bath house adventure

Ok so I've had my first experience in a public bath house in Korea. It was....interesting. For those who are germaphobes, stop here and don't read any further because you need to keep an open mind. It sounds a lot worse than it really was. Basically two teachers at my school, Miyeon and EunKyong asked me to join in on this experience with them. They go about 2x a month and 2 other teachers usually accompany them. The reason they didn't this time had nothing to do with me if that's what u're thinking. One of them just got married and is on her honeymoon (I went to her wedding!!!) and the other one is busy preparing for her wedding. So when we meet up we first head to eat something. I love hanging out with these two cuz they love food and they're always eating even though they're always talking about dieting and exercising. After our dinner we head off to the bathhouse which is called Spasis. When you enter u're basically given a bracelt with a number. This number is ur locker number and you basically pay for everything with this bracelet. U put ur wallet into the locker so u scan the bracelet and then pay at the end. You can bring ur own stuff but you can also purchase things there and it's pretty cheap. Since it was my first time and I was told not to bring ne thing I basically paid 2000 won for shirt and short rental. But next time I think i'm going to bring my own t-shirt and shorts. It's not about saving money so much as I don't like the looks of the shirt and shorts. the shorts go really high and it looks like prison clothing. So i'm going to start a revolution of booty shorts here in the bath house of south korea. The sauna part of the bath house was our first stop. Here it's co-ed. and since we're not naked it was fine. the only problem was this. I would've totally enjoyed my stay there the entire time except that I was soo worried that I was going to get my period while I was in the bath house. Don't ask me why but i kept thinking that the heat was going to make my period come earlier. So I was worried the entire time about possible leakage. I don't even know if that was appropriate to blog about. but i've just bathed naked with other females present. I can kinda do anything now. Anyway, back to the story. So we basically went to one sauna room to another, with each room increasing in temperature. We only went to 3 and the temperature never went above 60 degrees but I did see one for 98 degrees and i thought of the band 98 degrees and then i thought holy heck water boils at 100 degrees who the heck can withstand that. The 98 degree sauna was outside on this rooftop patio. I thought that was pretty cool and since we had our refreshing drinks with us we sat down and Miyeon and EunKyong introduced me to some hardboiled eggs. Actually they were sauna boiled eggs. And they were disgusting. They ate it with me and they asked me what I thought of it and i tried to lie and told them they were ok.. but as everyone knows I can't lie to save my life and they called me on it. I sheepishly told them I thought it tasted like rubber and they laughed and told me they agreed. They actually never order this but since it was the typical snack at the place they felt I should experience this. We had a good laugh over that but agreed to never have this snack again. I feel I should describe this egg. It looks innocent enough with the shell on, but inside the egg white is now a tanned color and basically the texture is like rubber and it tasted like rubber. so all in all I think i had rubber at the sauna. In any case we decided to head in and finish our refreshing drinks in one of the saunas. After hitting the 58 degree sauna we head towards the ice room which was actually great after the saunas for 5 seconds. and proceeded downstairs back to the locker room. We get back to the locker room and i was told to remove my prison wear. They had come prepared for me with everything. we had purchased the scrub cloth at the towel counter and so we headed towards the bath. basically first we used the soap provided to wash down the mini stools and the basins provided. Basically the shower area is short walls with about 4 showerheads in each row. u're supposed to sit down on the stools provided and then shower. We basically rinse and shower for a bit and then head off towards one of the hot tubs. We then head back to the shower area and proceeded to scrub ourselves. although I had gotten used to seeing my coworkers naked by this time, it struck me as odd that I had to keep an eye on her just to see how things were done. and obviously she did the same to make sure I was doing this right. it really was weird how fast u get used to it and weird that i even went thru with it. So after lathering and rinsing off the lather I thought we were pretty much done. but NO.. we were supposed to lather again and scrub. We did this about 5 times and basically we do it until we start to see dead skin come off. it's so weird. cause at first I didn't get any and so they decided to try it for me. WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD and slightly gross. They scrubbed my back.. which is fine.. BUT WITH THEIR OWN SCRUB CLOTHS that they had used on their body. I had to block that thought from my head. and eventually it didn't bother me. so eventually we managed to get dead skin to come off my body and i was told to scrub harder on myself which left my skin feeling rather tingly. afterwards we washed our hairs and I was done earlier than them because I could not bring myself to scrub any harder and any more on my body. And basically that was the end of the bathing experience but it does have the effect of making ur friends closer. There are other really cool things about this bathhouse I should mention.
first it's cheap the three of us spent about 14,700 won. so its about $5 each. Second it's open all night so if you want to live cheap when u visit korea, you can basically just stay in these bathhouses and sleep there. they have tvs, massage chairs, pillows, some kind of weird dome things where u go and lie down while under a red light. 3+, you can get a manicure while u're there, you can get a massage from a person instead of the chair massage, you can eat at the restaurant, you can sleep there and even participate in a yoga class there. I thought that was pretty cool. Any ways i'm getting really tired now since my body is so relaxed now. I'm going to head to bed. but finishing thought. will I head back? YES, HAHAH I got a free membership that will allow me one free visit after 2 paid visit. WOO HOO!!