So i have a story for you kids which involves so much Korean wang you wont believe it. I went to a jimjilbang. What is this you ask? The name alone sounds pretty sketchy, but i assure you there was absolutely no actual banging. So, since i know you all have pretty short attention spans, I'll get to the story. A jimjilban is a Korean sauna/bathhouse of sorts.
This is what wikipedia says about them:
Jjimjilbangs are one of the truly great aspects of a unique Korean culture. These are large, gender-segregated public bathhouses complete with hot tubs, showers, Swedish-style saunas and massage tables.
So here is my experience. I walk in and pay 6,000 won, about $4.50 US, and they give me a pair of pants, a shirt and a receipt. I proceed through the door marked "man", and this is when things get a little bizarre to me. Its a brightly lit room, filled with lockers, a desk with a man behind it and
tons of completely ***** Korean dudes of all ages, shapes and sizes. Some are getting dressed some undressed, some were watching TV (****), some were sitting around talking to their friends/families (****), some were having a snack (****), just generally hanging out *****. It was like a giant common area and with rows of lockers against one wall.
So the man behind the desk tells me to take off my shoes and put them in one of the small lockers near the door. Which i do, and he then gives me a key to a big locker and tells me to put all my clothes in it and go shower before i put on the pants/shirt they just gave me, which apparently are only worn if you want to go to another floor which isn't gender segregated. The place has five floors and all sort of things like TV, computers, restaurant, sleeping areas, kids play area, and other such things. The places are sort of like mini vacations that Koreans take to relax, and only the sauna is gender segregated.
So, i find my locker and which is on the far end of the place and strip down. Having never been to this place before, or anything like it, i walk past of group of 6-8 kids, maybe 10 or 12 years old, and into the bathroom. Realizing what i just did, i immediately turn around and come out and they are all laughing hysterically and staring/pointing at every part of me. They said a bunch of shit to each other in Korean and were cracking up as i walked past again to find where i was actually supposed to go.
Now the foreign population in Seoul is somewhere around 1.3% of the twenty million people in the greater metro area. The vast majority of that 1.3% is either Japanese or Chinese, and they blend in a lot better in a situation like this than a 6'4" white man with blondish colored hair. Plus, while i don't consider myself to have excess chest hair, a do have some, and Koreans it seems have zero. Additionally, they don't seem to trim up their pubes at all. They're all natural big bush style, and of course i keep my shit trimmed pretty short and the balls clean shaven. I think that's probably what the kids were laughing at, my lack of a 'manly bush' or maybe because my pubes are blond.
So my point in all this, is that is probably the first time most of these people have seen a white man ***** in real life and their all noticing that we're looking different. Now, i should say that i never really showered with dudes before.. didn't have to do it in school and other then maybe at the pool when i was six the situation just never came up.. so this whole thing would have been sort of awkward for me even if everyone in the place wasn't blatantly staring at me and i wasn't the only ***** white guy surrounded by hundreds of gawking korean dudes.
So i eventually wander through the big crowded locker room trying to figure out where to go. i end up at the other side and I see some dudes coming up some stairs and and decide this is probably the place and head down.
The first thing i see is a a big square room with mirrors on all the walls and people drying off, doing their hair, getting a haircut, stuff you might normally do after a shower at home... alone.... in your own bathroom... but Koreans it seem like to do these things ***** and in large groups.
So i see a door marked bath and head through. Its another giant room and in the middle is a ton of showers. half of them are just big pillars with like 6 shower heads on each on and the other half are these weird short ones with stools for you to sit at while you shower really close to the ground using a hand held shower.
Altogether, i would guess there was probably probably 80 places for people to shower at and maybe 40 of them were being used, plus all the people actually using the saunas and soaking tubs. Luckily the Koreans seem to prefer the sit-on-a-short-stool-and-shower-method so i go to an open standing shower and begin to lather up, making sure to get extra clean because the guy at the front desk told me to wash really well; probably because i am a foreigner and thus extra dirty.
As i am showering i notice that the Korean seem to prefer not to wash themselves, but they wash each other. I think to my self, "well i guess its not so weird to wash your friends back given the already totally bizarre circumstances", and then i see someone bend over and his friend washes his *** and balls. This i feel is a little much, even given the situation.
Against the wall, around the room was all sorts of different hot pools, wet and dry sauna rooms, lawn chairs for sleeping *****, and an area where you can get a massage/scrub down. So after i shower i decide to head to a jade bath because its the least crowded. So i jump in and begin to relax a bit, being covered by water they can no longer blatantly check out my junk. Then i begin to think about the situation and i decide if they have no shame in staring at me why should i not take this opportunity to stare back and settle the age old question... do Asian guys have really have small wangs? So i begin to check out the competition and have to say i was probably bigger than 75% of the guys there. I'm no monster, by any means, but i'm not small either. So based solely upon myself, since i haven't seen too many dicks of other colors, i'd have to say the rumor is true and Asians do seem to have tinier wee-wees.
The rest of the experience wasn't actually that bad. I mean i just accepted the fact that I was an outsider invading their odd cultural thing, and accepted that i was going to be stared at and went about checking out the different pools and saunas. They had some cool water fall things that were nice to sit under, and jumping into the cold *** pool after 5 minutes in a super hot sauna was actually pretty nice. The cold pool even had a water fall. Now getting out of the super cold water pool, wasn't quite as nice because i was definitely closer to Korean size and of course they were watching. There was also an ice room which was basically a room with refrigerant pipes all along the wall coated in a thick layer of ice. Exiting that room was definitely a low point. Thankfully i could at least step out of the hot soaking pools and sauna with pride and i only went into that cold room once. I did jump into the cold pool a few times though, it was nice enough to accept the consequences and the ice room wasn't.
The other soaking tubs all had various attributes, such as special herbs and spices, that i didn't really understand but apparently make them more healthy. There was some cool tubs with water jets that massage your back and feet and a sauna with a gravel floor which i guess makes it extra healthy.. There was also a sauna where which was REALLY hot.. and they had salt to rub all over your body which again is really healthy or something.
It was definitely the strangest experience in Korea yet and i am pretty sure i wont go again but it was worth going just because it was so dam odd, and i was super hung over going in and i came out feeling pretty refreshed. Obviously it would have been better if bathing suites were mandatory, but reflecting upon it now maybe that's there way of keeping the foreigners out...
ya i know its too long but fuk you... it just wasn't something i could sum up succinctly.