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Today we decided to spend the day relaxing, we’d been walking around so much and our beds at the hostel are not comfortable, so we’d become quite achy all over.

So we tried out this place called Dragon Hill Spa. It’s a 10,000Won (approx USD10) entrance fee and with that you could spend quite a few hours there as there are things like a salt sauna, steam sauna, firewood sauna, hot water saunas, etc. They have other things which you can pay extra for like massages, manicures, facials, etc. Once you pay the entrance fee, they give you this RFID bracelet that you can use to “charge” food and services. Before you leave, you have to pay up for everything before they let you exit the place. Kind of a neat concept. It’s like ad hoc services, no appointments required.

We decided to try out the Meridian Sports Massage which was 100,000Won (approx USD100) for 100 minutes. It was seriously the most painful massage I’ve ever had but your muscles feel so loose afterwards. The massage is done with your clothes on and they really massage every inch of your body, including each one of your toes! They stretch you and twist you. They actually use their feet to massage you by standing on you. My masseuse even cracked my neck. It felt good to relieve that pressure in my neck. It was so comfortable… makes me want to go get another massage right now.

They serve snacks inside and yes they do have those soy sauce eggs that you see in Korean dramas. (Actually I didn’t know about those eggs until Ron & Susan mentioned them because I’ve never watched Korean dramas.) There is also a full service restaurant inside as well.

The women’s sauna was a bit weird though since it is separate from the men’s, everyone is completely unclothed and just wandering around from pool to pool and room to room. There’s only soap bars and no shampoo or conditioner so in this way it’s different from the day spas I’ve been to in US. But the nakedness all around is just something I think you’d have to get used to.

After our relaxing afternoon, we headed to go watch another performance called “JUMP” which is non-verbal Martial Arts show. It’s about this crazy Korean family that all do Martial Arts and it has a love story and “action” in it. It was quite hilarious but not sure if it was as funny as “NANTA”.

After the show, we found ourselves a Korean BBQ Restaurant which only served pork. We were actually looking for beef so we didn’t eat that much there and instead went to wander the streets looking for more food. Unfortunately, we did not find any beef BBQ so instead, we had seafood. I guess that doesn’t make logical sense but we were still hungry. We ended up having a huge clam (about the size of a softball) and something we think is a sea apple.

Giant clam in spicy sauce.

Sea apple.

Sea apple sashimi, reminded me a bit of sea urchin sashimi because of it’s bitter taste but its texture is different, kind of crunchy but also soft.

Today was a nice way to spend Christmas Eve. Tomorrow we head to the mountains for some skiing!

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