Nuddipantsifica-

A text-mostly interlude for you, dear reader, as Amsterdam resolutely refuses to do more than dribble connectivity in my general direction. Pay no attention to the scratching of my quill pen and the dim flicker of candlelight.

I figured today I would tell you the tale of Dragon Hill. (That already sounds epic, doesn't it?) There are no pictures for this (bonus), for reasons that will shortly become clear.

Not TOTALLY textual.

Dragon Hill is a jjimjilbang, or Korean spa. Spas in Korea are more like public baths with extra features. These are not the dim, contemplative rooms of the Red Door, where mediocre wooden flutes whoot over faint sloshings as a Ph.D. in Rubbing People plies her trade. These are brightly-lit, enormous rooms full of naked women, running around and chatting, hanging out and watching Korean soap operas before they go sprawl around in pools of various temperatures. There are also places to get massages and scrubs (look under "Hotel").

Now, as a sturdy white lady of 175cm (5'8, my arith-metric may be negotiable, but the inches thing is on), I am easily identified from afar on a Korean street. This ease of recognition is only enhanced by the context of a room full of nekkid Korean ladies. Somewhat luckily, Dragon Hill is pretty famous and near a large train station, so there are other foreigners there. A nice Dutch lady asked what she was supposed to do once she had on her jjimjilbang pajamas, and I had to break it to her that the next step was to take them off and stride with pride (and two tiny washcloth things) down to the room of peril (so called because it is all stone surfaces, slick with all the water).

Upon entry, you have the option of selecting a package of services in addition to general access to shared facilities (like the pools o' water and the coed swimming pool, if you brought a suit. The coed spaces are never-nude). I knew I wanted a scrub, because scrubs are super effective at getting rid of your lingering sunburny bits, and you feel positively shiny at the end. So I picked the first package that offered scrubbing, and was for women. I should have been suspicious, Internet, because it was ONLY for women, and they used the word "placenta." That is... a scary word, Internet. I thought it was a Konglishism.

Big menu. Like a diner. A diner for your dermis.

Also, hip bath. When I hear that, I think it's a deep bath that, say, comes up to my hip. That I sort of hang out in while my skin gets all soft and squishy from the lovely rose petals or whatever are in there with me. Hoo boy, was I wrong.

First off, after the lovely visitor guide lady had run me through where I was supposed to go and in what order, I got my stuff put away in my locker (with my handy-dandy rubber wristband which has an RFID chip that allows you to sum your purchases inside and pay when you leave, as well as to get access to your locker, without caring if it gets wet or not). Then I went down to the room for the... Oriental Hip Bath. There were no baths, dear reader. There were, after I had showered, some weird stool things with holes in them in a dim room, each with a hot plate under it. I was the only patron there, and the lady managing the room was not a speaker of English. Whatever my current level of Korean can accurately be described as, it is not comprehensive enough for her to explain what was going on there. 

You know how sometimes you put your head over a steaming bowl with a towel over the whole business when you have a cold? It was kind of like that. I was made to understand I should sit on one of these weird stool bits, and then I was presented with a pink poncho that went over my head and to the ground around me and the stool. No arm holes. She proceeded to put a pot of tea on the burner under the stool, creating a little steam tent for everything except my head. I became a soup dumpling. This part, friends, is where I started repeating under my breath a mantra taught to me in my youth by my sister, "We all suffer to be beautiful." I think she was talking about the occasional curling-iron burn, but I have decided that suffering to the dignity can fall under this categorization, too. 

It got really hot in there, Internet. (Yes, steam is hot, tell your friends). When the attendant saw me feebly trying to sneak the collar of my tent out to get some air, she came over and with complete dispassion, proceeded to flap the entire garment about 12 times to release steam and let in air. It was like a time-lapse of a recidivist flasher. (She go to wear clothes, by the way). After about fifteen minutes of being a bao,* I asked, "ten minutes? five?" and the attendant laughed and said I'd be done at 7:10, a good forty minutes away. I'm not sure if I cried or if it was just sweat/condensation.

In the room, because the steam was so contained, was a television, tuned since I'd walked in to a Korean soap opera. Without subtitles, I couldn't follow more than the fact that there were attractive young people in tortured love, and their parents were constantly meddling in their affairs. One successful young man's mother clearly didn't think the girl he was with was good enough for him, and I was just starting to get my head around the underdog character's troubling past when the attendant changed the channel to a totally bewildering reality competition involving 9 male competitors, each dressed like a waiter, driving around the city with a certain briefcase. They frequently tried to steal one another's briefcases, and one scoundrel went into a store and bought four identical briefcases. I think I understood the soap opera better. Anyway, in this baffling way, time eventually - ever so eventually - passed.

Once I was considered sufficiently steamed, I was released into the wild for my scrub/massage. This was gotten to by going through the big room of pools of various temperatures, full of other people. It is at this moment that I remembered that I had a tattoo. It is in Hangul (Korean alphabet) and Hanmoon (Chinese characters, per the Koreans). It's a very positive thing about Korea, and a bit of a pun (because I cannot help myself), but Korea is not a nation of tattoo-havers. They are more of a nation of tattoo-frowners-upon. Thankfully, my scrub lady seemed to find it a charming affectation, rather than a sign that I was likely to have secreted a gun on my person for the doing of criminal acts.

So. Scrub ladies. The setup, which is typical of a jjimjilbang, is a rank of four or five massage tables - padded bench things - covered in waterproof upholstery. You beach yourself like a tense whale on your couch of choice, and your scrub lady proceeds to scrub you and beat your muscles into submission. Internet, you have no secrets from your scrub lady. In the west, and later in Thailand, as I discovered, you are provided temporary undergarments to protect the scrub lady from your most personal bits. That is some Seatec Astronomy stuff to Korea. They are thorough.

Apparently, this whole package I'd gone for was suited to ladies because they spend a lot of time trying to reassure themselves (and, I guess, you?) that you don't suffer from wandering uterus syndrome by repeatedly poking you in the lower abdomen, as if to say, "Yup! Still there!" I had a bruise right over where I think my appendix might be, from the enthusiastic reassurances. I wish I'd had the Korean to say, "That's not a tumor or anything, I'm just pudgy." I think it would have saved a lot of time and concern.

So I got scrubbed very thoroughly, massaged and moderately beaten, and then sent to go sit in a hot pool. After all that, I got to shower and put on my Dragon Hill pajamas and go down to the game room, where I met TJ and played a racing game. Sadly, we could not get the two racing games to operate simultaneously, so we couldn't race each other, but we played some lightning round air hockey and wandered the facility some. He decided he'd head back to the hotel, and I stayed a while longer to take advantage of the massage chairs in the ladies' locker room (which sounds much more utilitarian than it was - nice soft lighting, makeup counters for miles, lovely seating areas, and the sleeping room were all there, in addition to the salon and a small shop for buying new underwear and snacks. My Kindle and I hung out, and when my muscles felt sufficiently like wet noodles, I pronounced it a successful jjimjilbanging and went back to Sinsa station.

The cherry on top (so to speak - cherries do not belong on top of things. They are to be enjoyed by themselves, and do not speak to me of maraschino cherries, for they are a dread creation of which mankind should be ashamed) was this delicious scoop of dark, dark chocolate gelato from Caffe Bene on my way back.

DINNER OF CHAMPIONS

And that was Penultimate Korea Day!



*Chinese steamed bun, you know: white, plump, sweaty.