We decided to go President's Day afternoon since its cheaper on weekdays and its not a Korean holiday. I initially had visions of getting the Works - a massage, scrub, wrap and whatever else they do, but that would mean Marc would have to entertain the boys for a few hours in the pool and Jonah likely wouldn't be too happy about that. We decided to just do the family thing for our first time there. Driving south from our house to Asan, the landscape quickly went from flat rice paddies to tree-covered hills. It sort of looked like a poor man's ski resort town, but still rather pretty.
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| There she is. Spaaaaavis. |
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| The many pools. |
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| The place is huge and even has a huge outdoor wave pool and snow sledding/tubing hill out back. |
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| Checking in and getting locker keys. |
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| Its a requirement that everyone wear a hat or swim cap, so Toby is all set. |
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| Swim Goods |
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| Shoe lockers at the entrance. |
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| Mr. Cool |
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| One of the food courts. |
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| Entrance to the men's locker room |
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| The big pool in the middle at about 93 degrees. There are little "stalls" in the pool with massage jets, an area for stretching and a section that has beach pebbles set into the floor to massage your feet when you walk over it. |
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| This lousy picture doesn't really show the super fun kid's area. |
On one exterior side of the bath house is a water park with huge slides, but we didn't check out the whole thing and it was too big for our boys anyway. On the other exterior side were more hot spring pools. The only problem is you have to walk outside, wet, to get there. But we wanted to see it, so brave Tobin and I ran out and down the stairs to get to the outside pools. There was a big one and several little ones, each for a different purpose. One was an Herb pool with green water. Another was orange with Ginseng. And another was really hot and bubbling. We swam around the steaming big pool for a few minutes and then ran back into the bath house.
I don't know how much time went by, but it was getting close to dinner, Jonah was growing fussy and I was getting tired of feeling like a soggy prune. Marc and Toby stayed a while longer, while Jonah and I headed for the women's locker room. I wanted to see what the Ladies Only section was all about. Turns out, nudity. Sorry, folks, no pictures! The room was really large with two-story high ceilings and steam rising up everywhere. The first thing I saw was a table with two tubes of toothpaste, a bowl of what looked like salt and a sign that said Dentifrice. Then I saw one of the open wet treatment rooms. A naked lady was lying on a bed being scrubbed to the bone by another naked lady. We walked around the middle where there were more pools for specific purposes. A hot one, a warm one, an herb one, a cold one. Around the perimeter were little sections for rows of showers, all community-style. Some were for standing showers, but most of them were for sitting on a little plastic stool in front of a mirror, kind of like a vanity table, but wet. Each station had shampoo, soap and a hand held shower sprayer. The women at these stations, all naked, of course, were scrubbing themselves like they haven't bathed in years. They use sloughing gloves to scrub their bodies, they wash their hair, brush their teeth and whatever else they want after bathing in the pools. Besides the soaking pools, its the same sort of grooming they can do at home, in private, but for some reason its done publicly. So what did we do? We did as the Koreans and dropped trow right then and there. WE were the ones being stared at because we still had bathing suits on...aaaand maybe also because, yet again, we were the only non-Koreans. I parked naked baby Jonah next to me in one of the little baby tubs they provide and he played happily with a shower sprayer while I rinsed, Korean-lady-style. Its not like I really wanted to be naked but that's just what you do or else don't bother going. It's totally normal for them (and most other cultures, I might add). All ages, shapes, sizes, preggos, you name it. So we soaped up, rinsed off and walked back to the locker room for towels, which are the size of hand towels. That's the only option. On the way back we passed the treatment room again and this time the lady doing the scrubbing was in a bra and underwear. Ha ha! Either stay naked or put your actual clothes on is what I thought. Too funny. In the locker room, the Korean women go to another dressing room area to comb and dry hair, put on lotion, etc. and they stay naked the whole time rather than getting dressed first. But Jonah and I got dressed and went out to meet Marc and Toby. I really want to get some treatments one of these days, but the menu is only in Korean and the staff didn't speak any English. I'll just have to get someone to translate for me so I can show what I want for next time. And I am definitely going again, hopefully by myself, so I can "take the waters" when I want for as long as I want, get worked over and scrubbed within an inch of my life. Ahhh! Spaaavisssss.
On our way out we had to stop at yet another amazing play area for kids which was by the locker rooms. I'm telling you right now - if you have kids and want to spoil them with fun, bring them to Korea. I could give you a month-long itinerary of fun, crazy, crazy-fun stuff for them to do. There are huge play zones at pretty much every large public building.
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| This takes up less than half of the room. |
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| The slide looks like some kind of kid-factory conveyor belt. Here comes a fresh 2 year old! |
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| Here a man is using a long shoe horn available so no one has to sit to get their shoes back on. And no stilettos allowed!! ;) |
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| Bye, Spavis. I'll be back to take your waters! |
