This past Friday, for the first time, I went to a Korean bathhouse with an American friend.
Yes, this meant I was walking around naked. (Genders are separated at the spa/bathhouse.)
I had an ostrich complex- I took off my glasses so everything was blurry so I figured if I couldn't see clearly, maybe others couldn't see me clearly (or rather weren't looking closely)... One goes there to relax anyway so there's really no space/time/place/atmosphere/need to worry about how you look. I just tried to follow what some of them were doing, such as putting one of the two small orange towels they gave us around my hair, and sitting on the other one when in the sauna rooms.
Afterwards, fish nibbled at my feet!
After hours of soaking up warm water, and get a body scrub until our skin felt like a baby's, we got dressed and went to the "Dr. Fish" pool for which we were given a separate small (blue) towel.
We sat on the edge of this pool and dipped our feet in, as per the broken-English instructions and the picture on the wall, and little fish came and ATE the dead skin off our feet! Yes, I willingly put my feet in a pool of water for fish to eat off of!
It was hilarious and ticklish at first! After our initial shock and resignation, we got over the crazy idea of it, and relaxed... What a cool idea! What a symbiotic relationship! We get our feet cleaned, and the fish get to eat! Some were small enough to go between my toes, and some were as big (if not slightly bigger) than my biggest toe! Did it hurt? Not one bit!
That sounds so cool, I found out we have some bath house's like that in Las Vegas and California.
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