Jjimjilbangs (찜질방), translation is "steam rooms," are large, gender-segregated public bathhouses. They are fantastic, affordable, and honestly, one of my favorite places to visit here in Korea! Who doesn't like to pamper yourself all day in a comfortable, social, stress-free environment (especially, since it has been snowing for the past five days!!!). Included in the jjimjilbang's gender-segregated areas are pools of various temperatures (cold, medium, hot, extremely hot), bathing areas, and saunas. There are also unisex areas with ondol heated flooring for sleeping and lounging, and several types of saunas of various temperatures.
Most jjimjilbangs are open 24 hours and are a popular weekend getaway for Korean families and friends. If you are traveling to another city, it is best to look for a jjimjilbang to stay at. For an overnight stay, you are given clean clothes and either a bunk bed or a sleeping mat.
In the sauna unisex section, there is the main area where people can sleep, relax, eat, and socialize and there are the various sauna rooms. My favorite room is the hot pebble room where you lay on the floor covered with smooth, warm pebbles. It feels so incredible! There are also the cold room, the medium temperature room, and the "sweat lodge" type room. The other day this room was 96 degrees Fahrenheit. I loved it! The sauna rooms remind me of the inside of a Navajo Hogan due to their shape (rounded ceilings), smell (earthy smell), heated stoves, and materials in which they are made out of. "Hwangto" or yellow earth (similar to adobe) used to be one of the main materials for Korean houses back in the day. It's expensive now, but jjimjillbangs use the material because supposedly it is good for the skin. The yellow dirt has infrared rays and when you come into contact with it, your skin relaxes and the toxins are discharged from the body. 
Ok, the bathing areas are so great and truly an amazing Korean cultural experience! There you can find mothers spending time with their young kids, children playing in the water (the other day two little girls offered me "tea" from their pretend tea party), friends giggling away, grandmothers admiring the generations below, and so many other beautiful and loving interactions. I can only imagine what it must have been like long ago in many different countries (Rome, Japan, Finnland ...) where people publicly bathed all the time.
In Korean culture, there isn't a concept of personal space because of how many people there are and how close everyone lives. Therefore in the jjimjilbangs, everyone washes each other's backs, children play with bubbles as mother's scrub them squeaky clean, friends giggle and catch up on life, and everyone shares soaps, face masks (green tea, mud ... , mint...there are so many kinds), and several other products. If you want, you can pay extra to have the sauna's staff give you messages, pedicures, manicures, and if you are really brave, a full body,"Helga's house of pain" type, intense scrub! Yikes!!!! I still haven't been able to tempt that!
Did I mention that in the women's and men's separated sections of the jjimjilbangs that everyone is naked! This is surprising to me, because as a whole, the Korean culture is very conservative. You won't even see women wearing tangtops in the summer time! Being naked can take a minute to get used to, especially, because being a foreigner you attract attention anyways. But personally, I think it is so healthy to accept and love your body. I just think it is so cool how open these women are (I don't know if it is the same on the men's side). Their relationships grow closer as they spend hours in these timeless, non-conflicted environments. I love it and it's something I wish was back in the states.
"We are just women who admire and really know each other. We allow each other to have weaknesses the public doesn't allow us to have." ~Lisa Minelli 
Mum and Woman's Body painted by Pan Yuliang
No comments:
Post a Comment