Dragon's Dream is a subterranean bomb shelter that's carved into a system of caves on the side of a mountain. From what I understand, it's mostly known for the quality of their onion pancakes called pajeon, but we mostly just took advantage of the bamboo soju and ridiculous amounts of dongdongju, a milky rice wine that's served in a large kettle. The bar/restaurant felt like a ride at Disneyland. The cave itself has drippings coming down the wall and there's a constant soothing sound of water trickling through the cave. I had to duck a bit as I walked to our table, so claustrophobic peeps should find another spot. I wish I would've brought a camera, but I've stolen a few pics from the interwebs for you kiddies to enjoy.
That was the beginning of the night. Very cool, but not exactly an assault on my cultural upbringing. We left Dragon's Dream and went to a small outdoor area and drank until around the time the sun came up. "Well, hell, that sounds like every high school summer in southern Illinois. So why the title on the blog, Tapp?" you ask. After a long night of drinks, my courage had been sufficiently bolstered enough to check out an aspect of Korea that's piqued my curiosity since I got here. I went to my first jjimjilbang.
It's been on my nervous-radar since I first started looking into Korean customs and culture. Essentially, it's a large public bathhouse that's split up by gender. Many of them have a sleeping area you can go to afterwards. In general, South Korea is a very conservative society that shy's away from everything sexual. In American culture, nudity is sexual. No matter how enlightened you consider yourself to be, being naked in America has sexual connotations. So much so, that by me writing the word 'bathhouse', many of you immediately conjured a picture of San Francisco in your head. It might have been a bit different in previous generations, but we didn't even shower after gym class back in school. It was a bit too much of a taboo. That's the part that was confusing me and sparking my curiosity, I guess. A society that tends to blush if a woman's shoulder's are bare, is perfectly comfortable being surrounded by a bunch of other naked people. It just didn't compute for me. I had to see it for myself.
So I figured, 'I'm comfortable with myself. I've been skinny dipping more than a few times, hell, I was once depants'd in front of a couple thousand people at Rehab at the Hard Rock (thanks for that Tom) I can do this.... maybe just one more shot.' It helped immensely to have a friend that was familiar with the custom and had even been to that particular jjiljimbang in the past. It also helped that I was still in some serious back pain that I mentioned in the last blog. I'm not entirely sure, since the site's in Korean, but I think this is where we were. We walked in the door and, after paying a massive 9000 won (about 9 dollars... and that price included the sleeping area, too) we were given a locker key on an elastic band to wear on the wrist or ankle and proceeded to the changing room. Or unchanging room, I guess. After a quick shower, I headed towards the first pool and realized about that time that the naked just didn't matter anymore.
That's when I first really enjoyed it. Butterflies were gone and nothing but 6 or 7 hot tubs, sauna's, and such to look forward to. The water had a saltwater base and the temperatures ranged from almost scalding hot to just above ice cold. Basically, it was awesome. They even had 3 or so sauna's with different temperatures... one dry sauna was registering at 85C or 185F or so, ridiculous. Once leaving the hot tub/sauna area, the jjimjilbang goes back to a gender mixed area. You're given a set of pajamas and there's more hot rooms to sleep inside. There was one room that was similar to an igloo that was relaxing as hell after sweating out in the saunas. If sleeping in an oven isn't your thing, you can go into a bunk bed area with floor mats. The whole experience was incredible and it's been one of the best things that I've done since getting to Pusan. We crashed for 4 or 5 hours (our pass was good for 24, btw) and then woke up to spend the day on the beach. Beaches are another beast all together in Korea, but I'll have to talk about that next time....
No comments:
Post a Comment