A Spa Experience

A couple of weeks ago a group of us took the kids swimming at the new Home Plus in Jinju. Home Plus is similar to Walmart or Target except for the pool and spa on the 8th floor. Hope they never have a leak! We took the escalator up and I was impressed to see a really nice, new gym facility.

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We were quite the crowd so it took the girls a bit to get us signed in and equip us with the appropriate gear. That's right, you don't just saunter into the pool here in Korea. They have a certain system and everyone is expected to follow it. (This a difficult concept for an American to understand. We are so geared toward individualism. I can't stand it when I am told to wear this or do that just because everyone else does.) A couple of us really didn't plan on swimming and weren't familiar with the Korean swimming rules. 1. Even if you don't swim you must change into gym wear, which they provided. 2. You must wear a swim cap. 3. Shower before entering the pool.

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They gave each of us a wrist band. Blue for the guys, red for the ladies and yellow for the little ones. We headed toward the the locker rooms but were stopped and reminded to remove our shoes. The young korean girl working there was watching and decided we could use some help. She took us in and used one of our wrist bands to demonstrate that the locker numbers corresponded with the bands and were actually electronic sensors that opened the lockers. She opened a small locker and pointed at our shoes and waited, while we put our shoes away properly and locked up. Then we moved on to a set of larger lockers to store the rest of our belongings. I guess she felt like we could handle it from there and left us on our own. We all discreetly changed into our suits or gym clothes and were ready to hit the pool.


We walked into a large open lounge room where you could watch TV, buy drinks/snacks from a small bar, re-do your hair and make-up, etc. It was really nice just odd that we were the only ones wearing clothes. We went through a set of double doors to the spa area. This room contained at least four different quite large jacuzzi pools, a set of showers, massage tables, and another area with little stools where women seemed to be bathing themselves. All of them straddling stools, soaking, talking in their birthday suits.




A friend of mine said korean women feel equal when nude and have shed all the material things that differentiate social status and class. I, however, feel more equal in my clothes than my own skin and noticed that everyone in my group skipped the required shower. My friend Twee, said she got into one of the jacuzzi's after a trip to the rest room and the Koreans gestured that she should remove her suit or get out.


We met Aaron in the pool area and he said "Mom, there were naked Korean Men everywhere in there"... The kids enjoyed splashing around with there friends and buying snacks from the snack bar --another use for our wrist band -- they scan your purchases and you pay for everything on the way out -- loved that! We had a great day and now understand how things work at the spa.

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Another interesting Korean cultural experience. Sorry, no pictures with this post!