The Cleanest Clean That Ever Cleaned

I finally made it to a Korean bathhouse. I'm a little confused as to whether the one we went to is a standard bathhouse, though. It's called a jjimjilbang and also a sauna (in Korean, that's three syllables), but my guidebook calls a traditional bathhouse a mogyoktang, a sauna, or a daejungtang. It's possible the distinction is in the fact that this place seemed to be more sauna-based than bath-based. Anyway, it was still an amazing cultural experience, which I will probably start repeating once a month or so.

We went to the jjimjilbang after work last night. It was really nice--it was decorated like a luxury hotel. The entrance fee was 10,000 won (about $7), which gave us (Heather, Leon, and I) access to the gender-segregated locker rooms, baths in varying temperatures, showers, sauna room, and steam room, as well as the coed jjimjilbang floor, which has about ten sauna rooms ranging from about 30 to about 80 degrees Celsius, as well as an ice room, and a restaurant. I'm a little pissed about the men's facilities. Apparently the guys get a mud bath and a gym, possibly other stuff I don't know about. What the hell?

We first went to our respective facilities to put on the elastic-waistband cotton shorts and the t-shirt we were given for the jjimjilbang floor and went up there to meet Leon. He evidently misunderstood our plan, though, because after we waited for like 15 minutes for him to come downstairs, Heather had to go make an announcement on the PA for him to get his ass moving and meet us. Apparently he had been enjoying the lavish amenities of his floor, and got laughed at by the other men as he was called for and had to skulk out of there.

We tried some of the rooms for a while--the Ox Bezoar Room, which had little caves to lie in and sit in 32-degree comfort, then a slightly hotter sauna at 41 degrees. The saunas don't tend to have benches or anything in them. At most there is a bamboo mat on the floor and small pillows or wooden blocks with neck rests for lying down. After about a half hour we went to the restaurant, as we'd already been hungry when we got there. Then I had to go back to the women's floor to soak in the bath for a while. I had read online about the professional scrubdown you can get at these places, and I knew I could benefit from that. Heather made me an appointment for 12:30, and she said it would be good to soak in the hot water to soften up my skin before most of it was scrubbed away.

This being the first time I've been in a public place where naked people were walking around, I felt a little modest. I was particularly conspicuous being the only white person there, and I think I got a few stares at first. Nudity among strangers is part of Korean life, though, what with bathhouses like this and open showers at gyms and the like, so they got used to me pretty quickly, and after a while, I wasn't so shy. It was kind of awkward, though, when Heather had to come tell me later that I needed to pay before I started my cleaning. How often does one get seen totally naked by one's boss?

Before soaking, I took a brief shower at one of the stations. There are two kinds of showers: one type is at low counters with shoulder-height dividers and taps on both sides, with a mirror at each station. There is a bath tap and a handheld shower head, and you put a plastic basin below it to fill with water. You sit on a plastic stool and can use a small bowl to scoop water onto you, or use the shower head, while you scrub your body down. A number of women were there with friends or relatives, and would take turns scrubbing each other's backs. The other type is a standard shower head attached to the wall. There are no stalls or anything to protect one's privacy, but there is a separate shower room, I noticed. I didn't go in, but I'm sure there are rows of open shower heads in there, too, so there must be some advantage, like extra steam or something, to washing in there.

I chose the former type, it being the more traditional style of shower. In retrospect, I should have bought or brought some sort of scrubbing cloth and really cleaned myself well before going into the tub, but I was thinking what a waste of my time it would be to wash myself really well right before paying someone (25,000 won, by the way) to do it for me. Later I realized that going into the public bath without being super clean was probably against bathhouse etiquette, as they try to keep the water as clean as possible. The hot bath isn't for cleaning; it's for relaxing and opening the pores, then the cold bath is for closing them and invigorating oneself. I noticed after my treatment that one of the baths I'd been in had been emptied, and they later refilled it. I was mildly afraid it was because of me, but I had seen all these old ladies walking around in cotton shirts and lacy underwear (haha) scrubbing the place down, so I imagine it was just time to change the water.

As for the treatment, it was the most bizarre thing ever. The woman who cleaned me told Heather she was scared, because she doesn't speak any English, but Heather said it would be fine. When I was in the tub, the lady called me over 15 minutes early by walking slowly toward me and clapping, then when I turned around to see what the hell, she beckoned me toward her. Heather thought that was hilarious when I told her.

I got on this plastic table, like a massage table, and she started with my face. She put some gunk on it, then used a cloth to rub it off and give me a facial massage. Then she pulled my hair back with one of those long paper-like cloths and put this ground cucumber concoction on my face. While that set, the scrubbing happened. She dumped warm water on me with a basin, put on these square scrubbing mittens and proceeded to rub off half my skin. She scrubbed pretty much every inch of my body from various angles, turning me around in weird positions and manhandling my appendages, for almost an hour. It was kind of brutal, but it didn't really hurt, just was very intense.

I was filthy dirty rotten. Heather was telling me that Koreans don't take showers every day, because up until only a few years ago, hot water from the tap was a little hard to procure. So in recent times they have only been taking showers every couple of days, and before that, when they actually had to heat up water themselves and use the "poor man's shower" method, only about once a week. I guess this is why the bathhouses have always been so popular. Anyway, even though I take a shower (or even two) daily, I'm not nearly as clean as Koreans are. When Koreans do take a shower, they take advantage by scrubbing the hell out of themselves and getting not only dirt, but also dead skin, off themselves. I exfoliate with a Brillo pad currently, but only once every few weeks. I think Americans are under the impression that overexfoliation is bad for the skin or something, but I don't think that's true now.

You know when you rub your skin, you get those little shavings of dead skin rubbing off? Well with this treatment, I had so much dirt and dead skin coming off me that those tiny shavings turned into big grey worms. It was disgusting, and embarrassing. Heather told me Koreans have a word for those things: ddae. I looked it up today, and my dictionary says it means "grime." Seems appropriate. It also means "occasion." As all the ddae was appearing, and the lady kept scrubbing me everywhere, I heard her express what I assume was shock and awe at how dirty I was. I was telling Leon and Heather that I think she got dirt off me from the kindergarten sandbox.

When she finally finished scrubbing, this other lady came in and they dumped buckets full of water all over me and the table, having me lift up to get underneath me, too. Then they removed the face mask and rubbed me down with a soapy bath puff and rinsed me again. The second lady took over at this point for the massage that comes with the treatment. She first put a towel over me and pressed down on my back a bunch through it. Then she lubed me up with a LOT of this extremely slippery lotion and rubbed and pushed on most of my body hard. I think she could feel the pain in the shoulders and neck, and she tried to get the massive knots out for a few minutes. That's impossible, though.

She was also putting me in some weird positions. My favorite one was when she had me on my back, and she pulled my arms down towards the floor behind me, rubbed them there for a moment, then pushed them down and catapulted them back up so they landed smack on the table at my sides. At the end, she had me sit up on the side of the table so she could do some stuff, then she just pushed me off onto the floor, as I was so slippery. I didn't fall or anything, don't worry. The whole thing took about 75 minutes, almost twice what Heather told me it would be, as there was so much dirt on me. The result of this whole thing was crazy. My skin was glowing, smooth, and softer than it's ever been, and I think she scrubbed a couple years off my face, and more off my body.

The best, as in funniest and strangest, thing about this treatment was that it was topless, at least the scrubbing part. The first lady was probably about 50 and was just wearing these black spandex shorts, and there was this laugh riot going on in my head the whole time about getting a topless cleaning treatment from an old lady. The second lady had on a bra, at least, but with her I ended up getting the female version of teabagged, as she bent over my head to massage my stomach and I got a nice faceful of middle aged cleavage.

After rinsing off the lube and getting my little sauna outfit back on, I went back up to see if Heather and Leon were still up. This facility is open 24 hours and people are allowed to stay overnight. A lot of people use the 24-hour saunas instead of hotels, as it's cheap and you get so much out of it. It was after 1:30 by this time, and there were a number of people sprawled out all over the floor in the jjimjilbang floor lobby, hallways, and rooms. I wandered around looking, and found Leon still awake, but ready to sleep in the hallway. Heather was in a room next door. I was feeling really awake from the whole ordeal, so I hung out in some of the rooms for a while before trying to sleep.

The rooms were all different. Some of them had stones like amethyst or rose crystal set into every inch of the walls and ceilings, and others had walls made of different materials beyond stones and crystals, like wood, rubber, or metal. One room was called the Silver Room and was floored and walled with silver and gold-colored rubber that had little bumps stamped "99.9% silver." Liars. After a bit of that, I went downstairs and washed my hair and rewashed my body so I could go back into the baths. When I was in the baths the first time, there were two hot baths. One was at the normal temperature for a hot tub, and the other felt like it was close to boiling. It was so hot that when I first put my foot in it, I thought it was cold. I tried sitting in it both before my scrub and now at about 2:30, but I could never get fully into the water, just sit on the bench with it up to my midbelly, and I couldn't stay in it for more than five minutes. It actually turned my skin red, and made my heart pound so hard I could see my chest moving. I tried the supercold bath after this, and after the lobster pot, it seemed ice cold. I was pretty disappointed that the second time I tried the baths, both the hot baths were at the uncomfortably hot temperature. I had looked forward to sitting in a hot tub and soaking for a long time this time.

I tried the steam room next, and that was pretty cool. It had amethysts in it, too. Then I decided I should try to sleep, as we were planning to get up early in the morning for McDonald's breakfast before Heather had to go into work. I went into the Ox Bezoar Room again, so I could sleep in one of the little tombs and not have to deal with being looked at or tripped over. After some time being uncomfortable on the hard floor, with just a wooden block and my towel for a pillow, and also getting way too hot after a while, I went out to try the hall. I still had to deal with being on the floor, this time with no block, but the temperature was reasonable. But as I can never sleep well away from home, even with a bed, I eventually had to accept my fate and enjoy the place the whole night through. I went into pretty much all the rooms over the next few hours, including the ice room, which really looked and felt like the inside of a freezer. I talked to a couple young Koreans in there who spoke English.

I kept going back down to the locker rooms to see if I could catch it empty enough to take some pictures, but every time I went for the camera, some clothed or unclothed women came around. I didn't want to take any pictures with anyone in the room, in case they were afraid I would take pictures of them. So sorry, no pictures. At about 4:30, when I was down there, Heather came down to take a shower. I figured she'd sleep deeper into the morning, but I guess it's hard to stay asleep with people walking through and whispering all night. I went back up and hung out some more, and met up with her later. We sat around in a couple of the rooms until after 7, when we figured it was time to wake up Leon and get to McDonalds. I took one more shower before we left. What an experience.