Last Updated on July 15, But I do love the pampering of a good soak and scrub, whilst relaxing with the Korean bathing community. In fact, being naked in a bathhouse is actually more comfortable than wearing a bikini on a beach! Seeing bodies of all shapes, sags and sizes, parade around non-chalantly and matter-of-fact, I get to feeling less judgmental in general, about a pinch of fat here, cellulite there….
It was late Friday night when I arrived, around 11PM. The entrance was lit up in neon reminding me of either, a Las Vegas casino or a love motel. Judging from the long queue of somethings waiting to get check in, it felt like nightclub bath and sauna life was ready to start rocking.
This would be my hotel for the night. When fellow Daegu-ite, Feather of Vegan Around the World met me, we were immediately greeted by a sashed ambassador. At the front desk, I pay and get my locker key and smock. Shoe lockers at the entrance: Being Korea, removing shoes is your first action to any entrance. Shoes go into a shoe locker. Bathhouse lockers. Feather was game, as well. After I paid my cha-ching at the reception desk, I was given smocks, 2 towels and a locker key.
I dropped my shoes into our numbered lockers above and went to the bathhouse to change. We walked into a low lit room with two rows of massage tables lined facing each other. With sizable arms and sensitive, but virile fingers, they pushed and mushed throughout our bodies, turning it inside out into heavenly pulp. As a single gal with knotted muscles and tight shoulders, this was both, visually and physically pleasing. Definitely worth whatever won I paid. Lining the small room were little box stools with large cutout holes on the top.
Below each hole sat a hot plate of medicinal herbs. An ajumma attendant motioned for us to remove our clothes. She handed us pink satin body skirts, which drape over the entire body, then motioned us to sit on the box and cover it with the skirt. Or so I thought… It took me a while to figure out how to sit on it, without falling through. Feminine bonding: Oriental medicine hip bath or giving your vagina a facial.
