We'll it's been awhile since I last made an update, but I had a recent adventure which I thought would be fun to talk about.
Last weekend I hung out with a couple of girls that I've met since coming to Korea named Willow and Jenny. Jenny is Marvin's sister (if you remember, Marvin was the guy who was recently a teacher, and went to Canada), and she connected me with Willow and our Japanese sensei Momoko. Jenny, Willow, and Momoko are all exchange students at Korea University.
Anyway, I met with Willow, Jenny, and some of their other friends last Friday night. It was fun meeting new people, especially since most of the time I hang out with the same people (not that that's bad, but sometimes it's nice to see other people). It was fun, and we ended up talking until late in the evening, but unfortunately we hung out until after 12:00am, which is when the subway closes. It was at this point that I was faced with a dilemma and had to consider a few options:
Option 1: Stay up all night and wait until 5:30am to catch the earliest subway train
Option 2: Take a taxi and spend roughly $50 getting back home
or
Option 3: Go to a Gymjilbong (a Korean bath house and spa) and kill a few hours sitting in a sauna, some hot tubs, and sleeping in one of the sleeping rooms.
I decided to go with option 3, and found myself going to the gymjilbong at somewhere around 3:00am. It was really interesting doing this, since this was only the second time I had been to a gymjilbong in Korea, and it was the first time I had gone there by myself.
(As a side note a Gymjilbong is a bath house, usually consisting of multiple hot tubs at different temperatures, a small cold pool, showers, and sauna rooms set at different temperatures. In addition, they provide you with clothes that you can wear while walking around, and a locker with a key to keep all of your stuff in)
For the most part it went well, but there was an older guy who kept asking me questions in Korean, and I was so tired that it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
After sitting some hot tubs for awhile and taking a shower I decided since there were sleeping rooms I thought I might sleep for awhile. Interestingly enough I had to step over a guy who was passed out on the stairway leading up to the sleeping room.
What I found was that the sleeping room was basically this dark loft with mats on the floor, and because of the warm temperature of the building, it felt much like one of the sauna rooms!
When I walked in, all of the mats were taken, so I just slept on the floor. After about 45 minutes I woke up sweating, and my back was soar from sleeping on the hard wood floor. So I went back into the hot tub room, sat in a tub for awhile, took a shower, and left, and eventually I caught the subway train and headed home at around 5:45am.
To say the least it was an interesting experience, and although there were parts of it that left me sweaty, confused and tired, for only $6, I felt I got my money's worth.
