For your reading pleasure my daughter is going to tell us all about her experience at a 찜질방. 

So, in Korea, there are these things called 찜질방. usually, there’s a 목욕탕 there too. When I went to korea a few years ago, a few of my friends had talked about a 찜질방, but I didn’t know what it was, only that it was ‘fun’. So this year I got to find out.

I went there with a couple of my friends and upon entering the building, it appeared to be just a 목욕탕. The person at the counter gave us some  pink uniforms (shorts and a T-shirt kind of thing). Then we went up a few flights of stairs and put our things in some lockers and changed into our uniforms outside of a small 목욕탕. Then we went up more stairs and into a big room. There were people (men, women and children) just lounging around in their unifoms (guys got blue ones) watching one of the two TVs (one had dramas goin on and the other had soccer). The walls were all covered with shiny quartz rocks of all different colors and depicted a mural of some giraffes and jungley things. There was also many small celtic looking doors (like what you wood imagine Snow Whites cottage to have) in the walls with a temperature and the name of the room over it. Some of the doors were just big enough to crawl through, but I didn’t go in, because they looked a little scary. These were usaully the hottest rooms. In the back was a small ‘restaurant’ type thing.

My friends and I went back there and they purchased hard boiled eggs and a salad bowl sized thing of 매실. We watched a drama, then went and sat in one of the hot rooms (70C) for a while. Inside were more murals of a huge sun, (well it was called the sun room). I peeked in at a few more rooms and they were all completely tiled with a shiny rock mosaic. There was one room, called the 얼음방. which was like the inside of a freezer complete with ice on the walls. We pretty much skeedaddled out of there.

The next time I went, we actually sat in the hot room instead of watching Golden Bride, and after I had become sweatier than I had ever been in my whole life, we went and washed off in the 목욕탕. Apparently becoming extremly sweaty helps detoxify your body and is very good for your skin and helps you lose weight. (Everyone in Korea is concerned about losing weight.) All in all it was indeed a fun experience.