It's the New Year and my back aches. So for a moment, let's leave behind politics and saving our little worlds and spend the day in Korea's version of heaven.
My friends and I found it in Tacoma of all places years ago and we've been making the trek periodically ever since. What a place. I remember the first time Marina and Laura took me there. Marina, my Russian friend who grew up being dragged to Russian baths on Saturdays by her mother to be flogged by birch twigs, or venik, until she was shiny clean had converted by necessity in Seattle where Russian baths do not exist, to the Korean way and gave me strict orders that we had to get there early and leave open the whole day and although I wondered why, I followed orders and dropped my kids at school and headed to hitch a ride with her at 9 am.
Actually getting to the Korean Spa is the toughest part since the drive is long and trafficked through endless freeway construction and warehouse, truck laden streets--not your usual setting for a relaxing spa day f. Marina and I passed the time by talking about Russian literature. She told me how back in Russia she read one of her favorite books "Master and Margarita" (then blacklisted) in her college room dorm, overnight under the blanket, printed on a huge computer lab printer by someone very brave, who secretely typed it in by bits and pieces nightly (remember perforated cards as means of communicating with a giant blinking computer?). She lamented how Russia is moving backwards now, as far as censorship goes - very sad.
Then as we idled in traffic Marina told me how the Korean spa is the only place she knows of where you can eat good Korean food for lunch while naked. This image of munching on Kimchee in a restaurant around a table with my naked friends made the traffic jams seem rather inconsequential and at the same time less urgent to escape.
We got off at the Tacoma Way exit and passed a bunch of run down strip mall shops to arrive at our destination. The official name is The Olympus Women's Spa. It was a non-descript grey one story building we entered with dim fluorescent lighting, light green walls, linoleum floors and dingy drapes and two pretty Korean women seated behind a metal reception desk. I could see marina's excitement level increase once we arrived while mine was going into a east/west timewarp. There were no little bowls of flowers and women in kimonos running around with arched doorways. This was a working spa; the real thing.They took our credit cards and we signed up for a scrub and moisturizing and free access to the baths for a very reasonable price. They gave me a key and told me my number was 89 and mumbled some more instructions which whizzed past me. I clutched the key with my life, still thinking about my naked lunch to come.
We got to the locker rooms and got into our flimsy light green robes and went through the door into the baths. There, you're greeted by a echoes of korean women talking muffled by rushing water, steam steaming, and buckets of joy. The large steamy room with white tile and marble, showers, steam baths, and four large pools with baths of varying temperatures was lively and inviting and the stress went right out of my spine and I started to strut around naked like a regular with the other 15 other women who had already settled into the spa by 9:30 AM. As we sunk into the 115 degree pool our spirits ascended the stairs to Korean heaven. The Korean ladies who looked like tanks in short black shorts with tops that showed their round bellies circled the baths periodically calling out numbers, searching for their customer for the next scrubbing. And before I knew it, off I went to the scrubbing room, only partially screened from the main baths where lined up iin a row ten deep women lay buck naked on their fronts, on their backs, each attended by a korean woman throwing buckets of water on them and scrubbing the living daylights out of their white skin before getting faces covered in honey and cold cucumbers. I lay there feeling like a Kobe beef cattle being massaged... angels on kites flew threw my head while my body seemed to turn into cumulus clouds...
And who were my fellow naked women strolling from bath to bath, giggling in the steam room, reading a book on their side? lazing away the day. Some were young, some were very old, some were Korean, and an awful lot of them I mused were strippers on their day off, escaping the grind.
We had our lunch, spicey tofu soup and plenty of kimchee. It tasted good. We laughed. We cried. The chairs were cold. And then back to the baths we went for another dose of Korean goodness.
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