Life is more exciting when you're fun.

*NOTE* This post was supposed to have been published a month ago, but I forgot about it. Lol....anyway, enjoy.

Hello everybody! So, I thought I'd just write a quick post about my spur of the moment trip that Emilee and I decided to take. Both Laura and Kyla were gone this past weekend with their families (Laura's family came to visit this past week and Kyla's mom just arrived on Saturday)
So, Emilee and I were going to hang out in Gunsan, but, we hadn't really been anywhere for a while and I was getting really bored and had Gunsan-fever. I wanted to leave.
So, I turned to Emilee on Friday night and said, "Hey, let's go somewhere this weekend. Let's go to Seoul." Emilee, being the practical person she is (and the only one that has been able to successfully save any kind of large sum of money) just looks at me for a second and then opens her wallet where she keeps her finance records (smart woman) checks them, then says "sure, why not?"
So, we plan our trip Friday night, and Saturday morning we are on a bus heading for Seoul. How fun is that? I was so excited, it was like a surprise road trip. We saw both Kyla (who was also headed to Seoul to pick up her mom from the airport) and Lizzie, (who was with her friend Eun-hye going to the beach in Buan) at the bus terminal, so all of the Oklahoma girls had decided that last weekend was not a time to stay in Gunsan. SEE YA G-town!!!
              Okay, so, Emilee and I get to Seoul and go to the Namdaemun market, which is just a big outside market full off toursity stalls and stuff. We walked around for about an hour, and found these cute touristy t-shirts. We both liked the same one, so now we have matching t-shirts. (couple tees!) After we were finished looking in Namdaemun, we headed off to Myeondong (the popular shopping district of Seoul) because we both had things we wanted to buy there. So, after walking around for another hour trying to find Myeongdong, we finally ask directions and are not only able to understand them (they were given to us in Korean) but successfully follow them. Oh yeah, we felt like bosses.
We have both been in Myeondong before, so we kind of knew how to navigate the area. We found our favorite street food vendor and ate delicious sausage and rice cakes wrapped in mystery meat on a stick. Then, since it was a million degrees and the humidity was probably 90%, we found a coffee shop and just hung out in the glorious air conditioning for about an hour. We went to the underground shopping area where I found a really beautiful, handmade headband, and Emilee looked for a hat for her brother. Buuut, the hat place that she thought was in Seoul, was actually in Busan, which is on the other side of the country. Bummer.So, as we are meandering again around the above ground shopping area in Myeongdong, we find a hat and purse place. Not only do they have the hat that Emilee wanted for her brother, they also gave us free K-pop/Korean movie star calendars and note pads. So sweet.

My acquired articles in Myeongdong

                 When we were planning out our trip, we had to figure out a place to stay for the night. I suggested a Jimjilbang (a spa/sauna/spend the night place--totally awesome and I love them) because they are cheap and it's a very Korean-y thing to do. It's a good experience. Emilee had heard of them before and had staunchly refused to ever go to a JJB. Buuuut....this time she read about all the facilities and fun things to be done at a Jimjilbang (referred to as a JJB from now on) and caved. Yay! So we had found a website that said there was a JJB around Myeongdong. We wrote down all the directions and contact information and had a map of Myeongdong on Emilee's phone as well, so we thought we were set.
After we were finished shopping, we decided to look for our JJB before we had dinner so that we could just go straight there whenever we were tired. It was around or 4:00-4:30pm when we  started to go looking for the JJB, and by 8:30 we still hadn't found it. We were two very tired and irritated ladies at this point. We had been all over Myeondong, gone into several buildings that fit the description (and the directions given on the website) but had no luck. We had asked directions at an English tourist help center and were told that there was a JJB on the street a few blocks down from where we were, but when we went to said place, they told us that there weren't any JJB's nearby, or anywhere in Myeongdong. The sauna that we had the name, address (in Korean and English) AND phone number of (the one we had looked up online) was supposed to be on the 14th floor of the "Myeongdong Tower" building, but everyone we showed it too told us they had no idea what the "Myeondong Tower" was. Only one lady that we asked seemed to know what the Myeongdong Tower was and she directed us to a building that we had passed about 12 times. When we went into the building and showed the security guard the address for the sauna, he nodded yes (like this was the right building) and pointed for us to go inside and straight. So we did...and we ended up on the other side of the building by another security guard. So we showed HIM the address and he said that this wasn't the building and told us to go out and down the street and then right.
By this time, we had been looking for this stupid place for 4 hours and we were fed up. So we decided to just go get dinner, then get in a taxi and tell him to take us to the nearest Jimjilbang.
We got a nice driver and we just said "Jimjilbang!" and he took us to a place about 5 minutes away from Myeongdong (where we were going to return in the morning to go to church). It was in this back alley, so I was kind of wary about it, but it turned out to be a really cool place.
It was super cheap, only 13,000 (about 10 dollars) for the night. In a JJB they give you clothes to wear if you are going to sleep there, and since Emilee and I are "waygooks" I'm pretty sure they gave us the biggest size they had in women's clothing.
I would just like to say, that the clothes were way to big. The shorts came down to mid calf and the crotch hung down so low I looked like a gangster, so I had to hike them up  and wear them like Erkle.
               Anyway, Emilee and I got our locker keys and went to the women's locker room where immediately we were greeted with clothed, half naked and full naked ladies walking around, checking themselves out in the mirror...everything. No shame. At all. I've been to a couple of JJB's before, so I wasn't surprised at all, but poor Emilee was a bit shocked.
You have to get undressed in the locker room and then go to the shower area, there is no way to not be seen naked by everyone...Emilee tried to get around this by wearing her shirt and holding her shorts in front of her as she headed to the showers, which are, of course public, (women only). However, an ajumma that worked there took Emilee's shorts from her and tried to take her shirt too, but Emilee just ran down the stairs to the showers before she could. So, don't try to wear your clothes to the showers! They will be taken from you! Lesson learned.
After showers, we got dressed in our huge, orange JJB clothes and went up to the sauna area. There are 5 floors in this particular JJB, so we of course had to explore them all. Floor 1 was the divided floor (men's showers/locker room area/ women's locker room and shower area). And the rest of the floors were co-ed. The second floor was the snack/open space area with  massage rooms, business meeting rooms (why would you have a business meeting at a JJB?? "Hey, lets take a shower together and then talk about the finances on this new product!" "Sure, boss!" AWKWARD!) and then just a big open space where you could sit and relax or sleep. The third floor was the entertainment area and it had game rooms, arcade rooms, massage chairs (that were extremely painful and ridiculous) and another big open space to relax and sleep or whatever.
The fourth floor was where it was happening. It had, of course a big open space to relax etc....but it had a TV and all the sauna's were on this floor. There was a Jade room, two salt rooms (one was a lower temperature than the other) two dugout rooms (not sure how to describe these..refer to the pictures) an oxygen room, a charcoal room, hell...oh sorry... I mean, the high temperature sauna, and an ice room. Emilee and I went into all of these rooms of course and it was a lot of fun. On the fifth floor was the men's and women's sleeping area (if you don't want to sleep in the co-ed common areas on the other floors) and there were a bunch of bunks with mats on them. Emilee and I slept in there and it was awesome and quiet.
So here are the pics to this awesome place. (and our faces are super red in all the pics because the rooms are super super hot!!!!)

 In Myeongdong!

After showers

 Dugout room

 Jade room (60 degrees C)

 Salt room door (low temperature one!)                                     In the salt room

The doorway to hell....its 86 degrees C...thats 186.8 degrees F. You can't bring your phone or any electronics in there, (cause they'll melt) and you are advised to only stay in there for 15 mins at a time. Uh...duh...you're slowly roasting....who wants to stay in their until their well done? Not me! (and the glass is not tinted...its red in there because...well...its an oven...

(Kind of fun fact...maybe not, but I later went to a JJB in Jeju (tell you about that trip later) and the room was even hotter than this one...I could only stay in that room for about 3 minutes. It was so hot that I could barely breathe, and when I came out, I was drenched in sweat and my body temperature was so high that the lower temperature rooms (the 50/60C rooms) didn't feel hot at all.)

Ice room door                                              (its -14 degrees C and it feels awesome after being in any of the other rooms, especially in the hell room)

 In the ice room!!!  

So, that was our spur of the moment trip to Seoul! It was really fun and I'm glad Emilee got to experience a Jimjilbang. It really is something you should experience if you are ever in Korea. 

Okay, so, little fun/annoying fact about Seoul taxi's: On the side of the taxi it will say "free interpretation" that gives off the idea that they know English, or will have some sort of device that you can type in where you want to go or what you want to say and it will translate it for you so they can understand, right? Well, no.

"Free interpretation" is really just a trick to make you choose that taxi over the other ones. You will have to pull out your phone and use your own translator if they can't understand your Korean. And even then, some of the taxi driver's don't seem to know Seoul at all. I mean, how hard is it to understand "Baw-su taw-min-al" (bus terminal)? That's exactly how the Koreans say it! Sheesh! Anyway, even when we pulled it up on our phones and used the translator, he still took us to the wrong place. Oh well...we eventually made it back to Gunsan.
So, that was our trip! More adventures to come soon!
~TWGA