We had a great Friday night / Saturday morning. On Friday night, we met two Japanese women and one Australian man for dinner. We went to the Jagalchi Market. The Jagalchi Market is a multi-story building on the water front - facing Yeong-Do Island. On the ground floor are many people selling live fish. We went upstairs to a small restaurant run by Rie's friend's friend. We ate lots of great seafood for not very much money.
After dinner and a stroll around the Nampo-Dong shopping district, we went to a Jjimjilbang. Ever since I first read about this sort of place, I have been eager to check one out. A Jjimjilbang is the Korean version of a hot sauna place, with an extra special room up top.
We all paid our entrance fees and then split up. The women went to the fourth floor and David and I headed up to the third floor. The sauna floor was typical of what I have seen elsewhere in Korea - lots of places to stand or sit and wash yourself. After a good scrub, there were about 6 or 7 different temperature and style baths to soak in. The warmest baths at this place had salt water. The baths in front of the big window overlooking the harbor and island had very powerful jets coming up from the floor and I could not find a comfortable position in them. The room also had four hot saunas of varying temperatures and one ice sauna.
After washing and soaking, we headed up to see what makes this style of sauna special. We put on the pajama-like shorts and shirt that we were issued at the entrance and went up to the fifth floor. Rie and her friends were already waiting for us upstairs. A jjimjilbang is a sauna with a napping room. The sleeping floor was a big open room that overlooked the harbor. People who don't want to spring for a hotel room go there for a cheap place to sleep.
The floor of the main room is hard tile, but is heated from below with the ondol system of piped hot water that is common in Korea. They had a pile of over-sized bath mats that you can use to claim your spot on the floor and also use as a blanket if you get cold. We set up camp in the middle of the room. Somehow, even though we had had a big dinner and a small dessert, we were ready for some more food. We went to the snack bar and bought a big bowl of shaved ice that was covered with sweet beans, chewy rice cakes, and some canned fruit. Instead of paying there, we they just held our key chain up to a sensor and got charged at the front on the way out the next day.
On the sleeping floor, there were also about 7 different saunas. One had reed mats and was only about 100 degrees F. One of the hotter ones had a white-sand floor and another had a black-pebble floor. They also had a computer room where people played games or cruised the Internet.
The main room had a few TVs and lots of people talking and eating, so it was not the best for sleeping. Off to the side they had about ten little caves. They were about 4 feet high and three feet wide and had room for one or two people to crawl in and lay down. They stayed full all night, so I never got to go in one.
At mid-night, they shut off the TVs and most of the lights and all 100 or so of us went to sleep on the hard floor. Between the previous hot baths I took, the heavy cotton pajamas I wore, and the heated floor, I got pretty warm. At around 3 a.m., I woke up and went into the ice sauna for a little while. They keep the temperature right around 0 degrees F in there.
I did not have the best night sleep, but it was an interesting experience. It has been my experience in other large-group sleeping situations that people just grumble at the loud snorers, but don't do anything. That is not the case in Korea. Any time one of the drunk men started to make too much noise, someone nearby would shout at them and tell them to stop. One of the cleaning women even went and woke up some snorers just before the morning.
I watched the sun rise over Yeong-Do Island and then played on the Internet until everyone else woke up. We ate breakfast in the attached restaurant when it opened at 9:30 and left the jjimjilbang at around 11 a.m.
No comments:
Post a Comment