Dream Sauna, Daegu, Yong San Dong (드림)
Dream Sauna (드림)
First visited in July 2010. Last visit 6th May 2011. Dream Sauna is a smallish bathhouse in Yong San Dong (용산동), Daegu and is a five-minute bus ride from Song-So, Mega Town where the Lotte Cinema Complex is. Since my last visit there seems to have been a few changes and I found more to appreciate than on my first visit.
The bathing facilities are modern and clean with a large cold pool, large warm pool and smaller hot and ‘event’ pools. The saunas include a steam room, pine sauna and a yellow mud sauna (황토방) with a charcoal wall, interesting art work and a resident television. The salt room (소금방) is fantastic as the salt is ankle deep on the floor and at first you think you’re entering a room of snow. You can even lay in it though the room is not specifically designed for this. The salt ‘font’ and seats have all been decorated to look like they are encrusted in rock salt. Quite an enchanting room. The salt sauna houses the television which can also be viewed from two other sauna rooms.
The large cold pool, beside a small jade, ondol sleeping area, has tiled artwork of dolphins above which three windows with colourful ocean scenes, are illuminated by sunlight. The smaller windows down the side of the bathhouse have floral designs. With bright tiling, the ambiance is light and roomy and a contrast to the black marble of Hwang So.
Plan
Dream Sauna - Bathhouse design (male)
The bathhouse: has a large rectangular changing area with a small recess containing a television and sofas for relaxation. There are around twenty sit down shower units and a bout the same number stand up showers. Shoe shine and a barber are on site.
Cost: 4000 Won
Location: This is very easy to find as the sauna is right next to Tesco Home Plus in Yong San Dong. If you come out of Home Plus and turn left, you will find Dream Sauna less than 3 minutes walk on the left hand side. There is a large opening on the ground floor with a sign over it and the ticket booth is in the lobby. (Wikimapia Link)
Ambience – bright, very clean bathhouse.
Waygukin – none but only my second visit.
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Paedofinder General – On a Lighter Note
Paedofinder General - formerly The Witchfinder General
One reason I love Roketship.com is that ‘a picture certainly paints a thousand words’ and with an added caption or speech bubbles that thousand is stretched even further. It seems my opinion on paedo-paranoia, expressed in Uncle Ernie’s Daegu Antics Prompt a Rant, has attracted a few comments on The Marmot’s Hole and a few nasty ones which I deleted from my pages. Well, popular sentiment has never been my bag. Boo-hoo sentimentality leads to war, one still being fought, and all sorts of other social travesties. I work under the axiom that if it’s popular it’s shit – or in this case, suspect! Rap – that’s shit and a lot of it borders on repugnant. Most Hollywood movies are crap and the majority of celebrities fucking wankers! Even the shittiest chocolate is the most popular and as for the Bible… boring. I’m a Mahler man. There’s more spirit and humanity in Mahler’s music than you’ll ever find in the pages of religious twaddle. Mahler should be a religion! And then there’s Bruckner, and Handel… and a pantheon more! I’m a snob to anything popular and proud of it.
Mahler fiddled with my head when I was 12. Ich liebe Dich!
Then I found ( via The Marmot’s Hole), this excellent link to some animations which express exactly what I was trying to say about Ernie’s Antics and obviously didn’t. The sketches are very funny and encapsulate what I failed to articulate. Amusing animations have the capacity to go places where words often fail without causing irritation.
Paedofinder General: Fiddler on the Roof – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoxQINcVBgU&feature=related
Paedofinder General: We Three Kings – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC6iQwoXc-w&feature=fvw
Paedofinder General: Don’t ever go with Strangers – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBFqe_3M2Z8&feature=related
And just who is Uncle Ernie? Fiddle About, from Tommy – The Who
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
A Hanja Classic – The Thousand Character Classic (천자문-千字文)
천자문
For students, The Thousand Character Classic (천자문 – 千字文) is a central text in learning hanja and appears in various publications and formats. Written in China, by Zhou Xingsi who lived between 470-521 AD, it comprises 250 phrases each containing 4 characters. Although it is unclear when the Ch’oen Cha Mun ( The Thousand Character Classic) first appeared in Korea, its use in learning hanja dates back to 1583.
The Ch’oen Cha Mun has appeared as a cartoon and forms the basis of numerous comic books with a didactic purpose. I recently found this excellent pocket size edition.
Pocket size Ch'oen Cha Mun
Clear text but as would be excpected, no English translation
Cost – 5000 Won.
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Here Today Gone Tomorrow
It was there last week because I walked right past it and decided I should eat lunch there sometime. I particularly like bo-ssam (보쌈) and last time I ate in this restaurant one of the side dishes was grilled mackerel pike. (공치)However, the restaurant has disappeared and is now a bar. Korean is a state of transition and businesses come and go with rapidity.
Three days previously this was a 'coffee and bun' shop. It is directly opposite Mr Big and Davici and opened a week before they did
I’m in a part of town I rarely visit; it’s over the crossroad near my one room, the dividing line between my world and what as well might be another city. Suddenly, I recognise where I am having walked onto a street from a direction in which I’d never previously come. For a moment I’m transported back 10 years. First, I recognise a shop that used to be the fast food restaurant Popeyes. It mutated into a stationery store within months of my arrival and is now a boutique. And just there was the shop where I bought a second-hand piano. Now it’s a travel agent. This reminds me of the shop where I bought my flight back to the UK after my first visit and I turn my head to locate it – it too has gone. And next to the piano shop was a small covered market where on a hot a muggy afternoon I remember drinking two glasses of freshly squeezed kiwi juice. The entire market has gone.
Davici Opticians took 10 days to transform
In the area around my ‘one-room,’ only a few businesses and even people remain from ten years ago. The big corporate businesses, still stand but the small businesses have changed hands sometimes on numerous occasions. I’ve taught hundred of kids in this area. I can remember many of their names and still recall some faces. Their English names are easy to remember as there was a trend back then for kids to give themselves quite bizarre names – Silver, Gold, Cow, Knife, Cat, etc. However, I have only passed two ex-students who recognised me.
Mr Big and Davici both opened in the same week. Mr Big was formerly a clothing store that took less than 10 days to mutate
In less than 65 paces from my front door I can see ‘Mr Big,’ ‘ Davici’ the opticians and the beauticians, ‘Beautyplex.’ The three business are directly opposite each other and less than 10 days all three replaced former businesses and reappeared in new guises. That was earlier this year and since then another 2 business have either relocated or appeared in the same block.
© Nick Elwood 2010.This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Uncle Ernie's Daegu Antics Prompt a Rant
Uncle Ernie’s been at it again, this time in Daegu but he managed to escape to Japan before the police caught him. A little jigery-pokery in the pants of a few students and suddenly every one ‘loves’ kiddies and starts baying for those accused to be tortured, brutally beaten, executed or incarcerated for life. It’s basic, Witch-hunts and Pogroms for Dummies.
Twenty years ago the word ‘paedo’ didn’t exist and even today many people can’t spell the word and constantly use it incorrectly, often conflating pederasty with paedophilia. Of course, I’m on dangerous ground as the baying often insists that anyone not whipped into a raging frenzy and demanding draconian punishments for offenders, must be a paedo themselves. The parallels are obvious, Krystalnacht, the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism and the Spanish Inquisition.
Ernie at work in one of his guises - lovely hat
Fiddling with kids is bad and crimes involving rape and violence against children are terrible but get real! First, ‘fiddling all about,’ Uncle Ernie’s favourite pastime, usually committed at bedtime, is only a recent concern. Twenty years ago no one really gave it much attention. I can certainly remember a time when the media often reported cases of teenage boys who’d been fiddled with by ‘sexy’ housewives and reported in a manner which implied it was a wholesome, fun-frolicking experience that every boy fantasized and in which every dad could be proud that at the very least, their son wasn’t ‘queer.’ The Catholic Church, the ideal religion for committing a range of offences, including Ernie’s favourite, but additionally more heinous ones like buggery, violence and murder, are still trying to pay it as little attention as possible. If you want to commit crime and be happy and guilt free doing so, the Catholic Church provides a suitable ideological package and joining their club provides some lovely hats and costumes. Many of the world’s most notorious crime spots are countries where Catholic sentiment run rampant.
Secondly, touching a kid’s todger or stroking their bottom is far less offensive than allowing them to die of starvation, lack of sanitation and water. Globally, we tolerate the death of 20.000 kids every day which over a number of years amounts to significant holocaust and many die at the hands of weapons manufactured in west. The US and UK are two of the world’s leading peddlers of kiddy death. Sensing some of the emotive guff written by those responding to pervy teachers, one might be led to belief we actually care about the welfare of kids. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. I call it ‘guff’ because the responses and their nature are largely orchestrated via the media and popular politically correct sentiment, a form of peer pressure.
Global perversion!
You want to castigate a child abuser, start with the ones who do it on a global scale and make mega bucks doing it. Arms dealers and manufacturers and their political lackeys are perverts of the highest magnitude and then there are the politicians and political systems which put profits before people – a perversion most people are happy to tolerate.
Perverts in arms - probably just leaving or entering a church
And changing the subject, how did Ernie manage to get his kids to undress? I can’t imagine for one moment my kids just stripping off if I told them to, let alone trying to undress them myself. Maybe he spoke fluent enough Korean to order them to do so but even then I would imagine you’d need to provide a motive and I’ve met few English teachers with such a capable command of Korean.
Ernie must have gone to school that day with both a prepaid passage to Japan and his letter of resignation and of course, knowing exactly what he was going to do.
I’ll frotage a few buttocks, stroke a couple of wieners, hand in my resignation, make a dash for Inchon and be in Tokyo in time for tea!
And he’s married with children? It’s probably true but fantastical enough to suspend any witch-hunt!
Being totally cool-headed and rational – it’s a pretty minor offense! If I had kids and I had to choose between one being squashed by a bus, blasted to pieces by a landmine, starving to death or being touched by Ernie…….well, only a fucking idiot would choose anything but the latter. Ernie’s fingers are definitely offensive but a far greater catalogue of atrocities exist and are endured by thousands of children every day – and most warrants not the slightest concern and can be intellectualised away via political and economic theories or simply deemed naive.
Real perverts have the power to define perversion
Hype aside, what remains to call for chemical castration, execution and all sorts of inquisition-style punishments are vague. The guy is possibly mad but in the small selection of emotive guff I’ve read, I’ve yet to see terms such as ‘mentally ill,’ or ‘crazy.’ Paedo crimes are currently of master label status and as such carry the verdict of guilty the moment even tainted by the label and sadly, even if subsequently proved innocent the association will remain. Shouldn’t such a predicament, comparative with other historical events, raise alarm bells?
Victim of a cluster bomb - a product of perversion and a contributing cause of around a million Iraqi deaths
I didn’t enjoy writing this post, ranting comes very easily to me and has probably lost me a number of friends and on this site I have a policy of avoiding blatant rants. The world is a depressingly sick place and our apathy contributes towards it. Paedo-paranoia is part of the bread and circuses hype which detract attention away from the real axes of evil!
Labour Party Turned a Blind Eye to Iraqi Casualties (Guardian UK. July 2010)
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Korean Teenagers' Wacky World of 'Vacation' Fashions
Just when you thought you knew the kids in your classes they turn up with hair dyed red, or sporting the poodle perm. It’s especially worse with the girls as an adult hair style forces you to acknowledge the fact they are young women and not the kids that they’ve appeared as all year. Yes, the summer ‘vacations’ have arrived and through the blurry haze of humidity and the incessant chirping of the memi, a weird wackiness prevails.
Vacation hair fashion
The perms, if that’s what you call them, as I’m not au fait with the methods of metamorphosis used by women, are heavily discounted over the school ‘vacations’ and cost as little as 20.000 W (£10). This year, common trends seem to involve tinting the hair with a touch of burgundy, a summer fashion common with boys as well as girls and of course, the perm, which has been popular for several years. While boys may grow their hair longer, or at least as long as you can grow it in around 40 days ‘vacation,’ girls often paint their nails in quite adventurous and beautiful ways. Along with the various hair styles is a concurrent rise is temporary tattoos. Most of these tend to depict fantasy book characters though unicorns seem to be particularly fashionable on younger girls. Blurred and blotchy tattoos declaring filial devotion to ‘Mum and Dad,’ or the British Bulldog, are as non-existent in Korea as tattoos in Chinese characters declaring the wearer to be ‘female’ (女), this being a frequently observed ‘fashion’ in the UK. And to accompany ‘grown-up hair styles a little leniency is given to earrings, rings and other forms of jewelery bar anything which pierces or punctures the face or drives studs through noses or tongues. The great thing about Korean kiddy vacation fashions is that they are temporary and as such have to wash-off, wash-out, come-off, cut-off or un-clip, which is the destiny they all face once the new term is looming. For kids it provides a period of self-expression and/or momentary madness which helps wash away the stresses and strains of the past academic year.
Vacation fashion - the shaggy perm
A little re-touch needed
I find the perms particularly unattractive. Korean hair, especially on youngsters, is wonderfully beautiful, full of lustre , body and that typically black-blue, black. The perm bakes and frizzles the life out of hair and the ensuing curls and kinks undermine rather than enhance the original appeal. Of course, I’m missing the point! ‘Vacation’ fashions are a symbol of freedom which I understand is precious especially as kids don’t really have a vacation. Only in Korea can you have a ‘vacation’ that isn’t really a vacation but not to worry, you can perm your hair and mutate into a spaniel look-a-like for your ‘vacation’ classes and summer school! Unfortunately, if your destined for a ‘vacation’ boot-camp you’re buggered! Personally, in the muggy sweat of summer the only comfortable hairdo is a number 4 buzz with a pair of hair clippers.
Love those locks!
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Monster Prawns – Monday Market
Despite being inland, Daegu markets provide a tantalizing array of seafood. Cutlass fish is very popular (갈치) though it’s not one of my favourites as I don’t like fish that contain many small bones.
Cutlass Fish (갈지)
Prawns can be mammoth in size and these ones, not including the antennae, were about 7 inches long. The cost was just over 4000W (£2).
Prawns on a dinner size plate and about 7 inches long. The cost for 5 was just over 4000W (£2).
A succulent snack
© Nick Elwood 2010 This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Ear Piece Mania
Have you noticed that it seems a trendy, usually in western style restaurants, to equip your staff with radio earpieces. I often eat in a couple of places where the CIA and Personal Protection Services collide and fully expect to see staff with the barrel of a revolver poking from the waistband. It would be understandable if there were only a few members of staff per restaurant, but in Korea it’s customer service overload.
Two of the restaurants I frequent involve parking in a supermarket where I am always amused by the directions provided to vacant parking. First, there is the manic series of Power Ranger poses that alert you to the fact you have to turn left to enter the parking facilities. Of course, directions are adequately posted on both the tarmac itself and on street signs and you can hardly miss the building; it’s five stories high! Korean drivers have a reputation for multi-tasking, mobile phone in one hand, sandwich in the other; so I guess the Power Ranger routine grabs the attention of even the most inattentive driver. And next, once in the car park building, you can enjoy being mesmerized by the glitzy-glamour gals and their sequined stetsons that stand to attention on the apex of every corner and provide you a selection of semi-sexual hand gestures. My favourite is the direction to, ‘dim your head lamps,’ which looks like sign-language for, ‘it’s snowing.’ Performing this motion for several hours a day would drive you potty, unless of course you’d dropped an acid tab which in tandem with the glitzy-gloves, would be an exhilarating experience. Simply parking the car has been facilitated by 10 student staff, and that was only as far as the first level, but no one’s complaining when an hour’s wages are just enough to buy you a coffee and bun.
The Power Range Poses for directing traffic to parking lot
In the restaurant, another batch of students are re-enacting Men in Black. It’s early lunchtime and despite the fact there are only three customers, there are nine waiters each adorned with an ear-piece! I remember when CB radio was a fad and it was common to listen ‘into’ police radios, for fun. I wonder if you can listen ‘into’ restaurant radios because I’d love to know what instructions are transmitted. Do individual waiters have a ‘handle?’ Do they follow standard radio protocol?
Han Man One calling Waiter Number 10, take order from table number 5. Over.
Han Man One calling Waiter number 6, deliver steak and banana jam, with portion of kimchi and pickle, to table 5. Over.
The radios remind me of a Burger King restaurant in Osnabruck, Germany, which installed radios where you made you order. Staff had to speak your order into the radio which then broadcast it to the staff ‘cooking.’ Not a bad idea except the staff doing the ‘cooking’ were less than a meter from the staff collecting the order, and sometimes the staff ordering would turn about and become the staff ‘cooking.’ It seems nothing could be done without speaking first into the radio-loud speaker contraption. Worse, the sound the radio produced, perhaps because of the proximity, was muffled and incomprehensible and so, ‘Whopper,’ sounded like, ‘wowa.’
Maybe the ear pieces transmit calming music to anesthetize staff when there are no customers or when staff outnumber them. Maybe they’re totally dead, simply window-dressing, because I never seen any staff directing waiters. I’d sure like to have a whirl on them, secretly – and if of course, I could speak Korean. One of the places I eat has the most handsome waiter and I’d love to say a few things directly into his ear-hole. Unfortunately, though the restaurant serves a rather delicious sausage, amusingly called ‘sausage on the bone’ as it has a spare rib painfully protruding from one end, the only sausage I want is not on the menu!
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
A Hot Little 'Story'
Chillies growing near my house
My neighbour, an elderly man in his seventies is annoyed. He lives in a house next to my one-room ‘villa’ and loves to garden. Wild sesame grows around the front of his house and often, as I am leaving my building, their scent is wafting on the breeze. Along the sides of his house are an abundance of chillies.
My neighbours sesame plants
While Koreans often surprise me with their ignorance of nature, most patches of spare land, especially between buildings in residential areas have been toiled in order to grow sesame, mooli or chilli. If not eked out of vacant soil, plant life is sustained in ceramic or plastic pots of sizes ranging from tiny to big enough to bathe in. I have even seen patches of cultivated land laboriously dug out of small patches on the mountain side.
My neighbour is angry because someone has pulled up a couple of his chilli plants; a clear transgression because to do so involves putting ones hand through the fence into what is clearly his property. My other neighbour, who owns the restaurant directly in-front of my one-room, finds the incident somewhat amusing as she claims his chillies only have a couple of fruits on each plant and yet the solitary chilli which sits, day and night in a pot beside the restaurant front door, has seven fat fruits on it and no one has seen fit to steal it.
I’m perturbed; such theft is too close to the type of theft rampant in the UK except the chilli garden wasn’t vandalised or the stolen plants strewn across the pavement and subsequently stamped into the tarmac in that obvious expression of joy at destroying another person’s labours. The theft, though minor, unsettles me because it undermines the pedestal on which I put Korea but this is only temporary; I am pondering the issue outside the GS25 store and it’s Saturday evening at 11.00 and young kids, some as young as 10 or 11, are still walking about unaccompanied by adults. I remind myself my analysis may be a little over enthusiastic but in the UK no child of 10, or even 14 is safe on a city street one hour before midnight and if they are out and about, individual or in groups, they are up to no good!
Unusual photo of Korean police
The ‘story’ has an amusing twist because the old man was so outraged by the theft of three plants that he telephoned the police – and guess what? They turned up to investigate – within the hour! Of course, there was nothing they could do but nonetheless it is incredible that such a matter should be both reported to the police and responded to, by them. I can imagine phoning the police in my hometown and telling them ‘someone had stolen three of my prized chilli plants.’ First they would either consider it either a joke or the complaint of an idiot because everyone knows the theft of a plant, other than a marijuana plant, is insignificant. And of course, the police probably wouldn’t respond. You can guarantee ‘crime investigation’ to occur if you are a big business but for most plebs who are victims of crime, you will have to be content with watching it on television. I had a motorbike stolen in London and it took them several days to turn up to gather the information part of which would be used to identify criminal patterns and the other to provide statistics designed to foster faith in the system and appease concerns over public spending. Most statutory professions in the UK are now predominantly concerned with bureaucratic and data collecting procedures designed to justify their own existence, after-which they deliver some secondary service to the public. ‘Statutory services’ should be renamed ‘secondary services’ as their current remit, basking in the shady, inconsistent world of statistics, clearly has a political agenda.
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Bathhouse Basics 5. A 'Handbag' or 'Shopping Basket?'
Bathhouse floors are always slippery and a danger to move over quickly unless you’re under 10 years of age and impervious to falling over on hard surfaces. Hence, besides being naked, you’re compelled to walk in a manner looking like you’ve just been buggered; don’t worry, having been forced into wearing open back sandals, bath slippers and flip-flops for most of their lives, the geisha gait, that nancy little shuffle of a walk, is how many Korean men and boys walk both in and out of the bathhouse.
A typical bathhouse bag
To increase your incredulity even more, why not adorn yourself with a bathhouse ‘handbag’ or a bathhouse ‘shopping basket.’ Both are used to hold you shampoo, hair conditioner and shaving kit etc, and are ideal tan ideal accoutrement to take into the bathhouse complex with you.
The bathhouse ‘handbag,’ which is waterproof, comes in various designs and colours, mine is pink and has never raised an eyebrow. The ‘handbag’ can be carried openly, adorning your mincy walk, or carried discreetly in a larger sports bag. In the monsoon season and summer months the bag can sometimes get moldy so it is necessary to dry it out occasionally and a regular session in the washing machine will give it an additional clean.
A camper version
"Hello Sailor!"
The bathhouse 'basket'
The bathhouse ‘shopping basket’ seems to be more popular among women and is frequently seen being carried to or from the bathhouse. I can’t recall seeing a man carrying one. Likewise, they are not all that common in the male bathhouse but being open, they are easily aired and if you own a separate small locker in a bathhouse, they will easily fit inside.
I keep deodorant, pumice stone, shampoo, mouthwash, toothbrush, shaving gel and razor in mine and as I hire a small locker in my jjimjilbang-bathhouse, (3000 won a month), I leave this permanently on the premises. Though I’ve rarely seen men using ‘baskets,’ most either having ‘handbags’ or simply carry items individually, no one has paid it any attention. I use a deodorizer in my locker during summer just to remove any damp odours. If I visit another bathhouse I use my pink ‘handbag.’
If you feel self-conscious during the ‘walk-of-shame,’ that is the transition from where you undress to the bathhouse complex, both ‘baskets’ and ‘handbags’ are ideal to faff about in which helps take your mind off the fact you’re naked and the center of attention.
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
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