Spa World

Full disclosure: The point of this blog, at least partially, is to create a forum to receive feedback on my writing. The story below is long, and not a typical blog post, but if you get through it, I'd love to know what you think.

Also, what is going on with the formatting? Does anyone know how to fix the spacing, etc? Annoying...

SPA WORLD

About 45 minutes outside of DC, in the kind of bland strip mall that makes city-dwellers a little smug, is an oasis of wonderful weirdness called Spa World. The enormous facility is modeled after the more luxurious traditional bath houses in Korea, and prior to visiting for the first time, I'd heard just enough about it to make me both curious and slightly concerned.



I was interested because warm and humid is my preferred forecast, and squeaky-clean is my favorite state of being- not an easy two things to combine.

My hesitancy stemmed from the fact that, while the communal areas of Spa World are co-ed and fully clothed (sort of- more below), the pool and sauna area are single-sex, and full nudity is enforced with a sternness only found in former Soviet states and certain parts of Asia.The US is always trying to get Europe to join us in taking on dictators, but I’d staff my negotiating team with old Asian ladies. There’s a particular look that these women are capable of which combines annoyance and disgust in such a way that you not only feel their contempt, you agree with it.

More pointedly, my travels in Asia have made me painfully aware of the disparities between my Latvian/German/English physique (So sturdy! Built to withstand harsh winters and a steady diet of potatoes!) and that of a Southeast Asian (So willowy! Built to ensure Latvian/German/Englishwomen are fully aware of their monstrous hugeitude!).

On my first trip to Vietnam, I'd made the mistake of shopping for a silk jacket to take home for my mom, who’s about my size. Locals assured me that the nicest shop in Ho Chi Minh City was located in the kind of elegant hotel that made me feel fancier just for walking in. Slow fans, white flowers, and dark wood instantly caused me to exhale in relief after the motorbike mayhem of the streets.

In the shop, the beautiful sales women, dressed in shimmering, sleek dresses called ao dai, welcomed me warmly. They helpfully showed me different options while maintaining a steady commentary in Vietnamese, which at first I took to mean, “What a dutiful daughter, to think of her mother while she’s so far from home.”, but which I later realized more closely translated to, “Is he aware that we do not sell men’s clothes here?”, or perhaps,  “Even with shoulders so broad, I wonder how she is able to hold up such an enormously large head?”.

After browsing, I reached for the largest jacket I could find. It was a lovely, buttery yellow silk, embroidered with birds and flowers and trimmed with a silk cord in jade green. I slipped one hand in the left sleeve, one in the right, tossed my arms up to pull it over my shoulders- and ripped that fucker right in half. Just like on old episodes of  The Incredible Hulk, the whole scene played out in slow-mo, complete with the “ch-ch-ch” sound effects and the tearing of fabric. It was, by quite a large margin, the most mortifying thing that has ever happened to me. (So far).

All that being said, I don’t have tremendous hang-ups being naked in public, if situationally appropriate. I grew up skinny dipping in the summer. (If you’ve never had a chance, find somewhere private and get to it. Right now. I’ll wait.) In college, there may have been some light streaking. I’ve been to nude or topless beaches- even a naked pool deck in Key West. While traveling in Finland, I went to a single-sex sauna with my bathing suit in my bag, and quickly realized that a cherry red Speedo would have made me much more eye-catching than my pale pink backside.

And so it was that when my birthday neared, Spa World arose as an opportunity to get some girlfriends together to go relax, but also as a potential international incident.Would Korean strangers tut-tut my soft American frame? Would my curvy thighs confirm the decline of the American empire and the rise of the East? A lot of geo-political responsibility was resting on my bare cheeks.

I was only very mildly concerned about my friends seeing me naked. Still, there was some awkwardness. In the car on our way out to Spa World, my friends Molly, Ali and I eventually sidled up to the 800-lb love handles in the room; specifically, the fact that despite much mutual admiration, love and respect, we were about to see each other’s nipples, and that was a little weird. All three of us are fit and athletic, Molly from some seriously competitive water polo, Ali from biking around town, and myself from triathlon training. All three of us receive lots of admiring attention from the opposite sex. And yet, we were all, to varying degrees, talking ourselves out of being unnerved at the thought of getting undressed in front of other women.

We were all aware of the ridiculousness of the reaction. Molly talked about the time in high school when the girl she had always been intimidated by because she had the “perfect” body, complained in the locker room about her fat thighs. What a golden moment to have such a clear memory of! Life lesson #1: Everyone is crazy. Life lesson #2: No one is looking at you.

With a tacit agreement that a) don’t be ridiculous, you’re gorgeous; and b) I promise not to look at your junk, we arrived at Spa World. After paying my entry fee, I was given an electronic key which opened a small locker for my street shoes. I was also given a pair of what looked to be prison-issue orange pajamas, and was pointed back to the locker room to change.

At the locker room door I found a somewhat daunting list of spa “don’ts” in Korean, with an English translation below. Don’t waste water (good); Don’t wear lotions or creams in the sauna rooms (fair); Take a shower before entering the pools (perfect). Also, Those with communicable diseases are not allowed in the poultice rooms (okaaay...); and, perhaps most importantly, Keep your morality. So, no dry humping, then?

As though the sign could read my mind, it caught me just as the smirk started to pull on the corner of my mouth with a stern, Those who fail to follow Spa World rules will be asked to make leave. The tiny Korean grannie in my mind translated, I’ve got my eye on you, Gigantasaurus, and I WILL ask you to make leave, so watch it.

Our shoe keys also opened a larger locker for our clothes and bags, and the three of us quickly stripped down and headed toward the pool area. Through the glass, I could see the pool and dozens of naked women. I made myself drop my arms from across my chest. (Why was covering my boobs my first impulse?) I took a breath, walked through the door, and died of mortification as everyone stopped talking and turned to stare at me.

No, not really. Actually, no one even looked up.

The pool area was big, and gently lit, and filled with probably 75 women of all ages, sizes, races, fitness levels, and stages of tattooedness. A woman with a particularly large tattoo of the Bat Symbol on her right boob caught my eye. Breaking the promise I’d made to myself not 30 seconds earlier, that I would neither judge nor feel judged, I pondered what life circumstances had driven her to commit such prime real estate to the Caped Crusader.

Lining one long wall of the room were shower stalls, each equipped with pretty flower-shaped shower heads, shampoo, conditioner, and, oddly, mirrors. In case you’ve forgotten- yes, you’re still naked. To the right of the familiar US-style showers were two banks of “sit showers”. These seemed to be the domain mostly of older Korean women, and they sat on a small stool, lathered up, scrubbed thoroughly, and rinsed, with minimal wasting of water. If you only had one bucket of water to wash with, their technique would be ideal. At the station closest to me, I saw a woman shaving her face in the mirror in front of her. Ah. Yes. Of course.

Just past them, behind a wall almost tall enough to provide some privacy, was a large area in which eight naked women were lying on massage tables. They looked like oysters on the half-shell all lined up in a row, pink and promising, on their icy white towels. Spa World masseuses were pushing and pulling the women, seeking out every inch of dirt as they provided what I had to believe was the most thorough going-over any of their clients had received since they started bathing themselves. The masseuses were all wearing black lingerie, which seemed odd, until I realized that the likely alternative was naked.

After showering, I headed into the main pool in the middle of the room. The water was a perfect temperature- warm enough that I didn’t have to brace myself at all, but not so hot that I felt like a boil-in-bag meal when I was done. The pool was shaped like an amoeba, and was lined with stalls, each with different jets. In the first, I sat and the jets massaged my lower back, and then one that did my hips, legs, and calves. There were four towers sticking up from the pool deck at one end, which were shooting water straight down in such a way that it hit my shoulders with the perfect amount of force. The woman at the tower next to me was standing with her eyes closed, humming to herself, when I arrived, and was in exactly the same position when I moved on 10 minutes later. She looked like she had found some higher plane, and she might never leave.

Perhaps most thrilling alarming were stalls in which the jets shot straight up full-force from the floor. FULL FORCE. Parts of me fluttered in the current that I would have previously thought un-flutterable. These jets were for massaging my feet, OF COURSE. What else would they be for? A lady to my left, bobbing up and down and giggling, had one idea that I was fairly certain didn’t involve sore arches.

When we’d had enough of the pools and hot tubs, my friends and I toweled off, threw on our orange prison jammies and headed over to the common area. After the estrogen wombiness of the pool, the enormous, cheery chamber we entered was jarring. The overall space was about the size and shape of a basketball court. In the center, dozens of people were dozing, reading, or chatting with neighbors on mats in the middle of the floor. The men were issued mustard yellow uniforms, so together with the Orange Julius-flavored women, the room looked like 1973 had exploded all over it. It also made all three of us slightly uncomfortable- there was a vague cultiness to the whole scene, like propaganda of happy families under the benevolent eye of Dear Leader.

We shook it off and headed to the first of the half-dozen or so hot, dry saunas that were behind the doors along the walls of the main room. Each of the saunas was lined with a particular type of rock or mineral (salt, amethyst, red clay), and was set at a different temperature (hot, hotter, infernal). In one room, the floor was covered with billions of tiny clay balls about the size of grapes. When we walked in, everyone in the room was lying down spread eagled, as though they’d been dropped from a great height. Save for the snoring from the fat guy in the corner, most were only identifiable as being among the living by the quiet giggling that occurred whenever a new person entered, lost their footing as they stepped into the room, and cursed (equally identifiable in English and Korean). It was like the ball pit at McDonalds’ Romper Rooms, but for adults.

It was also, unfortunately, the only place in the whole facility that smelled less than astringently clean. Specifically, it smelled like hot feet. After 3 minutes disturbing everyone’s peace as I rattled around getting nestled into the balls just so, I jumped right back out to escape the foot-y fetidness.

As I was trying to decide which room to try next, I read the helpful descriptions posted just outside the entrances. Each room was ascribed a particular health benefit, such as improved skin, improved respiratory function, or improved ‘potency’. Actually, potency was mentioned in the description of almost every one of the different saunas. The issue seemed to be of some concern throughout the spa, which reflected my experiences traveling across southeast Asia.

In Vietnam, Cambodia, and China, it seemed that every  imaginable plant and animal was press-ganged into one potion or another in the name of improved erections. In Ha Noi I watched a bar full of men with, I had to assume, uncooperative trouser snakes, seek their revenge by consuming the hearts of cobra. Cobras are famously hard to empathize with, but these poor beasts were sliced open right in front of our eyes, and their still-quivering hearts and a good deal of blood were poured into small dishes to be tossed back in one gulp by the eager young men at the table. I don’t know if this had the intended effect on the men, but as a female witness, I could attest to the arousal of an emotion so far from “the mood” that no amount of Marvin Gaye karaoke and red wine would have salvaged the night.

The last room I tried was the meat locker room. It was refrigerated to a chilly 55, which felt like magic when coming from the hot saunas. This seemed to also be the room in which it was acceptable to chat; in the hot rooms, everyone had laid quietly and focused on not passing out.

Not quite everyone, actually. At Spa World as in life, in every room there seemed to be one idiot with nothing to say who just COULD NOT control the urge to share that nothing with the world around them.

Typically, the conversation went something like:

Idiot: “It’s hot in here.”

Friend: “Um-hmmm.”

Silence.

Idiot: “I’m sweating.”

Me: (barely) “Shh...”

Silence.

Idiot: “Phew! Even my ass is sweaty! Gross!” 

Friend: “Mmmm?”

Idiot: “I said, my ass is sweaty! Isn’t that gross?!”

Friend: “Mm-hmm.”

Me: (quietly) “Shhh....”

Idiot: “I can’t wait to get a bubble tea. It’s going to be so awesome and cold. I hate mango. Do you like mango? Mango’s gross. I like green tea. I think it’s good for your skin too. I think...”

Me: “SHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Christ almighty, my dog offers weightier commentary! Can’t you just shut up? Just BE QUIET. GOD.”

In truth, I did attempt a couple of increasingly insistent “shh!”es before I realized I was becoming that person who shushes other people. I was reminded of my friend Raj’s assessment of the difference between DC and Atlanta. In DC, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you honk at them and everyone around you thinks, “I hate it when people cut me off. What an asshole!” In Atlanta, when you honk at even the most-deserving offender, the people around you are looking at you, thinking, “Aw, bless her heart- what an asshole!” I didn’t want to be that asshole, finally just gave up, and left.

I went back to the common area, found a mat and a Korean Cosmo magazine, and waited for Molly and Ali to finish their treatments. I was surrounded by a complete cross-section of the population: older people napping; young women sitting in groups, towels tied in knots on either sides of their head like Princess Leia; middle-aged men joking and laughing baudily; families of 3 generations sitting and eating together. There was free WiFi, so some people were surfing on laptops. Everyone was ignoring the TVs showing a golf game and a P90X infomercial.

It struck me that there is really no equivalent to this in US culture, and also how badly we could use such a thing. As a young urbanite, I am almost entirely sheltered from both children and the elderly. The places I frequent attract people similar to me in every way; the radio I listen to, the books and newspaper I read, even the food I eat, are all consumed by people roughly equal to me in economic, geographic, and demographic status. I mean, I don’t even know any Republicans.(Okay, I know ONE, but don't think he really means it.)

More elementally, I was reminded of how valuable the experience of being naked around other people can be. It reminded me of my averageness, and of the ties and similarities between myself and people who, on the street, I’d assess as “other” for one reason or another. People are weird looking- all of us. Cellulite, wall-eyed boobs, funny pooches and dents. I was no better or worse than anyone there, and any pretensions or insecurities I had that said otherwise had to be stripped along with my undies back in the locker room.

Eventually, Molly and Ali finished up and we took a quick tour of the exercise facilities (which featured three of those old-timey fat jiggler machines), and the gift shop (Anne Frank in Korean? Nothing says “spa day” like the Holocaust!), before we finally decided that any more relaxation might actually cause some sort of irreversible brain damage. None of us were used to be completely without an agenda, and we were all ready to move on to the next thing.

Besides, I thought I saw a Dairy Queen on the way in, and I really hate bubble tea. Don’t you hate bubble tea? I like ice cream. I think it’s my favorite food. I think....