Golden Spa

Korea has been fun and interesting so far but nothing has stuck out as particularly blog-worthy because it's all just normal travel stuff... until now. This week is "Korean Thanksgiving" or Chuseok so we got a couple days off of work (i've only worked one day) and each teacher got two nice bottles of wine from the school. Score! I was worried about the holiday during training because I trained in Seoul but moved to Gwangju to teach and didn't think I'd know anyone in time to do something for the break. The problem was basically solved immediately because most of the teachers live in the same building so they can't really so much without me (although one guy already forgot me when he went to the tea plantation. so sad). So the plan was to go to a waterpark, unfortunately named, Golden Spa. I was not too excited about it, especially because I've heard horror stories about foreign water parks, but then my neighbor teacher told me everyone was going so I decided to go last minute. We took a bus to the main bus terminal and then hopped on a free bus to the waterpark! It was pretty empty so we didn't know what to expect there. The ride was nice though - about 45 minutes.

When we got there the ticket counter lady spoke no English and we spoke no useful Korean; luckily one of the guys had been before with people who'd previously been before so he knew what to do. Also we thought it was 56000 won but it was only 22000 and we didn't know why so we were worried that the whole park wasn't open - now we think it was end of season price or holiday price. woot! We got a bracelet that looked like a watch to unlock our lockers and buy food and beers with. We then opened a locker near the cashier to put our shoes in only. Strange, ok. Then we put some cash on the watches at a counter labeled "calculations." Then we went into another room and separated to men and women - oh the locker rooms! There were more lockers there for us to change and store our stuff. So fancy!

Ok nitty gritty: There are three parts to this water park. Let's start with the outdoor part. This part had awesome slides, and a pirate ship, and pools, a lazy river, and best of all... a shallow pool with doctor fish! It took me 5 tries throughout the day but I finally got my feet in for a significant amount of time (also I had a beer in hand the last time). Best ever! My feet feel so smooth now and I might have to try that again soon. There were men sitting in the pool but I could only get my feet in. I can't imagine what it was like having fish near their junk but whatever floats their boat. The slides were all awesome too and the place was so empty that we never had to wait in line, also this meant we had to go up all those stairs at once instead of waiting in line on them so we got a workout too. We also got to go on the slides as much as we wanted.

And the indoor part. This part had two more slides, but more importantly it had water massage stations in the pools for every part of your body. We would go to one station, lie down in the pool, push the button, and then jets of water would massage our backs and legs. or feet, or neck, or butt, or painfully the head. At times I felt like I should be in a private booth because it was so intense. There were also co-ed saunas of varying degrees and they were really pretty inside. One had paintings of cherry blossoms and another had a rock mosaic. The boys went in with their beers! One of the indoor slides was super crazy too. We had to walk upstairs and then the slide part went outside the building so we couldn't see what was to come. It was a dark tube that twisted and turned and then all of a sudden i was spinning around a funnel and then dropped into a huge dunk tank. Underwater I felt someone pulling on my arm to bring me to the side of the tank. It was this guys job to sit in the dunk tank all day and pull people up to the top! Quite a scary feeling not knowing what's going on and then some strange hand is groping for me. Only did that one once.

Finally the third part: a mini jimjilbang (Korean bath house). This, along with the doctor fish, is something I did not think I would end up doing, let alone within my first month. It was a mini bath house only because there weren't massage tables or people scrubbing anyone else down. It was still a whole bunch of naked ladies freely chilling in hot tubs and cold tubs and jet stream massage tubs. Girls were chit chatting while steaming, and in the showers moms and daughters were washing each other's backs. Pretty friendly place really. One of the saunas was 85 celsius! The highest I went was 66. There was also one pool that was half a foot deep with smooth but still painful rocks just for us to walk back and forth on, I think.

At the end of the day we took our watches back to calculations and got our remaining money back! Then We went to the convenience store for snack and beer and took them on the free bus back to Gwangju. Success! Now I feel like I can lounge in my apartment guilt free for the 2nd day of the holiday, and it's raining today - perfect!