Let me tell you, this place is no joke! I had recently watched an Eat Your Kimchi video when Simon and Martina went to a sauna in Busan and this place is pretty much the same. (watch that video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb-QJGq0cd0.)
Upon entry, you pay your $25 entry fee and they give you a wrist band with a key on it along with your spa scrubs, which are the same as you see in dramas....shorts and top. As soon as you walk into the locker room (one for boys and one for girls) you use your key to open a mini locker where you immediately place your shoes. After 30 steps further inward, you walk to your big locker where you stow your clothing and proceed to walk naked to the spas. Yes, I said naked. At first, I was like "Heeeellllllllll No! I'm not doing it", but after seeing EVERYONE else naked (and trust me, I didn't really look at anyone...it was more like I was aware of their presence) I was like, what they hell! Just do it! My friend Leah and I were the skinniest people in there, so to be honest, there was really nothing to worry about. The spa area had 3 pools: One was one frickin frigid like Lake Michigan on a January day, One was pleasantly warm and I could have sat there all day, and one was like being placed in a soup kettle on high (I didn't go there...only Leah did). Off to the side there were mini showers, where you could sit on an overturned bucket like piece of furniture and bathe yourself. It was pretty cool... even though I didn't do it myself. In addition, there were working women giving those full body scrubs you hear about in a small room off the main spa area. Those are the scrub downs you see on dramas, where they literally scrape the shit off of you. I saw Conan O'Brien go to one out in LA and he screamed like baby. No joke. You turn pink. And raw. We didn't do this, because it cost $50, but maybe next time?
Besides the scrubbing ladies, there were 2 saunas, a dry and wet one, inside this gender specific area. I walked into the wet one and immediately walked out. I have concluded it is none other than a suicide chamber. No lie. You can't even see across it, much less breathe. No thank you. The dry sauna was pretty awesome though. The benches are all wooden and tiered and you just sit there and bake. As I write this, I am slightly chilled by the February morning and would love to go back right now and warm up. Outside the sauna area next to our lockers, you could get a hip bath. I still don't really know what a hip bath is, but it kind of seems like you are getting marijuana scented tea fumes blown up the va-jay-jay. That's about all I could see and smell from the girls going in there, but I wasn't really interested. The little open holed boxes the women sat on reminded me of toddler latrines and the girl scout in me was like, no thanks. Sat on enough open holed boxes in my life to try it (and it cost extra and I didn't want to pay).
Out of the locker room in the other direction was the unisex area that had " a food court, heated floor for lounging and sleeping, wide-screen TVs, exercise rooms, ice rooms, heated mineral rooms, swimming pool and sleeping quarters that have sleeping mats." This places was the freaking bomb. Leah and I rolled our towels to make yangmeori (sheep's head) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrCYd94XdTg and hung around this area for quite some time. (FOR THE RECORD, WE WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE WEARING YANGMEORI. This made me sad because in dramaland, EVERYONE wears them. It might be because there weren't really alot of Korean people there when we went. Not sure. At any rate, if you go, still make your own yangmeori. It is cool and it shows people you know your Korean culture...and that you watch a lot of drama!) There were many many different dry saunas there and we tried them all. The entire floor of this area is heated too, so it was very pleasant to just lie down and shoot the breeze.
I should mention that after you pay your $25 entry fee, the wristband they give you becomes like a credit card. Every time you eat or have a service done, they scan your wristband and you pay the charges when you leave. The only thing I had to pay for was the sweet rice drink I ordered in the food court. Everything else was part of my $25 fee.
What was cool is that you could purchase a yearly membership or $1600. Imagine living there for just $1600 a year! It would be so cool! In fact, I wonder if I ever go to Korea again, if I could save money and just stay in the jimjilbong. I suppose I would need to rent another locker space for my luggage, but perhaps I could travel light? I don't know, but I'll consider it!
Soooo, for all of you Korea lovers out there that have heard about the Korean spa/sauna, GO. GO NOW! One regret I have from our trip in 2014 is that we never went to one. If I go back, it is going to be the 2nd place on my destination list. The first? Yeouido area. We never made it over there either. So, if any of our readers can share the address of a jimjilbong over in Yeouido, you'd save us some time!