Ondol, or floor heating, is the way we heat our apartments and is really quite lovely. We turn on the hot water, and it runs through pipes in the floor to make the apartment nice and toasty. Its not cheap, but it also only needs to be on for a few hours a day to keep the place warm.
Today, after choosing to try out the gym by our apartments, I decided to also give the bath there a whirl. We had been told that these places were godsends when the weather cools off. Firstly, do not let the term "bath" fool you. This is not a public bath in the form of a big pool with a bunch of naked bathers crowded together. Picture instead a luxurious water spa, with various pools of varying temperatures to try out, as well as little pools with massaging jets and rain-like showers. There are also several sauna rooms and steam rooms, and even little nooks with bamboo beds on which to nap. What else could you ask for at the end of a long, cold day?
The spa-bath at this particular gym is an entire floor, and is separated by gender, of course. That is the one catch about these places -- no bathing suit option! Everyone is naked, naked, naked. It feels a little weird at first, especially because the "stare at the foreigner" rule is not spared at the public bath. Before long, however, I was the happiest bather in the place, trying out all the cool options of jets and showers and hot and cool tubs. The steam rooms and saunas were especially soothing to my phlegm-filled chest, and will have surely helped in the laborious battle I have been having with this cough.
The mercury is going to drop further, and I sense that more frequent visits to this wonderful, warm place will be a large part of our Korean future!
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