and facial cleansers). It was my first time sitting on a stool to shower. Showering standing and sitting is a vast difference. For some reason, I felt more comfortable sitting down. You can reach your toes and feet better. So we washed our hairs, our bodies, our faces, only to realize that we should only do all that after soaking in the tubs shared with other naked bodies.

I must tell you that if you do not have a habit of bathing in very hot water, it is painful to go into the hot baths. The first one I went into was 45 degrees, and I thought it would be comfortably warm, especially in winter. So I stepped into it, expecting to be swathed in a cosy cloak of warmth, and almost jumped out. The water is friggin’ boiling. But I want to save face, so I soldiered on with a nonchalant look and slid into the tub, ignoring my burning red skin and the agony of having my skin scalded. Did I also smell melting flesh? So I froze (ironic) in the tub while I calmed my heart down and recited, “心静自然凉” repeatedly in my head. Finally my tender skin adapted to the temperature and I began to savour the warmth that washed all over me, penetrating into my muscles and relaxing them. I felt all the tension and fatigue within melt away and the knots in my shoulders seemed to disappear. But the enjoyment lasted for a while as I started getting giddy and found it slightly difficult to breathe.

Another thing my friend and I tried at the jjimjilbang is the full body scrub. Now, this is not the kind of body ‘scrub’ you get in spas where the masseuse works on your arms, legs, back and midriffs with an aromatic paste with little beads or salt crystals that ‘exfoliates’. Usually after that ‘scrub’ you will find your skin slightly smoother but that is probably due to the moisturizing element in the paste. Do not expect the body scrub at the jjimjilbang to be a similar experience. It is definitely not a walk in the park. But you will definitely walk away with infinitely smoother skin that is a shade or two fairer (true story).

At one end of the bath is an area with three beds with dated brown plastic mattresses. It is similar to those mattresses found in neighbourhood clinics. You approach one of three older aunties clad only in black bras and panties and choose the type of scrub you want. My friend and I chose the full body scrub with shampoo, which costs 25,000KRW (about SGD29). The aunties can speak minimal Chinese and they asked us to go have our baths first as they are still busy with other customers. When our turn came, we climbed onto the beds, our damp skin squeaking against the plastic. Then the aunties put on gloves and began scrubbing us down.

Oh. My. God!!! (I apologise for the use of more than one exclamation mark which I personally find childish. But one exclamation mark is not enough to express my overwhelming need to exclaim.)

Have you ever watched a movie set in the past era where women still wore corsets and hoop skirts and kids are always shown to be scrubbed down painfully by vicious nannies during bath time? But the kids always remained silent, lips trembling, eyes tearing, snot bravely held up in their nose, not daring to make a noise for fear of a nasty spanking by said nannies.

Picture our predicament. The aunties are the sour-faced muscular nannies while we are the naughty dirty kids. The differences are that they are still smiling and chatting happily to each other, they are small-sized with nary a muscle and they are in black lingerie. What an odd tableau. WHAT an excruciating experience.

Those gloves they used resembled metallic dish scrubs. Imagine that on your skin. Wince. It was a painful experience but really, worth all the pain. I have never felt so squeaky clean in my life before. First they apply some body cleanser on the gloves and then proceed to scrub your body, starting with the bottom of your feet, in between your toes, then your shins, your knees, and slowly work their way upwards. They even scrub places you have never thought of cleaning before. Then they will flip you around and work the same way. I felt like a slab of meat on that bed, being worked on by the butcher. By the time they are done with the scrubbing, mushed-up dead skin and dirt piled up and formed little anthills on the mattress. It is so very disgusting and every single inch of me is screaming in pure unadulterated pain.

One of the aunties even has the nerve to smirk to the other that we are very dirty. Yes, I fully agree with you, that is why we put ourselves through this torture. Now stop smirking. They also massaged our faces a little with soap and toweled it off with a wet cloth. Since our scrub comes with shampooing service, they applied some fragrant shampoo and did a short head massage. Once done, they splashed water and cleaned you up. Before letting you go, they gave a small back massage and ended by ‘cracking’ our backs. Despite the pain and the smirking, I really enjoyed the experience. My skin is squeaky to the touch, smooth and visibly fairer (only slightly since God knows how many layers of tanned skin I have). If I live in South Korea, this would be something I will do every two months, so that I can be smooth, fair and clean always (or at least once a month depending how fast grime builds on me and strong the UV rays are).

After the scrubbing, we braved a sauna that smelt like nutmeg and herbs. It was so hot; the air was so dense that breathing became a chore. It was like being trapped in an air-tight box with a heater for company. It was only that I settled down on a trough of bubbling cold water that I managed to regain my breathing function. I have never enjoyed saunas in my life. I am of the species that are more afraid of being hot than cold (read: fat). So, saunas are not really my thing. But it was quite enjoyable while it lasted. After a while I got a little bored, got a little too steamed up, got very uncomfortable and decided to go for a cool shower.

After we were all happily scalded, scrubbed, suffocated and washed, we proceeded to get dressed and explored the rest of the jjimjilbang. It is over-populated. There were so many people of all ages crowded at all levels (those that we females can visit). In fact, there was a group of school kids who seemed to be there on a field trip. Serious! An excursion to a hot bath to see each other naked! How can excursions get any cooler? Or scarier? But really, nakedness is nothing to them. It is ingrained in their DNA to see their own kind naked without cause for embarrassment. Unlike us hillbillies who live in places where hot baths and hot springs do not exist. Woe to us. Anyhow, it was getting late and we were tired. So we headed to the women’s sleeping area.

It is a small heated room with a few small windows for ventilation. There are thin plastic mats laid out and in a corner in the room, stood a pile of rectangular Korean pillows. You collect a pillow, which is firm but not hard, and you place it on the mat that you want to sleep on. Simple. Blankets are unnecessary because the temperature in the room is warm enough. If you must have something to cover, bring a jacket or something because blankets are not provided. I had one of my best sleeps there. It is so quiet (except for the occasional snoring from fellow sleepers) and really comfortable. I never would have imagined that a thin plastic mat would be so comfortable. When morning rolled around, I woke up refreshed. We treated ourselves to another hot shower before leaving the jjimjilbang.

All in all, this is probably one of the most interesting and unforgettable travel experiences I had. I do want to go back for more, despite the initial reservations about being utterly exposed to friends and strangers, and if I do visit South Korea again, I’ll be sure to book myself into a jjimjilbang.